Haiti's Aristide wins with 92 percent

Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was re-elected with an overwhelming 92 percent of the vote, the electoral council announced Wednesday.

Runner-up Arnold Dumas had just 2.4 percent of the vote in Sunday's elections, which were boycotted by all major opposition parties. Candidates have three days to contest the results.

Aristide's Lavalas Family party also made a clean sweep of nine Senate seats that were contested Sunday, giving it all but one seat in the upper house. It won 80 percent of all seats in the House of Assembly in legislative elections last summer that opponents charged were rigged.

Aristide confronts a mammoth task as he prepares to take power in the hemisphere's poorest country for a second time, amid charges of voter intimidation and irregularities.

Aristide became Haiti's first freely elected leader in 1990, ending nearly 200 years of dictatorship. After only seven months in office he was ousted by the army in a bloody coup.

The military government unleashed a reign of terror until 1994, when U.S. troops invaded and restored Aristide. Constitutionally barred from serving a second consecutive term as president, Aristide handed power to successor Rene Preval.

Aristide ran on a promise to create more jobs for the poor, but his opponents charge he plans to turn Haiti into a one-party state led by the Lavalas Family movement.

Across Haiti, life returned to what passes for normal on Wednesday, with millions beginning their daily search for food. Schools opened and buses were running again, after many stores had shut and schools closed amid a rash of election-related bombings that killed two children and injured at least 17 people. Each side blamed the other for the bombings.

"Now we hope the cost of living will go down," said mechanic Gregory Diverson, 18, in Port-Au-Prince. Food prices have gone up 50 to 60 percent in the past six months, but average wages have remained the same at about $400 a year.

The electoral council said about 61 percent of 4.8-million eligible voters had cast ballots, but independent news reports and opposition leaders said turnout was much lower.

Opposition politician Evans Paul charged that ballot boxes had been stuffed and tally sheets tampered with to increase the turnout figure.

In many polling stations, lines were short. Some closed hours early.

In a demonstration of the intimidation of which the opposition accuses the Lavalas Family party, a report emerged Wednesday that pro-Aristide thugs had raided an opposition meeting at a church on the eve of the elections in the town of Cavaillon.

The Rev. Yves Edmonde said the town's newly elected mayor and an assemblyman _ who both support Aristide _ led the group of "heavily armed Lavalas street thugs" that invaded the church, overturned the pews, punched people and threatened to burn down the church if any more meetings were held.

Lavalas leaders were not immediately available for comment. Amnesty International, however, said this month that it was "alarmed at the appearance of armed groups attached to municipalities" _ most of which are controlled by Lavalas.