Haiti votes for new president

Port-Au-Prince: Haiti goes to polls on Tuesday for the first time since Jean Bertrand Aristide resigned as the president and fled the country in February 2004.

Large crowds formed outside voting centers as Haitians went to the polls in elections many hope will end the turmoil that has rocked the country since 2004.

Security is tight with around 9,000 UN peacekeepers on duty as there are fears of gang violence and intimidation of the voters.

Many Haitians say they are still to receive their election identity cards.

Many of the 3.5 million voters faced hours-long hikes to get to the voting centers that were finally set up after four postponements of the election that was initially to be held in November last year.

"I'm very happy to see this enthusiasm to vote," said Juan Gabriel Valdez, the UN special representative to Haiti.

Lines of several thousand people formed outside some voting centers, which in some cases did not open on time causing increasing impatience among voters.

Electoral authorities had urged Haitians to get up early and be prepared to walk as long as three hours to cast their ballots, a sacrifice they said would be more than paid off by the prospects for the Caribbean nation to emerge from its misery.

"We had a very calm night, contrary to past election eves in Haiti," Valdez said.

But tension remained high in a country terrorized by armed gangs, plagued by rampant poverty, and with a history of fraudulent elections and military coups.

The 9,500-strong UN military and police force, which has been in Haiti since Aristide fled, stepped up security following an explosion of violence in recent months.

There are 33 candidates in the fray but the frontrunner is former president Rene Preval.

He needs to win at least 50 per cent of the votes to avoid a run off.

The 63-year-old Preval has long supported Aristide.

"Everybody here will vote for Preval, we love him," said Arisme Junior who like many other in the violent Cite Soleil neighborhood hopes the elections will lead to more and better jobs in a country where the unemployment rates exceeds 60 per cent.

Aristide was widely popular among impoverished Haitians, who make up 77 per cent of the 8.5 million population and who often blame the United States, France and Canada for the departure of Aristide, who fled the country as insurgents closed in on the capital.

Preval draws little support among better-off Haitians, who seem to favour industrialist Charles Henry Baker or former president Leslie Manigat.

Opinion polls ahead of the election gave Preval a lead of at least 27 per cent over Baker and Manigat, but the surveys' reliability was uncertain.

Should neither of the candidates obtain 50 per cent of the votes, the frontrunner would face off with the second placed candidate in March.

Among the longshot candidates is Guy Philippe, a former police commissioner who led the insurgency that played a key role in pushing out Aristide two years ago.

More than 800 voting centers area have been set up for the election that will also renew the 130-seat legislature.

Protectively, schools have been closed, government offices will be shuttered until Wednesday and American Airlines suspended Monday and Tuesday's flights to Haiti.