Carnival singer tipped to be Haiti's president.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Michel Martelly, a singer and carnival entertainer with a colorful past, may have triumphed in quake-hit Haiti's presidential elections, partial results indicated Monday.

Tally sheets read out on television and radio indicated Martelly was well ahead of his rival, former first lady Mirlande Manigat, in key urban areas including Petionville and the Cite Soleil slum in the capital.

"I think he has won the election. From everything that I've heard it looks like it may even be a landslide, at least in the urban areas," said US-based Haiti expert Robert Fatton.

"It's not fully representative but it indicates a trend. Petionville, it was overwhelming, Cite Soleil was overwhelming."

Even before voting stations closed on Sunday, Martelly supporters were triumphantly taking to the streets, but there has been no claim of victory from the candidate and final results are not expected until April 16.

Out of 50 people questioned by AFP in Port-au-Prince after polls closed on Sunday at 5:00 pm local time (2200 GMT), not a single one said they had voted for Manigat, a soft-spoken 70-year-old and long-time opposition figure.
Known to fans by his former stage name "Sweet Micky," the 50-year-old Martelly waged a slick campaign built on the promise he would dramatically transform Haiti's notoriously corrupt and violent politics.

There had been fears Sunday's run-off, delayed for months by bickering over a violence-plagued first round in November, would be overshadowed by the return from exile of charismatic ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

But Aristide honored a commitment not to upset the delicate political situation and voting was largely peaceful in the Caribbean nation whose recent past has been scarred by dictatorship and violent upheaval.

The candidates are vying for the job of rebuilding a nation beset by problems, from endemic poverty and corruption to the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake, and a cholera epidemic that has claimed almost 5,000 lives since mid-October.

Pre-election opinion polls showed Martelly enjoying a slim lead over Manigat, but experts warned that such forecasts are notoriously unreliable.
                              YAHOONEWS