Government-backed candidate Jovenel Moise and opposition candidate Jude Célestin emerged as the top contenders in the first round of the presidential election held on October 25 .
According to preliminary results released here on Thursday by Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP).
Moise finished with 32.8 percent of the votes to Célestin’s 25.2 percent.
The election, which included balloting for parliament and mayors, attracted 54 presidential candidates,
Of the 5.8 million registered voters, over 1.5 million votes were cast in the election, of those 120,066 were invalidated for fraud and other irregularities.
Provisional Electoral President Pierre-Louis Opont Moise and Célestin will likely face off in the expected December 27 runoff.
However, this has not gone down well with some hopefuls as several have already announced plans to push for the removal of Moise, who has reportedly been chosen by Martelly.
Candidates have 72 hours to challenge the results, which will be heard by the National Electoral Complaints and Challenges Bureau (BCEN).
Final results are expected to be released later this month ahead of the December presidential runoff.
Earlier this week, eight of the candidates including Célestin and Jean-Charles, issued a signed letter to the CEP asking members to appoint a five-member independent commission to do a deeper scrutiny of the ballot sheets to address the allegations of fraud and irregularities prior to publishing the results.
