Other than Jovenel Moïse of the ruling Haitian Bald Headed Party (PHTK), almost all of the other 53 Haitian presidential candidates reject the Oct. 25 election’s preliminary results announced by the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) on Nov. 5.

However, the candidates’ tactics for redressing what many observers also say are fraudulent and non-transparent vote counts differ widely. The result is a disjointed array of demonstrations, press conferences, declarations, letters, and legal contests which appear, until now, to leave the CEP, as well as the regime of President Michel Martelly and his backers in Washington, unmoved and unalarmed.

Supposedly based on the results of 94.3% of the 13,725 voting bureaus’ tallies (procès verbal), the CEP put Mr. Moïse in the lead with 32.81% of the votes (511,992), trailed by Jude Célestin of the Alternative League for Progress and Haitian Emancipation (LAPEH) with 25.27% (394,390), then Moïse Jean-Charles of the Dessalines Children Platform (Pitit Dessalines) with 14.27% (222,646), and Maryse Narcisse of the Lavalas Family (FL) with 7.05% (110,049).

The remaining 50 candidates all polled under 4% of the vote (57,000), with 45 of those under 1%. Only the top two candidates, Mr. Moïse and Mr. Célestin, would go to the run-off on Dec. 27.

However, Mr. Célestin has declared the first-round and its results “a ridiculous farce” and has vowed to fight for a thorough review of the vote, although he has not contested it legally through the CEP’s election court. “We are not [a] dealer, we are [a] leader,” Célestin tweeted on Nov. 6. “We will not accept the deal because we were in the lead!”

Only Ms. Narcisse and Duroseau Vilaire Cluny, who finished in 42^nd place with .08% of the vote (1,208), have legally challenged the election.

Narcisse’s lawyer Gervais Charles told the Miami Herald that they were “contesting the credibility of the process” but “know who we are going before to plead our case, the same people who are at the base of all the violations.” Claiming to be “not naive,” Gervais Charles said “the legal route has its limits” and encouraged the Haitian people to “keep carrying on a political battle.”

Meanwhile, Ms. Narcisse has apparently shunned joining other leading candidates in three open letters to the CEP denouncing the election as marred by “massive fraud.” The first letter on Nov. 3, the original date that preliminary results were to be announced, was signed by Jude Célestin and Moïse Jean-Charles, as well as Sauveur Pierre Etienne (OPL), Jean-Henry Céant (Love Haiti), Steeven I. Benoit (Conviction), Charles Henry Baker (Respect), Eric Jean-Baptiste (MAS), and Samuel Madistin (MOPOD).

“We have decided, without leaving our respective ideological and political positions, to demand that the CEP form this time, prior to the publication of the Oct. 25 elections’ results due to the numerous cases of irregularities and massive fraud during the vote, an independent commission of inquiry composed of five members appointed by credible sectors,” suggesting the media association ANMH, the human rights platform POHDH, the women’s group SOFA, a university group, and an election observer group. (The first round of legislative elections on Aug. 9 were marred by violence, intimidation, disorganization, fraud, and low turnout, but no results were changed and no parties punished. Some races were rerun on Oct. 25.)

The CEP excused its two day delay in announcing results as time needed to review the letter, although it never issued any formal response.

On Nov. 6, the eight candidates issued another communiqué denouncing the preliminary results announced Nov. 5 as “unacceptable,” saying that they harkened back “to the period of official elections by dictatorial regimes” under which “those that vote decide nothing.”

On Nov. 8, seven of the eight candidates (this time, Mr. Baker didn’t sign) sent another letter saying they “energetically protest and reject the supposed results” issued on Nov. 5 which were “stained by grave irregularities and massive fraud,” pleading again for an “impartial and independent commission of inquiry.”

On Nov. 9, Moïse Jean-Charles declared that he and his partisans were launching “a juridical-political battle” against the results and that “we cannot let them trample the vote.”

“We are asking the Haitian people to rise up in the four corners of the country to defend our integrity, our dignity, national sovereignty, national production, social justice, and the nation’s mines,” he said. “We will not allow a group of bandits, who have teamed up with a part of the international community and a part of the traditional [Haitian] elite, to take the country hostage.”

On Nov. 10, André Fardeau, formerly one of the FL’s foremost street mobilizers who defected to Célestin’s campaign three months ago, announced at LAPEH’s headquarters three days of marches in Port-au-Prince and Pétionville from Nov. 11-13.

So far protests against the election results have been scattered and sporadic around the country, rapidly repressed with clubs and tear-gas by the Haitian National Police (PNH), whose director, Godson Orélus, has repeatedly reminded the population that all demonstrations during this period are illegal.

The Dessalines Coordination (KOD) party has maintained, since it organized a well-attended national popular forum in Port-au-Prince in September 2013, that “free, honest, and sovereign elections are not possible with Martelly and MINUSTAH,” the acronym for the 5,000-member UN occupation force deployed in Haiti since 2004. In a Nov. 10 declaration, KOD called for the departure of Martelly and MINUSTAH, a provisional government, and an end to foreign meddling in Haiti’s elections. “A century after they emptied our banks, stole our wealth, and occupied us, the U.S. has no moral power to dictate to us what to do,” KOD said.

Meanwhile, popular and political interest has begun to focus on Antonio Sola, one of the partners in the Spanish election-engineering PR firm Ostos & Sola, which ran President Michel Martelly’s 2010-2011 campaign. The bearded and suited Sola now shadows Jovenel Moïse as campaign advisor, just as he did Martelly five years ago. The firm has been involved in over 400 electoral races around the world, and Sola has been accused of ruthless and illegal tactics, not just in Haiti, but in the campaigns of President Felipe Calderón in Mexico, President Otto Perez Molina in Guatemala, and ultra-right-wing ARENA party ex-paramilitary candidate Rodrigo Avila in El Salvador.

Participation in the Oct. 25 vote was very low, even by the CEP’s own suspect numbers. “Turnout on Oct. 25 was 26.4%, a participation rate similar to that of the 2010, when elections were held after an earthquake and amid cholera outbreak,” explained the Haiti Elections Blog, a collaborative project of several groups. “This level of turnout is extremely low for  Haiti; turnout in previous presidential elections was much higher, reaching 59.2% in 2006, 78.3.% in 2000, and 50.2% in 1990. Such a low turnout means that only 8.7% of registered voters cast a ballot for Jovenel Moise and only 6.7% for Jude Celestin, while the overwhelming majority did not vote.”

Last July, the CEP’s president, Pierre-Louis Opont, admitted that the 2010-2011 CEP, of which he was the Director General, altered its electoral results under pressure from Washington. The sting and shame of that foreign intervention into Haiti’s electoral process hangs in the air today.

“We ask everyone who was a victim of Opont and this CEP not to wait five or ten years to find out that what they’re giving today are not the correct results,” said André Fardeau at his Nov. 10 press conference. “Let’s give Opont and the whole tèt kale [Martelly] team what they deserve.”