Jovenel Moïse, who supposedly leads in Haiti’s controversial presidential first-round elections, may have thought that he would be acclaimed when he made visits to the Haitian community in New York and Miami this past weekend.

Instead, he encountered spirited, impromptu demonstrations which denounced him as an “election thief.”

Using Facebook, Twitter, SMS, and old-fashioned phone trees, activists scrambled demonstrations of several dozen in both Brooklyn and Miami, having learned of Jovenel’s unpublicized visits only hours earlier.

Although the Brooklyn demonstration was more raucous, the Miami picket line provoked the arrest of protest singer and long-time activist Farah Juste for “trespassing” when she tried to enter the public event where Jovenel was speaking.

On Friday evening, Nov. 20, rumors began to spread through New York’s Haitian community that the candidate of President Michel Martelly’s ruling Haitian Bald Headed Party (PHTK) would be holding a press conference at the Crystal Manor on Flatbush Avenue in the heart Brooklyn’s “Little Haiti.”

Jovenel’s conference, scheduled from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m., was doubly provocative because Radio Pa Nou, a Haitian community station sharply critical of Martelly and the Oct. 25 elections, was holding a fundraising gala at Crystal Manor the same evening, starting at 9:00 p.m..

“We definitely have to let Jovenel and Martelly know with whom they are dealing,” said well-known activist Fritzner Pierre, as at noon on Sat., Nov. 21 community groups began to contact each other and put out the word for the demo. “We cannot just let this pass.”

The result six hours later was a lively protest of close to 30 people who chanted and shook signs and fists in the cold outside the front door of Crystal Manor for the full three hours of Jovenel’s event.

“Martelly! Jovenel! Elections are not for sale!” the demonstrators chanted, in English. “Neg banann, ou banann nan vole eleksyon,” they also chanted in Kreyòl. (“Banana man, you are being blocked from stealing the election,” using the nickname given to Jovenel, a banana exporter, by his campaign.)

The protest was broadcast in realtime by journalists and young demonstrators using their camera-cellphones. Videos and photos of the demonstration were soon spreading virally over the Internet, attracting more demonstrators.

Jovenel Moïse was able to slip into the event (which was paid for and organized by Haiti’s New York Consul General Charles Forbin) because demonstrators did not see him coming and react quickly enough. But they were waiting for him on his exit shortly after 9:00 p.m.. The panicked consulate staff tried to sneak Jovenel out of a side door through a throng chanting “election thief.” The angry demonstrators then noisily surrounded the consulate car with diplomatic plates provided for the candidate and bellowed their outrage as it sped away down Flatbush Avenue.

The next day, Tony Jean-Thénor, a leader of the Miami community group Veye Yo, learned around noon that Jovenel would be making a public appearance that afternoon at the Little Haiti Cultural Center at NE 59^th Street and NE 2^nd Avenue. As he was doing Veye Yo’s regular Sunday midday radio show, Jean-Thénor called for a demonstration over the airwaves.

At 2:30 p.m., about 20 people, led by Jean-Thénor and Farah Juste, another Veye Yo leader, began demonstrating with signs and a bullhorn across the street from the Cultural Center until Jovenel arrived at about 3 p.m..

Two off-duty policewomen, hired by the Jovenel event’s sponsors Dr. Rudy Moïse and Dr. Smith Joseph, told the Veye Yo demonstrators they had to disperse because they did not have a permit.

Seeking to avoid a confrontation, the demonstrators put away their signs and decided to go into the press conference to hear what Jovenel had to say. As they tried to enter the building, the hired cops blocked them, saying they were “trouble-makers,” and called for back-up.

“About five police cars arrived in under five minutes, but when the cops came to the entrance, they found there was no problem and started to head back to their cars,” Jean-Thénor explained to Haïti Liberté. “But then one of the hired cops started shouting ‘Everybody get out.’ Using a tactic I learned from Gerry [i.e. the late Rev. Gérard Jean-Juste, Veye Yo’s founder and icon of Miami’s Haitian community], I began to take one step forward, then one step back, suspecting that they wanted to arrest either me or Farah. Unfortunately, Farah didn’t know this tactic and tried to move slowly toward the room, and one of the policewomen immediately arrested her.”

“I was explaining to her that I am a Haitian citizen who pays my $150 tax every time I take a flight to Haiti, my five cent tax for every minute I talk on the phone to Haiti, or the $1.50 tax every time I make a money transfer to Haiti,” Farah Juste told Haïti Liberté. “I have every right to go into the event which was open to the public. The next thing I know, she threw me against the wall and – klap – put handcuffs on me.”

Due to the arrest, Jean-Thénor rallied his troops and restarted their picket outside the event. He ignored the continued arrest threats of the hired cops. The demonstrators held their ground, despite a torrential rain storm, until Jovenel and his supporters had left, sometime after 4:00 p.m..

Farah Juste had been taken to the Miami Police precinct at 62^nd Street and NW 10^th Avenue where she was charged with “trespassing.” She was then taken to the police holding facility in downtown Miami. But Jean-Thénor went to the precinct where he spoke to the commander.

“I called Farah’s daughter, Karen André, who works at the White House,” Jean-Thénor explained. “She called Frederica Wilson, this district’s congresswoman. Frederica called Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado, who called the Miami police chief, who called the 62^nd Street precinct commander Ervens Ford, who called the city attorney. They had Farah brought back to the 62^nd Street precinct, where all charges were dropped.”

Meanwhile, back in Haiti, Jovenel Moïse tried to play down the demonstrations, claiming that in New York there were “five people demonstrating outside” while “200 cheered me” in Crystal Manor.

“The room where Jovenel spoke only holds between 50 to 60 people,” explained Evens Debas, who covered Jovenel’s event for the ToutHaiti website. “About a dozen of the people in the room were from the New York Consulate, the Chicago Consulate, and the Haitian Embassy to the UN. Another dozen were journalists.”

In other words, the candidate who aspires to lead Haiti mustered less than 30 people in New York despite having the financial and logistical support of the Haitian Consulate, an outrage about which journalists buttonholed the defensive Consul Forbin on the sidewalk as he left the affair.

Despite massive marches in Haiti and the diaspora protests charging that Jovenel Moïse benefitted from massive fraud, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced final results on Nov. 24, saying that he, supposedly with 33% of the vote, would advance to the second round to face Jude Célestin, who garnered 25%. Célestin has said that, due to “massive fraud,” he will not take part in the run-off, but he has not formally or legally removed himself from the running.

“There are only two options for the streets,” said former Sen. Jean-Hector Anacasis, the leader for Célestin’s party LAPEH. “The removal of Jovenel or transition,” meaning Martelly’s resignation and replacement by a provisional government.

It now remains to be seen if Martelly, with backing from Washington and the UN military occupation force, can weather the storm of protest that is likely to worsen in the days ahead.