PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – President-elect Rene Preval was the man of the hour yesterday following his turbulent election victory, but you wouldn’t know it from his appearance before a gaggle of international and local journalists.

Haiti, and much of the world, waited to hear from Preval – on his plans to form a new government, to address Haiti’s many woes and his stance on his former mentor, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a controversial former slum priest who’s in exile after being ousted as president two years ago.

But a day after Preval was declared the winner of the February 7 elections, he postponed a news conference until Wednesday and remained shuttered inside his sister’s gated house on a hill above the capital. He finally emerged after photographers pleaded for at least a photo opportunity.

“Wednesday at 11, Wednesday at 11,” Preval said – repeating it in Spanish, French, Creole and English – as reporters asked him questions.

More details emerged, meanwhile, on the behind-the-scenes negotiating on a deal to declare Preval the winner earlier this week as protests paralysed this Caribbean nation and allegations swirled that the results were being rigged to deny him a first-round victory.

Preval was a hair short of an outright majority with more than 90 per cent of the vote tabulated. Haitian officials decided in a meeting Wednesday that ran past midnight to divide the 85,000 blank ballots cast among the candidates in proportion to the percentage they had already received. That gave Preval just over 51 per cent and outright victory.

If he had fallen short of a majority, he would have faced a second-round election in March against second-place finisher, Leslie Manigat.

Chilean Ambassador Marcel Young said his country and Brazil sought to resolve the election dispute with Haitian authorities as the nation teetered on the brink of upheaval. Tens of thousands of Preval supporters had taken to the streets, claiming fraud. Some erected flaming barricades across roads. Shops were closed. Thousands briefly occupied the luxury Montana Hotel, where election officials held news conferences to announce the latest returns.

“We expressed our worry and I think it produced healthy dialogue and helped lead to a quick solution,” Young said, adding that Haitian authorities decided to divide the blank votes among the candidates.

“We were talking with them almost every day because it was an untenable situation,” he said. “There was no commerce and things couldn’t continue this way … Our country didn’t do anything but facilitate a dialogue.”

Manigat, also a former president, has accused election officials of breaking the rules to give Preval a first-round victory.

Bob Maguire, director of the international affairs programme at Trinity University in Washington, said Preval could be keeping silent because he wants to choose his words carefully.

“This is a very delicate moment and he has to be really careful about what he says, because every word is being parsed like it hasn’t been before,” Maguire said by phone.

“So he could just be extra cautious about things.”

Maryse Narcisse, Aristide’s spokeswoman, declined to say whether Aristide and Preval were in contact.

The US government believes the return of Aristide could destabilise the country and has hinted that he should remain in exile in South Africa.

“President Jean-Bertrand Aristide will make a statement next week,” Narcisse said by phone from New York.

Preval, who led Haiti from 1996 to 2001, became the first elected president ever to finish his term when he left office five years ago.

After he is inaugurated on March 29, he will lead a nation where heavily armed street gangs wage gunfights with UN peacekeepers, where the rich and poor are divided by mistrust and hatred and where a rash of kidnappings is driving out business owners.

The son of a former government official, Preval has vowed to crack down on hardened criminals.