Michel Martelly, a shaven-headed singer and political outsider, won Haiti's presidential election in a landslide victory that tapped into deep popular desire for change in the poor, earthquake-battered Caribbean state.
Preliminary results announced by the Provisional Electoral Council late yesterday gave the 50-year-old entertainer a clear win with nearly 68 per cent of the vote, compared with just under 32 per cent for his rival, former first lady Mirlande Manigat.
Celebrations erupted in the capital Port-au-Prince as cheering, jubilant Martelly supporters flooded the streets, singing, waving his portrait and setting off fireworks.
Mr Martelly thanked voters in a brief statement on his Twitter account: "We'll work for all Haitians. Together we can do it."
Tense anticipation tinged with fears of violence had led up to the announcement of the results from the March 20th run-off, the first second-round presidential vote ever held in the politically volatile nation, one of the world's poorest.
"Sweet Micky" Martelly, an iconoclastic entertainer known for his sometimes provocative stage acts, had campaigned on a forceful promise to change the status quo, pledging to break with decades of past corruption and misrule and bring a better life to Haitians struggling to recover from a devastating 2010 earthquake.
Mr Martelly, a star of Haiti's Konpa carnival music whose onstage antics include wearing wigs and diapers and dropping his trousers, has no previous government experience.
As president, he will face the huge challenge of trying to rebuild a small Caribbean country prostrated in poverty long before an earthquake killed more than 300,000 people and bludgeoned its fragile economy last year. Hundreds of thousands of destitute earthquake victims are still living in squalid tent and tarpaulin camps.
The results are preliminary because they can be subjected to legal challenges which must be dealt with by the electoral council before it can declare them definitive later in April.
To prevent trouble before and after the results were announced, blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers were out patrolling Port-au-Prince and other potential flashpoints. Some stores boarded up windows in anticipation of trouble.
The United Nations and donor governments including the United States, which have pledged billions of dollars in reconstruction funds to Haiti, want the election to produce a stable, legitimate leadership to take charge of the recovery.
The elections are choosing a successor to outgoing president Rene Preval and also new members of the parliament.
After a chaotic first round of elections on November 28th marred by unrest and fraud allegations, the run-off last month passed off generally peacefully.
In a statement issued by the US Embassy, Washington called the announcement of the preliminary results "another important milestone as the people of Haiti move forward to rebuild their country."
The statement did not mention Mr Martelly but said "while there were cases of irregularities and fraud on March 20th, these cases were isolated and reduced, especially when compared to the first round of voting.
"The United States calls upon all political actors to resolve any outstanding questions of the electoral results through the contestation process," it said.
The international community has worked to keep the Haitian elections on track through its UN peacekeeping mission and electoral observers and experts from the OAS and Caricom.
Backed by diplomatic pressure from Washington, these experts persuaded Haitian authorities to revise the disputed first round results to put Mr Martelly - originally placed third - in the March run-off with Ms Manigat, at the expense of a government-backed candidate dropped due to alleged vote-rigging.