PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - Angry protests erupted across Haiti Wednesday leaving at least one dead as President Rene Preval called for calm after his protege narrowly won a place in the runoff in disputed polls. The headquarters of Prevals ruling INITE (UNITY) party were set ablaze after Tuesdays late night announcement of the results of the Nov 28 vote in which his handpicked successor Jude Celestin came in second. Celestin ousted Michel Martelly from the race for the presidency, despite earlier predictions showing the popular singer ahead in the polls triggering widespread accusations of vote-rigging. Thousands of Martelly supporters took to the streets in the capital Port-au-Prince and the second city Cap Haitien, where gunfire erupted leaving one young man dead and two people wounded, media reports said. Demonstrate, that is your right. But dont attack public buildings, businesses or private property, Preval said on Haitis national radio, calling for calm in the Caribbean nation which has a history of political upheavals. You are giving Haiti a bad image. Conflicts are not resolved by setting things on fire and breaking things. Pull yourselves together Haitians, Preval urged. He reminded his countrymen the results could be legally contested. Martelly has until December 20 to formally lodge a complaint with the electoral commission. The United States reacted immediately through its embassy in Port-au-Prince, voicing concern at the inconsistent results, pleading for calm and appealing for the will of the Haitian people to be respected. But after a tense night, thousands of young people began converging before dawn on the center of Port-au-Prince, ravaged by a January earthquake, many brandishing posters of Martelly. The singer, known as Sweet Micky, was pushed into third place by fewer than 7,000 votes by Celestin, who will now run for the presidency on January 16 against former first lady Mirlande Manigat, officials said. Gunshots had echoed through the night in the capital while tire barricades burned. Then before dawn came the call. Wake up Get out of bed a young Martelly fan shouted, rousing supporters in the largest slum area of Petion-Ville. Clapping and singing, some brandishing sticks and garbage cans, some throwing stones, the protestors paraded through the city. The results announced in a packed Port-au-Prince restaurant credited Manigat with 31 percent of the vote, Celestin with 22 percent and Martelly with 21.84 percent. The people came out to vote for Martelly because Manigat and Celestin are not going to sort anything out. Martelly was ahead and they have stolen the elections, one masked youth told AFP. We will destroy the country until Martelly is made president, he warned. Political turmoil only compounds Haitis misery. Much of the capital still lies in ruins since the January 12 earthquake that killed 250,000 people and left 1.3 million homeless, now living in precarious tent cities. Ten months after one of the worst natural disaster of modern times, Haiti was hit by the first cholera outbreak here in more than a century. The disease, which erupted in a central river valley, has now spread to the teeming capital and killed more than 2,120 people. Whoever wins the run-off faces the daunting task of rebuilding a traumatized nation of 10 million that was the poorest in the Americas even before the earthquake. The US embassy said the first post-quake polls represent a critical test of whether the Haitian people will determine their destiny through their vote. But it acknowledged that Celestins success was inconsistent with the published results of the National Election Observation Council (CNO)... election-day observations by official US observers... and vote counts observed around the country by numerous domestic and international observers, the US statement added. The CNO, which is funded by the European Union and had more than 5,500 observers at 1,600 voting centers nationwide, had estimated on Monday that Celestin was trailing a clear third behind Martelly.