14117: 14117: Karshan: New York Times: Aristide of Haiti: Pragmatist or Demagogue? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MKarshan@aol.com

The New York Times

Aristide of Haiti: Pragmatist or Demagogue?

December 13, 2002
By DAVID GONZALEZ

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Dec. 12 - To his many impoverished
followers, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is the leader
they fervently believe will lift them out of their misery.
To his opponents - a group that has become more vocal and
more visible - he is a demagogue who must reform or resign
for the good of the country.

Those competing camps have clashed in the streets here in
recent weeks, sometimes with fatal results as Haiti's
lingering political stalemate, now two years old, flirts
with disaster and disorder.

Negotiations have so far failed to end the deadlock, which
stems from an election dispute. Several hundred million
dollars in foreign aid have been frozen because of the
crisis, and the economy of the hemisphere's poorest nation
has festered.

Yet President Aristide says Haiti is at peace, or at least
not in open warfare, thanks to him. In a 90-minute
interview at the National Palace, he said he had already
made significant concessions to his opponents.

He faulted international lenders for criticizing him while
not providing Haiti with money that would allow the
government to work. He has every intention, he said, of
finishing his second five-year term.

"I am not saying that I am the best," he said. "I am saying
it is not easy to find someone capable of doing what I am
doing for two years. I do not have to say a lot. I just
have to invite people to look at what we have accomplished
with nothing."

As much as offering a defense of his record, the statement
provided a précis of Haiti's political conundrum.

Even his critics acknowledge that for all his flaws, there
is no other politician with Mr. Aristide's popular
standing. But they complain that the president has
deflected responsibility for the political deadlock and
made progress toward breaking it impossible.

Despite assurances about his commitment to democracy, they
say, he has built his support in part by playing
dangerously on the race and class differences that have
made the country's politics so volatile - and its
democratic governments so fleeting - since Haiti's
founding.

"If he does not do something dramatic we are going to be in
a terrible situation," said a leading businessman who has
tried to intercede with the government. "I do not know if
he has the wisdom to do what is necessary, because time is
running out."

The Organization of American States has urged international
lenders and donors to release the money, and donors meeting
in Washington this week said they were looking for ways to
provide some immediate funds to assist development and
provide jobs.

But first they want Mr. Aristide to make some
administrative changes that will account for how the money
is used. Those changes hardly depend on the political
opposition, said one official at the meeting.

During the interview, held in the antechamber to his office
in the hushed, almost still palace, Mr. Aristide portrayed
himself as having already been reasonable with his
opponents, a fractious coalition known as the Democratic
Convergence.

He has offered to shorten or even end the terms of the
winners of the disputed 2000 elections, he said. He blamed
the opposition for sabotaging any chance for a peaceful
resolution of the political crisis by refusing to take part
in new legislative elections next year against his Lavalas
movement.

"Those who say Lavalas is weak, why not go to elections?"
he said. "It would be good for the country."

His critics answer that Mr. Aristide has been slow to
guarantee their security, particularly since a mysterious
nighttime raid on the presidential palace a year ago that
the president's supporters say was an attempted coup.

Since then, the critics say, the government has yet to
disarm gangs of thugs who have sought retribution and
intimidated Aristide opponents. Some say it is an
indication that Mr. Aristide cannot control his supporters
in the Lavalas movement, or does not want to.

Diplomats are warning both sides not to use the anniversary
of the palace raid, next week, to provoke more
confrontations.

"After 200 years of independence we still have some
consequences from that past where we had 32 coups d'état,"
Mr. Aristide said. "It is not easy for all the political
parties to forget about that bad way to behave, moving from
one coup d'état to another."

Mr. Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest who was first
elected president in 1990, was himself quickly ousted in a
coup, only to be restored in 1994 by an American-led
invasion force. Washington has had an ambivalent
relationship with him since.

In recent weeks, protesters, including former allies, have
charged him with dividing the nation with worrisome appeals
to race and class. Last week, during a speech in the town
of Les Cayes, Mr. Aristide condemned the opposition, many
from a fair-skinned elite, for being against dark-skinned
Haitians, like himself.

"You are peasants; you are poor," he said in Creole, the
language of most Haitians, in the cadence he perfected from
his days as a preacher. "You are the same color I am. They
don't like you. Your hair is kinky, same as mine. They
don't like you. Your children are not children of big
shots. They don't like you."

Mr. Aristide amended his remarks in a later speech, in
French, the language of the upper classes, to say that all
Haitians must work together for the common good.

But his critics charged that it was a familiar pattern of
making different appeals to different audiences and leaving
open the potential for misunderstanding and possibly
conflict.

The morning of the interview, several dozen supporters
gathered in a park near the palace to decry the withholding
of foreign aid. The protest echoed a theme that Mr.
Aristide himself has emphasized, that withholding the money
has directly increased his people's suffering.

"Many people seem to forget the poor have a right to eat,"
Mr. Aristide said. "Keeping the money out of Haiti is a
violation of human rights."

Such words have failed to sway international officials.
"Aristide has to understand there is political governance
and there is economic governance," said the official who
attended the donor's meeting. "People are skeptical and
think he will probably do what he always does, blame
somebody else."