14121: Edouard - News-Aristide of Haiti: Pragmatist or Demagogue? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Felix Edouard <loveayiti@hotmail.com>

This article mentions Aristide speech in Les Cayes

Aristide of Haiti: Pragmatist or Demagogue?
By DAVID GONZALEZ
New York Times
December 12, 2002

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."








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