18884: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Poll: Most Haitians in U.S. back Aristide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Fri, Feb. 20, 2004

PUBLIC OPINION


Poll: Most Haitians in U.S. back Aristide

A poll of 600 Haitians living in the United States finds most of them
support President Jean Bertrand-Aristide finishing his term in office and
tend to glorify Haiti's past.

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES

jcharles@herald.com


A majority of Haitians living in the United States want Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide to finish his term in office, but an even larger
group says the country was better off under the Duvalier dictatorships,
according to a nationwide poll released Thursday.

The poll of 600 Haitians residing in the United States -- half of them from
Florida -- also found that the community is divided on whether the United
States should send its military into Haiti.

The poll was conducted in English and Haitian Creole by Miami-based Bendixen
& Associates for New California Media, a nationwide coalition of ethnic news
organizations, funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation. It has a sampling
margin error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Believed to be the first in-depth poll of Haitian Americans, it included
both U.S. citizens and legal residents, as well as a few illegal immigrants.
More than 90 percent of those surveyed were born in Haiti.

The poll found that 52 percent of the respondents believe Aristide should
not bow to opposition pressure to leave office before his second term
expires in February 2006.

Local Haitian-American supporters of Aristide say the results show that most
people want democracy to succeed in their homeland.

''People are tired of coup d'etats in Haiti. We've seen 32 coup d'etats in
Haiti's history,'' said Tony Jeanthenor, chairman of South Florida's
pro-Aristide watchdog group, Veye Yo (Watch Them).

``It is the minority that is asking for Aristide to go. They have all the
money and the power. They've been running the country since 1804, governing
behind the scene.''

But he was dumbfounded by this eye-opening revelation: 56 percent of
respondents said Haiti was better off politically and economically under
dictators Francois ''Papa Doc'' Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude ''Baby
Doc'' than under Aristide, the Caribbean nation's first
democratically-elected president.

''Wow,'' Jeanthenor said.

Pollsters began calling Haitians in five states -- Florida, New York, New
Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut -- on Feb. 12, a week after armed
anti-government rebels began a violent rebellion against Aristide by seizing
more than a dozen towns, including Haiti's fourth-largest city, Gonaives.

Almost 60 people, including several police officers, have been killed in the
attacks, the latest uprising in a 3-year-old political crisis that has
crippled the Haitian economy and pitted Aristide against opponents demanding
his ouster from office.

U.S. INTERVENTION

Concerned about Haiti's worsening political crisis, some U.S. lawmakers are
urging U.S. military intervention. And France is exploring the idea of
sending in an international peacekeeping force. Caribbean Community leaders
are pressing Aristide and his political opponents to arrive at a political
solution.

Despite the support for Aristide to finish his term, only 23 percent of
those surveyed in the Bendixen poll believe he has done a good job governing
Haiti. There is also skepticism about Haiti's opposition movement, with 55
percent of those surveyed believing that opponents are fighting for
political power -- not democracy.

''Obviously the situation is chaotic in Haiti,'' said Sergio Bendixen, whose
firm did the polling. ``But what they are saying is he won the presidential
election and he should finish his term. If he were to leave, it would hurt
democracy.''

So with no real alternative to Aristide, respondents are choosing the status
quo.

Still, some would favor military intervention either in support of Aristide
(32 percent) or for the opposition (13 percent).

Many of the differences in opinion seem to be generational -- between
younger Haitians who arrived here as children and were educated in the
United States, and those who are older.

LIKE A DICTATOR

Support for Aristide's resignation -- 35 percent -- was much more prevalent
among younger Haitian Americans, who tended to believe the embattled
president is acting like a dictator and were more likely to see the armed
rebels as liberators.

Jean-Germain Gros, an associate political science professor at the
University of Missouri-St. Louis who has written extensively about Haiti,
said overall the findings indicate that Haitians in the diaspora have become
politically sophisticated in their thinking.

''Haitians, after living in the United States for a number of years, have
become habituated with democratic principles, one of which says if you were
elected to serve a specific term, you serve out your term,'' said Gros, who
is not associated with the poll.

GENERATION GAP

Attempting to explain the generational difference in the poll results, Gros
said younger Haitian Americans are perhaps much less likely to overlook
Aristide's flaws.

``I grew up in Haiti and know what it's like to live under a dictatorship. I
have some basis of reference. Subconsciously, I may conclude Aristide may be
a flawed democrat -- at best -- but he's not a tyrant in the mold of the
Duvaliers.''

The nostalgia that some Haitian-Americans -- young or old -- seem to be
expressing about the Duvalier regime can best be explained as typical human
nature, both Gros and Bendixen said.

''After time goes by, you forget the negative,'' said Bendixen, who has
heard similar sentiments shared by Dominicans about the dictatorship of
Rafael Trujillo and Chileans about Gen. Augusto Pinochet. ``The nostalgia
comes with time when you tend to think to the past.''

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