18913: Sajousp: Poll: Haiti better under Duvaliers (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: sajousp@aol.com

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Poll: Haiti better under Duvaliers
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By E.A. Torriero
Tribune staff reporter

February 20, 2004

Reflecting dissatisfaction over anarchy in their homeland, Haitian-Americans polled this week said Haiti was better off under the brutal hand of the Duvalier family dictatorships than with its current democracy.

The survey of 600 Haitian-Americans in Florida and the Northeast showed weak support for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected leader who is under fire for corruption and checkered leadership.

Still, more than half of those responding said Aristide should remain in office until his term ends in 2006 to emphasize the importance of elections.

"They feel that if he resigns it will weaken the democracy," said Sergio Bendixen, a Miami pollster who conducted the survey for New California Media, an association of ethnic media organizations.

The poll was one of the most extensive conducted of U.S. Haitians and was designed to represent a cross-section of the 600,000 Haitians in the United States, Bendixen said. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The survey's results reflect disillusionment among Haitians in America who send more than $1 billion in remittances and aid annually to relatives in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

With Haiti appearing on the brink of civil war, and a possible refugee crisis looming in the Straits of Florida, Haitian-Americans are lobbying the White House and the international community to intervene diplomatically or militarily.

While expressing strong disapproval of U.S. policies toward Haiti, respondents were divided as to whether the U.S. should dispatch troops. Thirty-three percent said they support American military help for Aristide while 31 percent said U.S. forces should not intervene. Thirteen percent said the U.S. should offer military support to the opposition movement.

After he took office in 1991, Aristide was deposed in a military coup. A U.S.-led military intervention in 1994 ushered him back into power. It was the second time in history that U.S. forces had invaded Haiti. The first time was in 1915.

"When it comes to U.S. military intervention, that is a very controversial matter to Haitians," said Patrick Augustin, who conducts a weekly talk show on a University of Chicago radio station. Augustin's show features phone calls seeking opinions from Haitians on the island and in the U.S.

Most Haitian-Americans live in Florida, New York and Boston, but there are more than 4,000 Haitian-born residents in the Chicago area.

In exile in the 1990s, Aristide was supported by many Haitian-Americans, but as the country slides into anarchy, many of those polled blamed Aristide's leadership.

The poll, conducted in Creole and English, indicates that support for Aristide remains strongest among poorer, younger Haitians, as is the case in Haiti.

And few of the respondents are ready to turn the reigns over to those opposing Aristide.

"Haitian-Americans need to play a role to break the impasse," said Gepsie Metellus , director of the Sant La Neighborhood Center in Miami, who helped shape the survey.

Most of the Haitians polled were born on the island and fled economic and political oppression in the last 30 years. Still, many think times have never been worse there.

Fifty-six percent agreed that Haiti's economic and political situation was better when Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier ruled Haiti with a reign of terror for 29 years until 1986.

Just 14 percent said life was better under Aristide, while 30 percent did not answer.

"It is a matter of people looking back at the Duvalier years maybe through rose-colored glasses," Bendixen said.


Copyright (c) 2004, Chicago Tribune

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