19442: Clotilde: "Rise and fall of a "Haitian Mandela"

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Clotilde6@aol.com

Rise and fall of a 'Haitian Mandela'
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, now cornered by popular revolt, once
embodied a dream of Haitian democracy.
By Clara Germani | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
It was a textbook moment in Jean-Bertrand Aristide's alternately troubled and
glorious path from parish priest to president to, now, a pariah confronting
total rejection by his country.
At a 1994 conference on military coups at the Carter Center in Atlanta, a
panel of experts asked the then-exiled Haitian president what he'd learned from
his own recent overthrow.
Moderator Robert Pastor recalls being astonished at Mr. Aristide's honesty:
"He said, 'I won the election by too much.... I thought I didn't need to
compromise and reach out to the opposition, and it ultimately provoked a coup.' "
Mr. Pastor's heart was won. "I thought, 'this guy's great. He learned a
principal lesson and is willing to say it in public."
But, say legions of cynical former members of Aristide's inner circle, the
president had drawn a more perverse conclusion: His mistake wasn't trying to
squelch opposition; it was not succeeding in doing so.
How a man hailed as a potential Nelson Mandela for his impoverished and
oppressed nation of 8 million could fall so far appears to be as much a tale of
wishful thinking by desperate Haitians and the international community that
backed him, say experts, as it was a tale of the old cliché that "absolute power
corrupts absolutely."
Aristide was given that rarest of political gifts - a second chance. But,
reinstalled in the presidency in October 1994 by a multinational military force,
he used his resurrection to perfect an autocratic style, say even those close
to him who were interviewed for this story.
Today, having infuriated, humiliated, and - some allege, killed - any
once-devoted followers who crossed him, Aristide has few political allies left. Even
his strongest credential - his election to a second term in 2000 - counts
little as rebels gobble up territory and threaten to take the capital.
Languishing in that familiar pre-coup limbo that is a trademark of modern
Haitian presidencies, Aristide is a symbol of a political culture that has been
bankrupt nearly since it began as a slave revolt 200-plus years ago. But his
historical image is just as a symbol of the impoverished Haitian masses he
worked with as a parish priest.
In the years immediately following the 1996 ouster of the dictator
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, "Titide" - affectionate Creole for tiny Aristide -
worked and preached from the St. Jean Bosco church, not far from Port-au-Prince's
teaming Cité Soleil slum.
He wore crisp shirts neatly tucked into dress slacks cinched hard around a
tiny waist that suggested not just a vow of poverty but a vow of hunger. His
slightly lopsided face was magnified by thick aviator glasses. His overall look:
unassuming nerd.
But what came out of is mouth - in any of the seven languages he spoke - was
powerful. His nationally broadcast masses preached liberation theology - equal
parts consciousness-raising for the poor (the Vatican and US embassy termed
it "class warfare"), nationalistic rhetoric eerily reminiscent of the Duvalier
dynasty, and tart-tongued anti- capitalism.
Aristide was widely credited for his ability to turn proverbs and scripture
into inspired Creole rhetoric - a rhetoric that seemed to transport him
physically from the calm languor the Haitian heat causes to a perspiring and fiery
physicality.
Bob Maguire, a professor at Trinity University in Washington who was a
development worker in Haiti, recalls this Creole mastery that first emerged from the
pulpit. Aristide, he says, once brought a stem of bananas to the altar during
one of the 1980s military dictatorships and asked parishioners to walk up and
take one. The Creole word for this clump of bananas is a homonym for the word
"regime." "See how easy it is to take apart a 'regime'?" Aristide asked his
congregation.
But if his oratory was often eloquent, it could also generate a violent spark
on the emotional Haitian street. Aristide could and did inspire mob violence.
This power to rival the authorities generated so many assassination attempts
that Haitians often attributed his survival to God-given mystical Catholic or
voodoo powers.
Indeed, the more Aristide was persecuted, the more he was adored by the poor.
"He had all the characteristics of an honest leader because he was a man of
the cloth in a very spiritual country," says Alice Blanchet, a Haitian-American
who worked in Aristide's presidential administration in the mid- 1990s. "He
had helped mobilize the public for the ouster of Duvalier and a series of other
coup leaders."
But, says Ms. Blanchet, even back then some close to Aristide were
uncomfortable with the way he cast himself in Haitian metaphor as a kind of messiah.
Those closest to him as far back as his parish days say now that they
overlooked his autocratic approach because he had the cloak of democratic principle
drawn close around him.
"I think he was a weak leader and we overjudged his mandate," says one
American who was close to Aristide and asked not to be identified. "His biggest
problem is he doesn't listen, he doesn't compromise, and he's an egomaniac in that
regard ... he was always that way. It wasn't like living with Gandhi.... He
didn't believe in self-denial, and he wasn't spiritual in any way. He was a
politician."
But, he adds, "I don't care if he loved fine clothes gold watches and
swimming pools...he was democratically elected. And no one accused Mandela of ever
being spiritual."
But Aristide rose to power because he was seen as a great hope for change -
someone very different and, having won two-thirds of the vote in a 13-candidate
election in 1990, someone with unprecedented public support. So, say those
who were close to him, his peccadilloes were overlooked - from his increasingly
elaborate household compound to his tailored clothes and an increasingly
domineering attitude.
"The first thing I noticed was wrong, " says Blanchet, was when she was hired
by the exiled Aristide in 1993 to work with his prime minister back in the
capital city. "Aristide wouldn't return phone calls to the prime minister ... he
wouldn't even give [the prime minister] his direct phone number."
Clotilde Charlot, who worked with Aristide during his first presidency and
was part of the professional brain trust who helped him get started in politics,
says her first real surprise came on the heady day of his inauguration.
Aristide suddenly disinvited from the inaugural parade his longtime political
ally, Evans Paul, who had just become the first democratically elected mayor
of Port-au-Prince.
The president deemed him "unimportant." Ms. Charlot said it was a shockingly
primitive power play.
Throughout Aristide's first interrupted presidency and the second one that'
started in January 2000, his political tactics have essentially nixed a working
parliament - and a working government. Key programs his own administrators
labored to create would be inexplicably killed by Aristide. He rejected a
hard-fought privatization plan that would have created government capital on the eve
of an international loan being granted, says Blanchet. He sent an envoy to
the Vatican to solicit the church's help in negotiating a coalition government,
only to announce while the envoy was still flying to Rome that this was not a
mission on Aristide's behalf.
It seemed, she says, that his philosophy was to create chaos that would allow
him to keep a grip on total - though unproductive - power. Others describe
how Aristide would not even brook conversational opposition.
Vicki Butler, the wife of former Ambassador Tim Carney, recalls a breakfast
with Aristide and his Haitian-American wife, Mildred, in which an argument
ensued because Aristide suddenly wanted Ms. Butler to accept his somewhat
nationalistic thesis that Haitians - who live in the some of the world's most
difficult poverty - are "happy."
The ammunition for his argument: The Swedes have a higher suicide rate than
Haitians - thus Haitians must be happy.
Butler says that Aristide's distaste for compromise meant he made no progress
on Haitis' multitude of problems, from scarring deforestation and water
degradation to disease and hunger.
"The man does not understand compromise and that's the nature and [larger]
problem of Haiti." says Pastor. "It really is a case where leadership matters so
much. He could have been a Mandela but he became a Mugabe."
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