21672: (Chamberlain) Duvalier wants to return (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(Newsweek, 12 April 04)


A Dictator Dreams of Home

Jean-Claude Duvalier is pining for a comeback. But the United States and
many Haitians frown on that idea

By Joseph Contreras



Jean-Bertrand Aristide was not the first Haitian leader to fly into exile
aboard a U.S.-supplied plane under intense pressure from a Republican
administration in Washington. The same fate befell Jean-Claude Duvalier,
the self-proclaimed president for life and son of the notorious dictator
Francois Duvalier, in 1986. The U.S. president at the time was Ronald
Reagan. Duvalier, widely known as Baby Doc because his father was a
physician, now wants to end his long exile in France and come home as a
private citizen. "In spite of all the years, I have remained very attached
to [Haiti]," Duvalier told NEWSWEEK in an interview in Paris last month
(box). "I ought to go back to participate in the reconstruction of the
country."

A lot of people inside and outside Haiti would firmly disagree. The younger
Duvalier left the country amid allegations of abject corruption and
human-rights violations committed during his 15-year rule. No
self-respecting politician in Haiti today professes any allegiance to him,
and the Bush administration doesn't want him to come back any time soon.
"We would view the return of Jean-Claude Duvalier as a negative development
for Haiti and the region," said a U.S. State Department official last week.
His return would have been unthinkable under Aristide, whose political
career began as an outspoken opponent of the Duvalier regime in the 1980s,
when the future president was still a Roman Catholic priest in the capital
of Port-au-Prince. But in the aftermath of Aristide's fall from power, some
mainstream politicians no longer dismiss the idea. "I have no problem with
Duvalier coming back," says Marc Bazin, a retired World Bank official and
former presidential candidate who broke with Baby Doc after briefly serving
as his Finance minister in 1982. "If we're going to look for consensus and
reconciliation, we can't keep those people out."

Any decision to allow Duvalier back into the country would have to be made
by Gerard Latortue, an ex-foreign minister and a former U.N. official who
was appointed interim prime minister last month to guide Haiti through its
post-Aristide transition. Latortue has yet to voice any opinion on the
matter, but there appear to be no legal impediments barring the return of
Duvalier, who was granted asylum by the French government when he fled
Haiti. Attorneys working for the Aristide government prepared a case
against Duvalier on charges of stealing state funds, but it never came to
trial.

Now 52, Duvalier walks with a stiff gait. His height and gray-flecked hair
give him the appearance of a distinguished diplomat. He lives outside Paris
and is reportedly strapped for cash, despite the fact that he was recently
included among the world's 10 most corrupt former chiefs of state by the
Berlin-based watchdog organization Transparency International. The group
believes that Duvalier looted between $300 million and $800 million from
the Haitian Treasury, putting him in sixth place, behind Serbia's Slobodan
Milosevic.

Baby Doc shrugs off such charges. "They had all the time in the world to
take legal action against me from Haiti," he says. "Nothing was done."
(That may not hold true in Aristide's case: the country's Justice minister
last week announced plans to seek his extradition from Jamaica to stand
trial on charges of corruption and human-rights abuses.)

What does linger, remarkably, is a certain nostalgia for the Duvalier
era—at least when it comes to living conditions. In the 1980s, foreign
tourists visited Haiti, the inflation rate was lower and the economy
actually grew at an annual rate of nearly 5 percent during one five-year
period. According to a survey of 600 Haitian residents of the United States
conducted by the Miami pollster Sergio Bendixen in mid-February, 56 percent
believe that Haiti's political and economic situation was better under the
Duvaliers—four times the number who favored Aristide's rule. Still, Robert
Fatton Jr., a professor and Haiti expert at the University of Virginia,
says that Duvalier's return would set a very bad precedent, perhaps
prompting other former strongmen—including Raoul Cedras, who ruled between
1991 to 1994 and now lives in Panama, and convicted mass murderer Emmanuel
Constant, now living in Queens, New York—to try to return. "The current
government doesn't want to see any of those characters back," said Fatton.
"If they let one in, it would be difficult to deny the others."

A special U.N. envoy said last week it could take as long as 18 months to
organize the new presidential election. That would give the dapper dictator
time to try to muster some support. "I still have a lot of friends in the
country," he says. He also has no shortage of enemies, including relatives
of victims murdered by the brutal Tonton Macoutes militias, whom Duvalier
inherited from his father, as well as angry Aristide partisans who have
held onto their rifles and wouldn't mind taking out their deposed hero's
original archenemy. They could be a compelling reason for Jean-Claude
Duvalier to stay out of politics, if he does return to his native land one
day.


(With Malcolm Beith in New York and Marie Valla in Paris)