27015: (news) Chamberlain: Presidential election survey (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

(LATimes, 26 Dec 05)


Haiti Candidates' Faces Familiar but Not Comforting

The 35 contenders in the first presidential vote since Aristide's exile
include former leaders, a rebel tough guy and an accused killer.

By Carol J. Williams



PORT-AU-PRINCE ? A cocky guerrilla chief, an accused assassin, a sweatshop
industrialist and several stalking-horses for presidents previously deposed
are among the candidates vying to become head of state in this most
troubled of Western nations.

With 35 presidential contenders approved for the Jan. 8 vote, Haiti's first
election since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled into African exile
nearly two years ago offers a rogues' gallery of the notorious and
controversial but few new faces because of four high-profile exclusions.

Two wealthy businessmen, Texas food-service tycoon Dumarsais Simeus and
Florida investment banker Samir Mourra, recently returned from exile. They
were deemed ineligible because they hold U.S. citizenship, and the Haitian
Constitution prohibits a president of dual nationality. Evans Nicolas won't
be able to run under the banner of exiled dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc"
Duvalier because of a registration technicality. Defrocked priest and vocal
Aristide ally Gerard Jean-Juste was nixed because he's been jailed since
June for his alleged involvement in a journalist's slaying.

With the leadership slate crowded and the contest wide open, the election
offers a cornucopia of choices that span the political spectrum, from
socialists to populists to advocates of iron-fisted law and order. Among
them:


Rene Preval

The man who kept the presidential seat warm during the five years
separating Aristide's two terms is widely thought to be the leading
contender despite making no public appearances since the campaign began in
October. "I intend to campaign while lying on my back," he told a
journalist in declining an interview.

Preval, 62, has been keeping a low profile, probably to avoid the question
most supporters ask: Would he allow Aristide to return to the country?
Although Aristide is ineligible to run for president again, having served
two terms, he could wield influence over the masses through a proxy, as he
did during Preval's 1996-2001 tenure.

A veritable recluse at his remote bamboo plantation in recent years, Preval
and other disenchanted defectors from Aristide's Lavalas Party have
reorganized within the Lespwa movement, which has candidates competing in
all 129 legislative and 140 local races.

"He's going to speak about Aristide when the right moment arrives,"
explained Steven Benoit, Preval's brother-in-law and a candidate for the
lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies.

Benoit says Preval can serve as a unifying force by attracting Aristide's
constituency, the moneyed elite and Haitians who want the comfort of a
familiar face and "a corrected version of Lavalas" dedicated to improving
education, healthcare, employment and security.

During the inaugural Nov. 3 march supporting Preval, however, crowds from
the slums chanted for Aristide's return and became unruly. Police broke up
the rally.


Leslie Manigat

Another former president, the 75-year-old Manigat makes a virtue of the
mere 4 1/2 months he spent in office in 1988. His was one of the numerous
short-lived leaderships between Baby Doc's 1986 departure for French exile
and Aristide's landslide election about four years later.

"We are the only party out of power throughout all these disasters," argues
the courtly ex-president, who spent the Duvalier years in exile, much of it
in U.S. and European academic circles. He remained in Haiti, though,
through most of Aristide's tenure to nurture a center-right opposition
through his Assembly of Democratic National Progressives.

Manigat believes his countrymen see him as the candidate best positioned to
break with the unrelenting tumult, exploitation and corruption that have
beset Haitians since their slave ancestors ousted French colonial rulers
201 years ago.

"It's true that Preval has a strong position in the minds of
traditionalists," he said. "But people who feel that things can't go on in
this way anymore feel we have to do something new."

The veteran political scientist observed that Preval may become a victim of
his own popularity, noting that Haitian candidates tend to form alliances
against the strongest rather than along ideological lines.


Guy Philippe

The brash, young man who led the armed rebellion of February 2004 makes no
apologies for the uprising that drove Aristide into exile, instigated gang
warfare in the slums and unleashed such widespread insecurity that the U.N.
had to send troops.

"George Washington was a rebel. Charles de Gaulle was a rebel. I am a
rebel, and I am proud of what I've done," the 37-year-old former
Cap-Haitien police chief said. "You can't save a country without breaking
the law sometimes. People have a natural right to fight against tyranny,
and Aristide was a tyrant."

Philippe was initially a devout Aristide backer when the president was seen
as the voice of hope among the millions of desperate poor, long exploited
by a few hundred elite families who controlled more than 90% of the
economy.

"I fought Aristide not because I hated him but because I loved him too
much, and he betrayed us," said the warrior with the boyish face, an
American wife and two young children.

Philippe says his relative youth works in his favor and that his rebellious
activities demonstrate his determination to end poverty and corruption.
"All the leaders of Latin America who changed the course of their countries
were between 25 and 40," he contended, noting that 74% of Haitians are
under 40.

His plans for the country involve immediately reinstating the army Aristide
disbanded in 1995 and cleaning out the corrupt and politicized police
forces. Then he would seek to boost Haitian agriculture by limiting rice
and other imported commodities that he argues have devastated the national
food market.


Marc Louis Bazin

Known as "the Chameleon" for his service in every government since Baby Doc
was in power, the 73-year-old Bazin can boast the broadest range of
government experience. He was finance minister to Duvalier, prime minister
under the military junta that ousted Aristide in 1991 and held two Cabinet
posts during Aristide's second term.

"I have the capacity to align myself for the public good," Bazin said. "For
me, it's a plus. No experience I've had has tarnished my image."

In his presidential run, Bazin has taken up the mantle of Lavalas, the
movement from which he was recently estranged.

"We feel some responsibility to address the frustration of the masses," he
said from his hillside headquarters in the fashionable Pacot neighborhood.

A long-standing member of the foreign-educated elite, Bazin has campaigned
for land reform and better distribution of wealth among Haiti's citizens.

"You can't have 4,000 people in this country earning 50% of the national
income. We have to get them to understand there is no future in this," he
said of the small elite that controls the levers of production.

Bazin made it clear in an interview that he would regard Aristide's return
from exile as potentially destabilizing and that Lavalas must "turn the
page" and reinvent itself without its charismatic founder. But, like
Preval, he has sidestepped the issue on the campaign trail.


Charles Henri Baker

Running under the slogan of "Order-Discipline-Work," the 50-year-old
businessman has broken with the industrial elite's centuries-old practice
of staying away from the political front lines.

A poster boy for the hated bourgeoisie during Aristide's era, Baker has
amassed significant support among the impoverished masses by building on an
alliance between the business community and the main farmers union forged
ahead of last year's rebellion. Once a tobacco plantation owner, Baker has
been trumpeting that experience 20 years ago to galvanize support in the
countryside.

In the capital, Port-au-Prince, the heavy security at his campaign
headquarters speaks to the emotions his candidacy evokes among Aristide's
militant supporters, who see him as exploiting his 400 apparel assembly
workers, most of whom receive the minimum wage of $1.64 a day. Ten-foot
walls topped with coils of barbed wire encircle the new building donated by
a well-heeled supporter. Armed sentries man the iron gates, on guard
against enemies and vandals.

He said his visibility in the opposition to Aristide "gives me a little bit
of credibility" with those who recognized that the ousted leader was
corrupt and deceptive.

Asked about his association with the elite, Baker, the only white candidate
in the presidential race, said he was proud of his place in Haitian
society.

"We have to let the people of Haiti know that rich people are needed by the
poor for them to get richer," he said, espousing the trickle-down theory of
free enterprise.


Dany Toussaint

A former army major who became Aristide's bodyguard during his first exile
and returned with him in 1994, Toussaint made his money selling uniforms,
weapons and ammunition to security companies and his dubious reputation by
possibly being involved in the unsolved 2000 killing of crusading
journalist Jean Dominique.

Aristide loyalists on trial in the United States for drug trafficking have
called Toussaint "the assassin," but the candidate contends that he was
actually the target.

Toussaint, 48, has honed his candidacy around a promise to restore law and
order, warning Haitians that security will trump human rights as long as
lawlessness continues. If elected, he said, he would impose a 9 p.m. curfew
to keep minors off the streets so adults could go out without fear of being
ambushed by youth gangs. He would also have police arrest drivers who block
the city's perpetual snarl of traffic.

"If we don't restore order, the international community can give Haiti any
amount of money and it won't make a difference," he said, noting that the
slum gangs agitating for Aristide's return have reinvigorated themselves
with proceeds from ransom kidnappings that bring in an estimated $100,000 a
day.

Although most serious candidates have been fundraising among the 800,000
Haitian emigres in New York and South Florida, Toussaint's campaign has
been limited. He remains barred from entering the United States because of
accusations in the Dominique killing.