27417: Severe (post) Miami Herald Article on Preval (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Constantin Severe <csevere@hotmail.com>

Préval's return to the ballot shakes Haitian establishment

The candidate to beat in Haiti's elections is a quiet former president who has 
been working with peasants and growing bamboo since he left office in 2001.
BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@MiamiHerald.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE - Five years ago, René Préval did something no president in 
Haitian history had done: He finished his full term, left the National Palace 
and moved to the countryside to live in solitude, far from the political 
maelstrom of Port-au-Prince.

Now the 63-year-old agronomist -- whose term in office brought a rare spell of 
stability and some social progress, but paved the way for the chaos that 
followed -- is the man to beat in elections scheduled for Feb. 7.

His candidacy has delivered a degree of credibility to the first balloting 
since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the country in the face of massive 
political opposition and an armed revolt in February 2004.

Préval entered the race late -- just two months before the November date when 
elections were scheduled, before delays pushed them to next week -- and he is 
just now beginning to outline his agenda.

''In general, one of the things people reproach me for is that I don't speak . 
. . That's one of my defects, they say,'' Préval, a quiet man of slight build, 
said Sunday in a wide-ranging interview with The Miami Herald. 'This is false. 
When I was president, the people invented a slogan: `They are talking, he is 
working.' My nature is to do things.''

A December CID-Gallup poll showed Préval getting 37 percent of the vote, with 
the 34 other candidates far behind. In the capital, his momentum has 
significantly shaken the political establishment. Politicians and business 
leaders who helped remove Aristide from power and then pushed for the elections 
are now scrambling -- fearing that they might get squeezed out of power by 
Aristide's one-time protégé.

Préval has scrupulously refused to discuss the polarizing topic of Aristide, 
letting both sides guess whether Aristide would have influence in a Préval 
administration.

''I don't know if he's coming,'' back to Haiti, he said of Aristide, who is in 
exile in South Africa. ``I prefer to concentrate on the future.''

Diplomats and others who have spoken to Préval privately say he has not talked 
to Aristide for years and has expressed no allegiance to him.

SOURCE OF SUPPORT

Préval is not running under Aristide's Lavalas Family Party, but his own party 
Lespwa. And he has picked as his campaign manager a man who fled the country 
under threat by Aristide-linked thugs.

But Préval is drawing from the same base of support.

When Aristide was pushed into exile, many of the poor -- particularly in the 
capital -- saw it as a conspiracy by U.S. and French interests, in conjunction 
with the Haitian elite. And the transitional government did little to dispel 
the notion. Propped up by a U.N. peacekeeping force, police locked up numerous 
Lavalas leaders, arrested hundreds of sympathizers and launched bloody attacks 
in pro-Lavalas slums like Cité Soleil and Bel Air.

As the Lavalas Family Party splintered, the heavily armed gangs Aristide once 
empowered to protect him fell into a paroxysm of violence, fighting each other 
for turf and waging a minor insurgency against the new government and the U.N. 
peacekeepers.

''Probably the gravest thing about Préval is the hope that he gives to violent 
parts of Lavalas,'' said Andy Apaid, an apparels manufacturer who became one of 
Aristide's most vocal opponents. ``The hope is they will have the propensity to 
gain more strength. And his government will again depend on an unusual base.''

Préval says he will not tolerate armed gangs. He said he will work with the 
U.N. peacekeepers and international donors to immediately reduce tensions in 
the slums.

''What is going on [with the gangs] in Cité Soleil today is mainly criminal, or 
purely criminal,'' he said.

We have to take police action against criminals at the same time there has to 
be massive social investment in Cité Soleil. To give work to people to better 
the social situation, that will isolate the criminals because now the criminals 
use [their spoils] to aid the population.''

While many observers thought the gangs would mount a bloody offensive to 
disrupt the election, residents in the slums say it is the business elite that 
now has the motive to spoil the election.

''They know they're going to lose,'' said Rene Monplaisir, a Lespwa organizer 
from Cité Soleil.  They don't want elections.''

Jean-Germain Gros, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, 
St. Louis, and an expert on Haitian politics, said Préval is likely the only 
candidate who can bring a minimal level of consensus to a divided nation.

Gros says Préval has the temperament to work with people, to reach across the 
table.''

But Préval has many detractors. In office, he was seen as a puppet of Aristide 
and presided over a political stalemate that crippled the country, left it 
without a functioning government and stalled hundreds of millions of dollars in 
international aid.

Apaid said Préval might be the front-runner in the first round, but that he 
will not get the majority he needs to avoid a runoff. In the second round, 
Apaid says the opposition to Préval -- now behind many candidates -- will unite 
to defeat him.

A TOUGH AGENDA

Even if Préval wins, he may struggle to work with Parliament. For the 110 seats 
of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, Lespwa has 78 candidates.

His agenda will require plenty of help. He will need cooperation and major 
funding to meet his goals -- to get every child in school, to create a 
functioning healthcare system, to reform a judicial system where inmates 
languish for months without seeing a judge.

Préval says many of Haiti's problems stem from the rural peasantry, who cannot 
make a living off eroded land and move to slums to find relief.

When I arrived as president, the price of fertilizer was $70 for a big bag. 
Three months after, the price lowered to $35. We eliminated corruption in the 
Ministry of Agriculture . . . and cut out intermediaries. The same bag of 
fertilizer today costs $300. If you could cut the price another 50 percent like 
we did the first time, it would be a clear economic and political signal that 
will appease the peasantry.''

Préval also wants a commission to look at every inmate's case and release 
political prisoners.

''We will start with the political prisoners because it is the easiest problem 
to solve,'' he said.

Miami Herald staff writer Jacqueline Charles contributed to this report.