27534: Simidor (forward): Preval close-up

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: daniel simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/02/07

Ex-leader still enigma as Haitians cast ballots

Some see Rene Preval as Haiti's best hope after dark
years. Others worry he remains connected to that past.

By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent
Published February 7, 2006

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Before leaving office in 2001,
former President Rene Preval had these not so
comforting words for his countrymen:

" "Naje pou sorti ," he said in native Creole. "Swim
to get out."

Many Haitians took this as a warning they were in for
a rough ride. Controversial former President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was about to return to power.

After leaving office Preval disappeared from sight,
secluding himself at a family farm in the north of the
country. His political career seemed over.

His parting words, however, proved prophetic. Many
Haitians look back on Aristide's second term as one of
the darkest periods in their recent history. The
government sank into a cesspool of drug corruption and
political thuggery. Aristide was eventually forced out
of office by an armed uprising in February 2004.

Through it all, Preval said not a word. Now, after two
years of transitional turmoil under United Nations
guidance the country is bracing for new elections. Out
of nowhere Preval, 63, has re-emerged. Heading into
today's vote, opinion polls show him with a commanding
lead.

But the man who left office with those cryptic words
remains a mystery to many Haitians.

Some suspect Preval, once a close ally of Aristide, is
still his political "twin," secretly plotting to bring
him back from exile in South Africa. Or is the
opposite true? Is Preval perhaps on a quest for
personal redemption that will bury Aristide once and
for all?

There is no question that the two men were once
political partners.

In the late 1980s when Aristide was still a radical
slum priest ministering to the poor, Preval, an
agronomist by training, owned a bakery that provided
free bread to 25,000 poor slum kids.

"That's how we got to know Aristide," said Michele
Pierre-Louis, Preval's partner in the bakery.

In 1990 Aristide was elected president in a landslide
victory at the head of a grass roots movement called
Lavalas, the Flood. Preval became prime minister.

In those early years Preval was considered a hard-line
Lavalas radical. But he also earned a reputation for
trying to stamp out government corruption.

After only seven months in power Aristide was
overthrown in a military coup. The bakery was burned
down and Preval sought refuge in the French Embassy
with other government officials.

In 1994 Preval accompanied Aristide back to Haiti
after U.S. troops invaded to restore democracy. But
friends say the relationship was never the same. When
Preval was nominated in 1996 to succeed him, things
turned sour.

"Aristide was not happy about his candidacy. He wanted
power for himself," said Pierre-Louis, who now runs
one of the country's leading educational foundations,
FOKAL.

Aristide withheld his endorsement of Preval until the
last day of the campaign.

Once Preval was in the palace Aristide remained the
power behind the throne. He created his own breakaway
political party, the Lavalas Family. Preval refused to
join.

Aristide's partisans became a major political
obstacle, blocking key reforms. Parliament was
gridlocked, and eventually closed altogether. "The
shadow of Aristide was always hovering over what he
did," said Pierre-Louis.

Preval doesn't like to discuss this period. Friends
say he's not proud of his inability to stand up to
Aristide.

But it was also a fearful time. Once, a puppy
belonging to Preval's wife was found dripping blood
across the palace floor, its spine shattered by a
machete. Preval's friends took it as a direct threat
from Aristide, who still had ties to the palace
guards.

Preval had to contend with other suspicious deaths of
Aristide critics. In August 1998, Father Jean
Pierre-Louis, a classmate of Preval, was murdered by
two gunmen. The assailants were never caught. Then in
April 2000 one of Preval's closest mentors, fellow
agronomist Jean Dominique, was assassinated on his way
to work at a local radio station. An investigation
linked the crime to one of Aristide's former
bodyguards, though the case remains unsolved.

To make matters worse, as he left office Preval was
battling prostate cancer and his marriage was on the
rocks. After seeking medical treatment in Havana he
escaped to the family farm in Marmelade.

Despite his long political silence Haitians have not
forgotten his parting words. "We understood him then
because we could see he was drowning in the water,"
said Lebrun Thermidor, a 52-year-old rice and onion
farmer in the crowd at a Preval rally in St. Marc. "If
he didn't swim away, Aristide was going to kill him."

In an interview, Preval reluctantly agreed to discuss
Aristide's legacy. However tarnished his reputation,
many poor Haitians still clung to an image of Aristide
as the first Haitian politician to recognize their
needs, he said.

But, he added, the Lavalas Family was corrupt and
penetrated by drug trafficking. "I always said to
Aristide, "The people will suffer with you, but there
can be no impression, suspicion or doubt that there is
corruption' - and there was a lot of corruption."

He rejected an offer last year to be the presidential
candidate for Aristide's party. Lavalas Family leaders
urged Preval to prevent "the enemies of the people"
from taking power, according to witnesses.

"It is you who are the enemies of the people," Preval
reportedly said.

Preval's critics, mainly among Haiti's conservative
business elite, refuse to be convinced.

"Aristide is the brain and Preval is his tool," said
Charles Baker, an industrialist and favored
presidential candidate of the light-skinned business
elite. "If he becomes president, chaos will break out.
We will defend ourselves."

Baker, a graduate of Saint Leo University in Pasco
County, is convinced a victory for Preval would likely
result in Aristide's return from exile.

Critics say Preval has been lax in denouncing violent
pro-Aristide slum gangs who have terrorized the
capital during the last two years. Some of Preval's
street-level activists are members of Lavalas Family
and are accused of gang ties.

"Aristide is still the leader of our party. He did no
wrong," said Rene Montplaisir, 31, head of a grass
roots organization of the Lavalas Family. "But we
support Preval. He represents change and reform."

Preval says he won't turn away Aristide loyalists. But
he urges supporters to reject political violence.

Instead, Preval's inner circle consists mostly of
private sector business people who share his social
goals. They see Preval as the only candidate who can
bridge the country's yawning class divide.

"The circumstances are ripe for him to run," said
Daniel Dorsainvil, 46, a U.S.-educated development
economist and senior adviser to Preval. "He is the
most credible mediator between rich and poor."

Asked to describe Preval's virtues, friends seize on
his honesty. "Preval is the only president who spent
five years in power and left with his pockets empty,"
said Robert Magloire, a childhood friend and New York
civil engineer.

Far from being a Trojan Horse for Aristide, friends
say his campaign is largely a quest for redemption.
Hamstrung under Aristide, Preval, they say, is now
free to be his own man.

"I believe Preval this time is going to do what he
couldn't do before," said Pierre Leger, 58, who runs a
factory producing essential oil for the perfume
industry, providing work for 27,000 Haitian farmers.

During his absence from politics Preval started a
bamboo cooperative in Marmelade that has since become
a model for rural development. In July last year a
delegation of peasants from Haiti's 10 departments
camped out in Marmelade to beg him to run.

He was the last of 35 candidates to register. But he
immediately became the front-runner under the banner
of Lespw a, meaning Hope.

A slightly built man with a well-trimmed beard, he is
affectionately known as Ti Rene , or Little Rene.
Haitians say his silvery beard has magic powers. The
gap in his teeth is also considered sexy in Haitian
popular culture.

Preval's plain-talking style seems to go down well.
His campaign pledges are modest: promising universal
education for all primary school-age children, better
health care, and cheaper fertilizer for peasants.

But he offers no overnight solutions to Haiti's almost
insurmountable problems.

"We need investment and jobs and for that we need
peace," he told a rally while surrounded by several
plain-clothed bodyguards.

"The situation is very DIFF-I-CULT," he told the
crowd, pronouncing the word for extra effect.

When he asked who didn't have a job, almost every hand
shot up.

"Ah," he sighed, "that is going to be a big problem
for me."

-- David Adams can be contacted at dadams@sptimes.com

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