She’s not the only one. Last week jubilant supporters of President-elect Jean-Bertrand Aristide danced in the streets to celebrate the former cleric’s latest political resurrection. But the crowds were noticeably smaller this time. Many Haitians were afraid to go outside. Dozens have been killed or wounded in recent weeks in a spate of pre-election bombings, shootings and riots. Aristide will face daunting challenges when he assumes power for the third time next February. Near the top of the list will be fighting Haiti’s appalling crime rate and convincing skilled expats and foreign investors to return and help revive the moribund economy.
It won’t be an easy sell. Haiti has deteriorated markedly since Aristide stepped down in 1996. His party, Fanmi Lavalas, is mired in controversy over charges they cheated in parliamentary elections last May. The United States, Europe and the Organization of American States have frozen most aid since then. And the optimism and excitement that accompanied Aristide’s historic 1990 victory and his restoration to power by U.S. forces in 1994 have suffocated under growing disappointment. “There were so many times everybody thought it would get better,” said the pro-Aristide owner of a money-wiring business in Brooklyn who would give his name only as Betholand. “I went back myself to analyze the situation. I thought I could do business in my homeland. It was too scary. People who invest money there get robbed–they get killed.”
Aristide’s base has shrunk considerably. When he won the presidency in 1990, Haitians around the world rejoiced in their country’s first democratic elections. Thousands returned, providing much-needed capital and skills. But within a year a coup sent Aristide into exile. In 1994 Washington dispatched a 20,000-strong military force to restore him. And once again Haitian exiles rallied. But Aristide’s promised reforms failed to materialize and the economy tanked. In recent months many Aristide supporters have either left Haiti or split with his party.
Arlet Grandchamp, 61, is one of them. Grandchamp fled Haiti’s Duvalier regime in the 1960s. An electrical engineer, he participated in jubilant pro-Aristide rallies in the early 1990s. He returned to Haiti last year and ran for Senate on the opposition party slate. Grandchamp soon found things hadn’t changed as much as he had thought. Last April in the northern city of Port Margot, he took the stage to address a political rally. Before he could start, men in the crowd fired automatic weapons into the air and yelled that he had no right to speak. The crowd scattered. Today Grandchamp is back in the United States, disappointed and embittered. “I wanted to help establish a democracy in Haiti. But in Haiti, they don’t know what democracy is.”
Many diplomats agree. In parliamentary elections last May, Lavalas candidates won in a landslide. Most observers said the results were tainted. Opposition parties boycotted the presidential elections in protest. And instead of congratulating Aristide last week, the United Nations released a bleak report from Secretary General Kofi Annan to the General Assembly. He recommended that the U.N. close its Haitian mission when its mandate expires in February, writing that the mission could not function in a “climate of political turmoil.” He also noted that Lavalas has “disregarded all calls for a rectification” of last spring’s elections. In a news conference last week Aristide defended his win as a victory for democracy: “The huge majority of the Haitian people expressed their right through [their] votes. Those from the opposition who said no to the elections were free to do it, and we respect that.”
U.N. condemnations may be the least of Aristide’s problems. Since 1996 the Haitian gourde has plunged from 15 to the dollar to about 24. In September the price of gasoline jumped 44 percent in one day after the government announced it could no longer afford subsidies. Haiti has become a major hub for drug traffickers. The police force, according to Annan’s report, is under-equipped, “demoralized and unmotivated.” Public sentiment toward them was amply demonstrated at a pro-Aristide rally last October. The crowd attempted to lynch a police commissioner.
Yet not all hope is gone. In New York last week, a retired hospital administrator named Jean Deve Pierre reminisced about his Caribbean homeland. He left in 1964. As his golden years approached in the heady days of 1990, Pierre began to plan a return. By the time he retired, deteriorating conditions had given him pause. “Every Haitian is attached to Haiti. I want to spend there, live there and vote there. We are still waiting.”
