Even his admirers admit that Jean-Bertrand Aristide is difficult to deal with. Haiti’s once and perhaps future leader can be prickly, imperious, vacillating and whiny. After three years of comfortable exile in Washington, the soft-spoken priest still has not lived down the reputation he acquired during his seven months in office: an anti-American demagogue, an unsteady left-wing populist who threatened private enterprise and condoned violence against his political opponents. A moralist on a mission, Aristide is still more a parochial activist than a national leader. “He’s a priest,” says William Gray, President Clinton’s special adviser on Haiti. “Highly intellectual. Ideological, with no previous political experience.”
Gray, a former preacher himself, says allowances must be made for Aristide’s tendency to “talk in broad, visionary terms.” Gray insists that “I have found him willing to reach consensus . . . provided that others listen very closely to what he has to say and what he wants.” Gray’s predecessor, Lawrence Pezzullo, is less forgiving. “Aristide will return and re-create the tragedy of Haiti,” warns Pezzullo, whose frustration with the exiled leader led him to resign from Clinton’s team last April, one step ahead of being fired. “There will be no democratic process,” Pezzullo maintains. “He does not have the capacity to build a government of national concord.”
Yet for better or worse, Aristide is Haiti’s democratically elected president, and now, barring some last-minute reversal, he is about to become Washington’s man in Port-au-Prince. He has a reform agenda that seems reassuringly moderate. Bill Clinton has a plan to support him with military force and financial aid. Newsweek has learned that the administration plans to buy the acquiescence of many members of the Haitian military. A State Department document calls for spending $12.5 million to provide demobilized soldiers with pensions, new jobs and other “reintegration” assistance. It could be money well spent. In the 16 months that remain in his interrupted term, Aristide can make Clinton look very good, or very bad. “If Aristide becomes the ayatollah of the Caribbean, Clinton is finished,” says a Haitian businessman.
Until last week Aristide was all but invisible to Americans, apparently because his advisers thought he would not do his own cause much good by going public. Then, at a carefully orchestrated meeting with Clinton and Caribbean leaders last Friday, the Haitian president-in-waiting said all the right things, in a whispery voice that suggested restraint. He promised “peace and reconciliation,” telling members of the Haitian armed forces: “Do not be afraid. We say no to vengeance, we say no to retaliation.” He vowed to promote “an open market and opportunities to prosper.” He said he would “close the floodgates of Haitian boat people.” And, repeating a promise Clinton made for him in his televised address the night before, Aristide said he would leave office when his term ends, handing it over to a successor who is scheduled to be elected in December 1995. As Clinton nodded agreement, Aristide envisioned “a Haiti where, like in South Africa, we will celebrate a new beginning.”
But Aristide is no Nelson Mandela, and Haiti’s condition is far worse than South Africa’s. Aristide returns to a country where the only functioning institution is the military – and that has to be dismantled. He will confront urgent problems everywhere: thousands of refugees, mountains of rotting garbage, hillsides stripped bare of trees, electrical grids that don’t work. He will find expectant masses who have suffered vastly from both trade embargoes and official terror; the poor love him now, but their patience has limits. He will face middle-class and wealthy Haitians who still oppose reform. They turned against him in 1991 when he suggested that businesses should pay taxes and that the minimum wage should be raised from $3 to $5 – a day.
Aristide’s aides and his American advisers have drawn up an elaborate plan for economic reconstruction. It includes privatizing eight big state-owned companies. “We think we know how kleptocracies in the past have used the eight companies to line their own pockets,” says a U.S. official. By divesting itself of the businesses, the government will have less scope to use the public payroll for its own political machine. Aristide also plans to immediately launch a public-works program to fight poverty and clean up the country. And while it has American guns on its side, his restored government will move aggressively to collect personal and corporate taxes.
The process may not be peaceful. The poor resent the rich and hate the brutal henchmen of the old regime, thousands of whom will remain at large. Foreign troops are supposed to keep the peace, but there could be a political backlash when they shield unpopular people. “If the U.S. presence is seen just as a protection scheme for the bourgeois and the military, that would encounter resistance from the population,” warns an Aristide confidant.
There could also be political trouble inside Aristide’s government. At first, former prime minister Robert Malval will probably run a caretaker regime. Aristide is expected to replace him quickly; the two men fell out last year when Malval tried to promote a compromise between Aristide and his enemies. The National Front for Change and Democracy, which catapulted Aristide into the presidency, has now split into three factions. Two of them are led by potential presidential candidates: Evans Paul, the mayor of Port-au-Prince, and Victor Benoit, Aristide’s minister of education. All three factions support Aristide, but that could end as they maneuver for advantage.
For the first two months or so after the Haitian generals depart, peace will be kept primarily by U.S. and allied forces. Then they are expected to be replaced by 6,000 United Nations peacekeeping troops, about half of them American. The U.N. force will remain in Haiti through the presidential election at the end of next year. “All that gives you pretty good assurances – as good as you can get – that there will be democratic rule of law,” says Gray.
Washington will try to buy some peace with its $12.5 million payoff for ex-soldiers. The Agency for International Development plans to give what it calls “a financial incentive” to the 4,000 troops who will be laid off from the 7,000-man army. The program includes training, jobs and cash payments. Even some “section chiefs” and “attaches,” the most notorious junta thugs, will be eligible. “Aristide wants it that way,” claims a senior State Department official. “He doesn’t want a bunch of potentially dangerous guys walking around with nothing to do.”
During the occupation, a new Haitian police force will be created, partly with demobilized soldiers. Last week American and Haitian officials went to the U.S. refugee camp in Guantanamo, Cuba, to recruit interim policemen. Eyebrows were raised over Aristide’s choice of a police chief: Pierre Cherubin, who was accused of complicity in murder in 1991. Aristide cleared him at the time, and now the State Department says there is no evidence to establish Cherubin’s guilt. “In Haiti, just about everyone is accused of doing something,” says a U.S. official. “If we thought this man was a problem, we would have blocked him.”
Is Aristide himself a problem? Last year the CIA produced a controversial report questioning his mental stability while he was in power. But the intelligence community finds no evidence of mental problems since he has been in the United States. In any case, the administration thinks it has the reins and levers it needs to control Aristide and his volatile followers. In addition to its troops in Haiti, Washington will wield the power of the purse. So far, foreign donors have pledged $550 million in aid, and if Aristide misbehaves, the money will dry up. “He’ll act in the best interests of restoring his country,” argues a U.S. official. But part of Haiti’s tragedy is that financial pressure has not worked in the past. To be successful, Aristide’s “new beginning” will have to include a greater willingness to take advice.
