Préval's return to the ballot shakes Haitian establishment

The Miami Herald

Posted on Tue, Jan. 31, 2006

HAITI
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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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.






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