Haitian Premier Negotiates a Thin Line

In crisp new camouflage uniforms, automatic rifles at the ready, militia members from the disbanded Haitian army rumble out of their hilltop villa compound in a daily show of force to comfort the elite and intimidate armed radicals paralyzing the capital below.

Five miles downhill, in the most desperate neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, the army of the slums trains its own weapons and anger on government and commerce. For three weeks the gunmen have been sniping at port workers, police and U.N. peacekeepers, taking aim at any semblance of order eight months after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the country on a U.S.-chartered jet.

Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue sits halfway between the two forces, at least geographically. He calls himself the man in the middle.

The 70-year-old former United Nations official has been asked to accomplish what has eluded every leader before him: Reconcile Haiti’s rich with its poor, its blacks with its mulattos, its powerful with the deprived.

Latortue’s calls for national reconciliation and dialogue with the remnants of Aristide’s Lavalas Party have infuriated the business community, whose shops and factories are being strangled by the daily mayhem of the Lavalas-aligned gunmen, known as chimeres.

His moves to reintegrate soldiers demobilized by Aristide 10 years ago have incensed the few Lavalas figures trying to carry on the party’s social mission. They accuse him of empowering a corrupt force that deposed Aristide in a 1991 coup bankrolled by the industrial kingpins who, then as now, seek to call the shots in Haiti.

In an interview at the hillside mansion that houses his office, Latortue accused Aristide of orchestrating the disruptions from his exile in South Africa. He expressed frustration with Haitians of all political walks who are unprepared to compromise for the sake of peace. And he obliquely criticized the U.S. government for pulling out its troops before the job of stabilization was done.

Most forcefully, though, Latortue repeated the mantra he chants daily in radio interviews and public appearances: that his sole aim was to break Haiti out of its history of one extreme replacing another. For 200 years, since slaves overthrew their French colonial masters, dictators and demagogues have alternated at the national helm, mostly through coups and flawed elections, each newcomer exacting revenge against the supporters of the departed.

“Nobody wants to accept that there’s a government in Haiti that doesn’t want to stay in power,” Latortue said, noting that none of the dozen Cabinet members serving in his interim government are eligible to run for office when elections are to be held late next year.

Although he is criticized from all directions, the prime minister -- chosen by a panel comprising a Lavalas politician, an opposition figure and the senior U.N. official in Haiti -- brushes off the scorn as political posturing.

“I don’t take pressure from anybody,” he said. “I know I’m not persecuting [Lavalas], and to those who say I should go arrest everyone from the former government, that is not my style.”

A handful of former Aristide officials have been jailed on court orders. Ex-Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert have been accused of complicity in drug trafficking and rights abuses. Two former Lavalas senators, Yvon Feuille and Rudy Heriveaux, were arrested last week on suspicion of inciting the latest violence.

Latortue contends he is maintaining a delicate security balance.

“You can count on one hand how many have been arrested,” he said of the former government officials. “After all the atrocities committed in the last four months that Aristide was in power, if we really wanted revenge, we wouldn’t have only five people in jail.”

Gerard Gilles is a prominent Lavalas lawmaker who acknowledges that Aristide betrayed the movement’s mission. Nonetheless, he condemned the interim government for detaining his former colleagues and accused Latortue’s ministers of plotting elections that would favor other parties.

“When we try to move on without Aristide, they close the door on us,” said Gilles, who sees the arrest of party activists as evidence of government repression.

He contended that Latortue and his Cabinet were aligned with the political forces opposed to Lavalas and with the tiny mulatto business elite that wants pro-Aristide gangs crushed.

“It has always been the colonialists against the slaves,” Gilles said, alluding to the uprising that led to Haiti’s 1804 independence. “But it shouldn’t be like that. In this bicentennial year, there should be a spirit of compromise.”

Latortue said the best way for Lavalas to regain its credibility and capitalize on its still-strong support among the masses was for the party’s remaining leaders to join in the work of reforming the country’s political institutions.

“We’ve sent a message to them to get them to understand that we don’t believe force is the answer,” Latortue said. “If we know what they want, maybe they won’t have to fight for it. If they want the physical return of Aristide, that is an impossible dream. But if they are fighting for something else -- more jobs or social justice -- that is something we can work for together.”

By failing to cut their ties with Aristide, the prime minister said, Lavalas leaders were prolonging the violence, sharpening tensions and thwarting a desperately needed economic rebound.

Lavalas activists committed to the party’s goal of alleviating poverty confirm that Aristide continues to lobby them to stoke the demands for his return.

Gilles said he was among the party loyalists getting regular calls from Aristide. The former protege said the contact still stirred pride and eagerness in him.

“When he calls, I feel happy. Then I realize, no, I don’t want this,” the former senator said.

Latortue has called on South African President Thabo Mbeki to halt the provocations coming from his soil.

“I don’t suspect. I know this. Everybody in Haiti knows this. Aristide has been calling everyone” in attempts to ignite popular demand for his return, the prime minister said. “The chimeres will not go out without money.... They still have their guns, and he can call on them any time he wants a disruption.”

At the makeshift Haitian army base in this suburb high above Port-au-Prince, Remissainthe Ravix decried the danger and disruption in the capital and said he was ready to unleash his forces against the gangs.

“The country cannot stay in the situation it is in now,” warned the former sergeant, who has taken to calling himself commander. He alleged that the slum gangs were being armed and paid to unleash a major bloodbath but said he would wait for instructions from the interim government because he had “respect for the hierarchy.”

Latortue declined to rule out a crackdown by the former army troops, apparently hoping the mere threat of that action would deter the street gangs he was reluctant to antagonize with a direct confrontation. He also defended the soldiers’ right to recover their jobs and pensions.

“They are citizens of Haiti. They have a skill that can be used for the benefit of the country,” the prime minister said. “The decision to demobilize the army was illegal.”

The army veterans refuse to say where the money for their new uniforms and equipment has come from, although all signs point to the disgruntled business elite. Statements from the Chamber of Commerce urging Latortue to take advantage of the available forces to wipe out the slum gangs suggests at least moral support from the elite for the demobilized soldiers.

“The police can’t prevent violence. They are too corrupted,” Ravix said. “The only thing the chimeres are afraid of is us.”