Aristide Ally Is Ahead in Haiti Poll

More than five years have passed since Haitians last voted. Those elections were marred by violence and fraud, leading to an armed rebellion, the president’s flight into exile in Africa and the arrival of foreign troops to impose order.

But as Haitians prepare for Tuesday’s elections for president and legislature, a sense of deja vu prevails. The threat of violent disruption hangs over the vote, and the leading candidate is a former president who was unable to bridge the historical chasm between slum dwellers and a small, entrenched elite.

The capital’s slums, racked by warfare, remain so volatile that polling places were moved to safer venues. Hundreds of thousands of residents will have to walk miles through dangerous battlegrounds to cast their ballots. In Cite Soleil, which has seen the deadliest violence, thousands have taken to the streets in recent days accusing organizers of trying to disenfranchise the poor.

More than 300,000 of the 3.5 million voters who registered in autumn for high-tech voter ID cards still haven’t received them. Their anger echoes the cries of foul play that followed parliamentary elections in May 2000.

That vote, swept by JeanBertrand Aristide’s Lavalas Family party, prompted an opposition boycott of the presidential election six months later, which Aristide won handily. Discontent swelled into rebellion over the next three years, driving him to abandon the presidency in February 2004. He left the country under U.S. escort.

“I don’t want to think there are manipulations behind it,” said Mirlen Pignat, 33, who has lined up at election offices across Port-au-Prince every day since Dec. 24 in search of the voting card she applied for in September.

Most troubling to many Haitians may be the feeling outsiders have taken over this country of 8.5 million. A 9,000-member United Nations force has been in charge of security for nearly two years and will patrol the streets and polling stations election day. The U.N. and Organization of American States have overseen registration, poll worker training, production of the voting cards and the printing of ballots.

“Haiti has a very long history of dictatorship and military rule, but somehow the Haitian people still believe they can make their voices heard,” said Michele Pierre-Louis, head of the nation’s Open Society Institute, the organization funded by philanthropist George Soros to promote democracy.

Few seem to doubt that Rene Preval, a former president, will be their next leader, even if he needs a runoff election March 19. He has galvanized support among disenchanted Lavalas factions in the slums and long-neglected farmers in the countryside.

Preval has neither embraced nor distanced himself from Aristide, who was regarded as the power behind Preval’s 1996-2001 term. In an interview, the soft-spoken Preval, 63, insisted he was his own man. But he added that nothing barred Aristide from returning from exile in South Africa and said he had no opinion on whether Aristide’s return would thwart national reconciliation.

“Reconciliation isn’t the real problem for Haiti. The real problem is poverty and the political parties don’t disagree on that. What we need to do is raise the standard of living in the country,” Preval said, brandishing a chart that showed per-capita GDP had fallen by half since 1980. He said Haitians couldn’t reasonably expect to get back to the 1980 level for another decade.

“I am the only candidate who promises nothing,” he said, labeling his competitors’ pledges of swift prosperity as dangerously misleading. “Haitians don’t want lies. They want respect.”

Preval, the Europeaneducated son of a well-to-do agrarian family, has more in common with the business leaders who were Aristide’s sworn enemies than with the impoverished masses that were Lavalas’ power base.

But Preval’s history as an Aristide ally has allowed him to capture much of the Lavalas constituency while forging new alliances with some industrialists committed to breaking the 200-year hold a few dozen families have had on the economy.

Polls are notoriously unreliable in Haiti. But sources here said U.S. officials concluded from a USAID poll that Preval would win easily, and that to discourage support for the front-runner would only deepen resentment among Haitians who are convinced that the Bush administration helped drive Aristide into exile.

USAID contracted a Costa Rican polling firm, which canvassed 1,200 Haitians and found 37% planned to vote for Preval and 10% for textiles industrialist Charles Henri Baker, the only white candidate and a figure closely tied to the elite.

U.S. food-processing tycoon Dumarsais Simeus got 8% even though he was excluded from the ballot because the constitution prohibits candidates from holding dual citizenship. Leslie Manigat, a political science professor who briefly served as president in the late 1980s, also drew 8%.

Timothy M. Carney, former U.S. ambassador and acting charge d’affaires, said the U.S. government’s sole desire for this election was that it be free, fair and the outcome uncontested.

“The prevailing hope is that it has a credible result and that Haitians accept it,” he said. “We can work with whoever wins.”