Namphy Acts to Allay Fears of Hard-Line Military Rule

Lt. Gen. Henri Namphy, restored to power in an army coup early this week, moved Friday to pick a Cabinet of civilian specialists and technocrats to bolster his government of inexperienced generals and colonels and to allay fears of an iron-fisted military dictatorship.

Namphy, who installed himself as president, plans to place experienced civilians, including some who worked for ousted President Leslie F. Manigat, in the top professional posts in all 12 ministries, according to friends who have talked with him this week. Civilian experts and competent bureaucrats already have been assigned to senior posts in the Foreign Affairs, Education, Finance and Commerce ministries, a foreign diplomat said.

But diplomats and opposition figures said it is still too early to see how the new government will rule this impoverished country, where for two centuries there has been largely uninterrupted decline and tyranny. Many predicted a firm but relatively benign regime.

“I don’t believe he’s capable of a really tough dictatorship,” one opponent said of Namphy, although he is widely blamed for permitting a massacre at the polls last November. Like many Haitians, this source blamed the November massacre on a nervous situation that got out of hand.

A Haitian political scientist who has long opposed army rule said: “The line they’re taking in these first days looks as if they don’t plan a hard-line dictatorship but want to build firm lines of control, with Namphy in charge. I take it as a good sign that the coup was bloodless and that they haven’t cracked down on the press.”

Another analyst noted that ousted President Manigat “wasn’t mistreated before they sent him out of the country, and they seem to be getting ready to release the Manigat people they arrested.”

“But where the military government goes next is anybody’s guess,” he added.

Friends and opponents alike characterized Namphy as a “soft” personality with no taste for iron-fisted rule. Yet they warned that officers close to him--men like Maj. Gen. Williams Regala, the minister of defense and the interior, and Brig. Gen. Prosper Avril, a behind-the-scenes power broker, could take tough measures in Namphy’s name.

Friends of Namphy said he told them after the coup that Avril and other officers wanted to form a military junta that would give them dictatorial power but that the enlisted men who actually rescued Namphy from house arrest and restored him to the presidency insisted on Namphy’s being the undisputed president.

Restrained by Namphy

They said Namphy also told them that some of the officers wanted to shoot their way into the presidential palace but that Namphy restrained them.

Manigat’s foreign minister, Gerard Latortue, who left Friday for temporary exile in Paris, said that no matter how the Namphy government behaves, it will have difficulty restoring the sense of confidence and credibility the civilian government had achieved in its four months in office.

With Manigat, Latortue was widely credited by foreign diplomats with generating a measure of respect for Haiti and generous pledges of foreign aid from European and Asian governments. More aid could have bridged the gap left by the loss of $66 million in support funds abruptly suspended by the United States when the November election was canceled.

About $37 million in U.S. humanitarian aid remains in place, but resumption of the suspended aid depends on Haiti showing progress toward democracy.

“Without aid, we are near the breaking point,” a former government official said.

To stave off potentially explosive social unrest, he said, “the new government must recognize the need to establish conditions for a resumption of U.S. aid--namely, some gestures toward democracy.” And he warned that if Namphy scorns foreign help, as the late dictator Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier did in the 1960s, “there will be chaos.”

Latortue, who was interviewed before his departure, said he doubts that the Namphy regime will soon show any democratic signs or volunteer again to liquidate itself in favor of a civilian government, as it did when Manigat was installed after the election in January.

But critics of the military see no significant public movement in the near future against the Namphy government. A Port-au-Prince businessman said:

“No one is protesting against Namphy because the action would be construed as demonstrating in support of Manigat. Generally, people feel that the army put Manigat in and the army took him out, so nothing has changed.”

Concerning the chances for renewed foreign aid, an official of one of the donor countries said Latortue had put together enough pledges from European and Asian countries to more than make up for the loss of U.S. support.

He said that pledges from France, West Germany, Japan, Taiwan and Italy, along with the World Bank and several other international organizations, would have resulted in $200 million to $280 million in the year ahead. Haiti’s annual budget is about $200 million, much of which goes to pay for wheat and oil imports that cost about $5 million a month.

“Because of the coup, they don’t stand a chance of getting those increases,” the official said. “Instead, their total aid will probably drop to $160 million or less.”