Violence, Political Feuds Dim Haiti Election Outlook

Bitter quarreling among pro-democracy politicians, coupled with renewed street violence and a surprisingly open flaunting of strength by supporters of the ousted Duvalier dictatorship, have set Haiti back sharply in its stumbling march toward free elections.

Provisional President Ertha Pascal Trouillot, already under fire for her sluggish performance since she was elevated from the Supreme Court in March, has refused to give in to demands that she resign. But political leaders and foreign diplomats agree that she lacks the power to bring off the elections without risking the kind of chaos and terrorism that derailed the voting in 1987.

“She’s not only doing very little, but she’s doing the wrong things,” Marc Bazin, a leading moderate-center candidate for president in the elections scheduled for Nov. 4, complained in an interview.

But like other political figures who were instrumental in selecting Trouillot when the military government of Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril fell last March, Bazin said there is little choice but to keep her.

Jean-Claude Bajeux, a leftist political leader and human rights activist, said: “The question is, if we get rid of Mrs. Trouillot, who will the army accept in her place?”

Bajeux expressed doubt that the elections can proceed as planned.

Bazin and Bajeux were both members of the Unity Assn., a group of 11 political parties and a civic association that recruited a reluctant Trouillot for the presidency. At the time, the Group of 12, as it became known, was viewed as the most positive political development of the last four years, with virtually all the pro-democracy political groups in the country united for the first time to work toward elections.

Recently, however, the group has split, with seven of the members demanding Trouillot’s resignation and the others offering her varying degrees of tepid support.

The provisional president’s power has been blunted by a quasi-legislative body called the Council of State that was formed in March, at the urging of the Group of 12, as a counterweight to the presidency.

The 19-member council, representing civic, social and geographic elements of the population, was to act as a watchdog over the provisional president but has since asserted itself as a coequal, exercising veto power over her decisions. But it, too, is divided, with some of its members eager to force Trouillot’s resignation and others urging dialogue.

Perhaps the most frustrating institution for Trouillot, however, is the 8,000-strong army. The poorly led, undisciplined force ruled or dominated four of the five provisional governments that have looted Haiti’s treasury since the fall of the Duvalier dynasty in 1986. After stoutly and sometimes bloodily aborting previous moves toward democratic civilian rule, the institution has nominally endorsed Trouillot’s leadership and pledged to protect current electoral plans.

But two recent political assassinations and the return to Haiti of two widely feared exiles associated with army and Duvalierist violence illustrate the impotence of the provisional government and how doubtful the military’s pledge really is.

When the most notorious of the two exiles, Dr. Roger Lafontant, a former leader of the Duvaliers’ private security force known as the Tontons Macoutes, arrived on July 8, Interior Minister Joseph Maxi ordered him “isolated” at the Port-au-Prince airport. Instead, Lafontant, a former interior minister, was waved through and promptly made contact with other right-wing figures.

Two days later, Trouillot ordered the army chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Herard Abraham, to arrest Lafontant. But the general refused on grounds that there were no criminal charges against him. An outspoken presidential candidate, Sylvio Claude, subsequently filed charges that he had been tortured at Lafontant’s orders during the Duvalier era.

Earlier this month, at the persuasion of U.S. Ambassador Alvin Adams, Trouillot ordered a second arrest warrant for Lafontant, and Abraham agreed to carry it out. But Abraham warned that the arrest might be delayed because he did not want his troops hurt by the band of heavily armed former Tontons Macoutes who have surrounded Lafontant since his return.

“If they’re waiting for Lafontant to give himself up, it will be a long wait,” a Port-au-Prince businessman said after seeing Lafontant and his armed entourage move around the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville without army or police interference.

The second unwelcome exile, former army Maj. Gen. Williams Regala, was considered less of an immediate political threat, even though he is widely believed to have been behind the violence that upset the 1987 elections. Regala served as minister of defense and the interior in three army-dominated governments after the fall of the Duvalier dynasty. He has since kept a low profile, entering and leaving the country several times without incident.

But Regala, apparently uncomfortable at being publicly linked with Lafontant as an unwanted returnee, agreed to leave the country quietly. The U.S. Embassy facilitated his departure by renewing a student visa for the retired soldier to attend Prairie View A & M College in Texas. Still, as if to emphasize the government’s powerlessness, Regala delayed his departure until last week so he could attend a religious ceremony.

The turmoil over the two exiles followed two weeks of near-paralysis in the government brought on by the assassinations in June of a senior member of the Council of State and a labor leader. Four men, two of them said to be in military uniform, opened fire on a meeting of the council and a group of trade unionists, killing Serge Villard, one of the council’s most admired members, and Jean Marie Montes, a union activist.

Villard, along with the head of the council, Dr. Louis Roy, played a leading role in writing the country’s 1987 constitution and was hailed as the father of a controversial constitutional provision that forbids “the architects of the dictatorship and its maintenance during 29 years” to take part in politics.

The constitutional ban was used in 1987 to bar several candidates who had been prominently linked to the Duvalier dictatorship from running. There has been speculation that Villard was killed in retaliation for the constitutional prohibition.

One of those affected by the ban was Claude Raymond, a former army chief of staff, who has been charged with sending squads of armed hoodlums into the streets to terrorize voters after he was prevented from running for president in 1987. He was also accused of collaborating with Regala in the massacre of voters on election day that year.

At present, Raymond is trying to burnish his image in preparation for another run at the presidency--if he is not banned again. In a rare interview with two American journalists, Raymond presented himself as a mild-mannered democrat who abhors arms and never had anything to do with anti-election terrorism.

“Absolutely not,” he said, patting the head of his 2-year-old grandchild. “The only solution to the crisis we have been living with for the past four years is free and honest elections.”

Although Raymond scrupulously avoided even implying a threat concerning what will happen if he is again barred from running, other Haitian politicians fear he will provoke another upheaval.

“He looks like a nice guy, but . . . I don’t want him coming after me,” said one, revealing his fear of Raymond by demanding that he not be quoted by name.

When she took office, President Trouillot agreed to demands by the Council of State and the Group of 12 that she open an aggressive investigation into the roles played by Raymond, Regala and others in the 1987 violence. But council and political party critics charge that she has done nothing to hasten this or other investigations, including a search for the killers of Villard and Montes.

“It is obvious the president doesn’t want to move in the direction we want--that is, get rid of a certain number of very well-known Macoutes barons such as Claude Raymond,” Bajeux said.