Populist Priest Wins in Haiti, Is Backed by U.S.

Unofficial returns Monday swept the populist priest Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide to a landslide victory in Haiti’s presidential election, bringing an immediate pledge of support from the United States.

“We congratulated him on his victory and told him the U.S. fully supports the democratic process in Haiti,” said Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson, representing President Bush’s official observer delegation to the remarkably peaceful Sunday election.

Aristide’s radical posture and anti-American rhetoric had initially worried U.S. officials. Before becoming a candidate, the charismatic priest continually called on his nation’s poor to take matters into their own hands rather than trust to elections. After joining the race for president, he took steps to moderate his platform and tone down his sermons, but questions remained Monday as to the direction his government would take.

“We fully respect him as the apparent president-elect of Haiti and look forward to working closely with his government,” Aronson said. He indicated that U.S. financial aid to Haiti will resume as soon as the new Aristide government, to be inaugurated Feb. 7, makes clear “its plans and policies and its needs.”

Former World Bank President Robert S. McNamara, a member of another observer delegation led by former President Jimmy Carter, said he is “certain” that the bank and other international financial institutions also will offer assistance.

Aristide had campaigned against foreign aid as a panacea for Haiti’s massive economic and social problems.

The streets of the capital were engulfed for much of the day by torrents of impoverished but joyous supporters of the 37-year-old slum priest, tens of thousands of them dancing, singing and waving tree branches symbolic of victory.

One act of violence marred the citywide celebration when a member of a police patrol fired into a crowd of chanting demonstrators, killing a pregnant woman, then drove a pickup truck across her body, according to eyewitnesses.

The killing took place directly in front of St. John Bosco Church, where Aristide used to preach before he was expelled from the Salesian order two years ago after upsetting the Catholic hierarchy with his tirades against authority and outside influences--including the U.S. Embassy here.

One of several failed attempts to assassinate Aristide took place in the church in September, 1988, when 13 of his parishioners were hacked and clubbed to death by a still-unpunished band of thugs operating under Haitian army protection. Witnesses identified the attackers as former strong-arm men of the Tontons Macoutes, the ruthless private militia that kept the Duvalier family dictatorship in power for 29 years.

But aside from the one incident, police and army troops maintained polite security, and there were no signs of the Macoute thugs.

A spokesman at Aristide’s political headquarters said the priest would have no comment on his victory until it is officially confirmed by Haiti’s Electoral Council, the constitutional body that organized and conducted the long-delayed first democratic election in Haiti’s 186-year history. The council said it would be releasing results piecemeal over the next two days.

But as Aronson’s early congratulations suggested, there was no doubt concerning the final result. A senior member of the 202-person observer team from the Organization of American States said data collected by OAS and U.N. experts gave Aristide 60% to 70% of the total vote. His nearest competitor in the 11-man race was Marc Bazin, 58, a former World Bank official, who polled less than 20%, the OAS source said.

The single partial result released Monday night by the Electoral Council showed Aristide with 70.6% to Bazin’s 12.6% of a small cluster of precincts totaling 27,227 votes.

The estimated 1,000 international observers from Carter’s group, the OAS, the United Nations and other organizations appeared to be unanimous in certifying the elections as free, fair and credible. Carter said there were irregularities, mainly delays in distributing ballots and other election materials, in only 4% of the more than 14,000 polling places around the country. He said that was insignificant “even in nations that have been conducting democratic elections for generations.”

Aristide’s stunning victory left Haiti’s traditional social and financial power structure, as well as foreign governments that had long urged democratic elections here, feeling vaguely uneasy concerning the direction his government will take.

The wispy, bespectacled priest has been an emotional and often mystical champion of Haiti’s downtrodden poor, often urging them to take justice into their own hands to eradicate Tontons Macoutes and others with links to the oppressive Duvalier dynasty. For months he opposed democratic elections as a trick of the conservative Establishment designed to further oppress the poor, who flocked to him as to a new messiah.

But after entering the presidential race, Aristide moderated what seemed to be class-war elements in his version of liberation theology and his vaguely socialist, anti-American rhetoric. Instead, he offered an imprecise program of “justice, participation and transparency.”

Conservative critics fear that his mass of poor followers, if not Aristide himself, may have in mind the same kind of street justice that during the past five years has repeatedly seen mobs kill suspected Duvalierists and storm their houses and businesses.

They also fear that Aristide’s idea of mass participation in government may be to appeal to the mob rather than work through the constitutionally elected legislature after he takes power. Legislative opposition appears inevitable because Aristide’s party fielded only a few candidates for the Senate and National Assembly in Sunday’s election, virtually guaranteeing that the majority of both houses will represent the parties of his election opponents.