Army Celebrates--but Not the People : Haiti: Armed Forces Day is the first national holiday since the military overthrew President Aristide on Sept. 30. The event’s theme is democracy.

The Haitian army gave a parade Monday and nobody came.

The occasion was the annual celebration of Haiti’s defeat of French forces at the battle of Vertieres in 1803, when the onetime slave colony sealed its bid for independence. But instead of celebrating the historic victory over Napoleon’s army, the Haitian people turned their backs on the military, some literally.

As elements of the 7,000-strong military paraded through downtown Port-au-Prince--followed by a caravan of battered, rusted cars carrying officers and civilian government officials installed by the military--the few people on the garbage-choked sidewalks looked on in sullen silence or did an about-face.

The Armed Forces Day was the first national holiday since Sept. 30, when the military overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Catholic priest who was swept into office last Dec. 16 as Haiti’s first democratically elected president of modern times. And in a show of the comedy and tragedy that defines life here, the military’s theme was the celebration of democracy and civilian independence of the armed forces.

“It’s as if Sept. 30 never happened and the 300 people the army killed had returned to life,” said a local journalist, referring to the number of people that human rights experts say have disappeared in the past two months.

The absurd nature of the day was evident from the early morning high Mass at Port-au-Prince’s large cathedral, where an organist pumped out hymns with a Caribbean beat on an electric keyboard.

Soldiers handed out little gaily-colored cards announcing “the unity under Christ of loving neighbors with a respect of life . . . and liberty.”

There were far more empty seats than celebrants. Among those missing were the Roman Catholic religious hierarchy and the diplomatic corps, which used its absence to signal the leper-like quality of the government. Nevertheless, dozens of officers, bedecked in gold-braided dress uniforms, mouthed prayers for divine guidance.

Their religious devotion finally seemed to come unstuck when the priest ended the service by calling on the congregation to shake hands as a sign of peace. The only person among the officers and dignitaries who stirred was Joseph Nerette, the little-known judge named by the military as the figurehead president. He reached up and tugged on the red-and-blue sash that kept slipping from his frail shoulder.

The troops then paraded from the church through the mostly empty, hostile streets to the military headquarters for a reception. Tables covered with white cloth and laden with food were set up in a rutted parking lot. A small tank sat 10 feet from the main table where generals, colonels and civilian officials posed for pictures.

While chickens and flies pecked at the sodden meat pies, cakes and melting cheese, skinny children in ragged clothes clung to the outside of the iron fence separating the parking lot from the street. As if finally aware that something might be wrong with the picture, one officer--as the dignitaries left--opened the gate and allowed some people from the street to gather up the leftovers, but only adults who carried a handful of signs praising the army.

“You can laugh and make fun of the tin-pot toy soldiers, as you call them,” said one pro-Aristide politician now in hiding. “But this isn’t a comic strip. Maybe they can’t march and they would run away from a real army, but these people can kill and torture.”

The dump at Bon Repos, just 15 miles north of Port-au-Prince, underscored this view. Seven bodies were found there by foreign journalists over the weekend. All of them had their hands bound behind them, all were shot in the head. Shell cartridges of the type used by the army were next to the bodies. The day after the bodies were discovered, someone returned and burned the corpses.

That sort of action is just part of the feeling of repression everywhere here. The only private television station has stopped carrying news programs, and the most influential independent radio station now plays only music. “We censor ourselves,” said one journalist. “We don’t have any choice.”

While seething resentment against the regime is evident, particularly in the hellish slums of the capital and in the near starving, poverty-ridden countryside, the soldiers have contained it. All pro-Aristide protests are broken up violently. Those arrested are kept in secret jails and, if released, their heads often are shaved so they are easily identified.

The nights also are full of the sounds of gunfire as troops drive through the slums, shooting randomly at houses.