Haiti Privatization Plan Has Many Foes : Caribbean: Aristide’s proposal to sell money-losing state enterprises is a dramatic reversal for the president.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide the radical came first to prominence and then to power declaring that “private property is the property of the peasants.” Today, Aristide the president wants to sell Haiti’s publicly owned businesses to foreigners.

The proposed privatization of nine money-losing and corrupt state enterprises not only marks a dramatic reversal of Aristide’s leftist leanings but puts him at odds with a strange coalition that includes his bitterest enemies, his most radical supporters and even most of his Cabinet.

When asked who in the Cabinet opposes privatization, a senior Aristide aide responded: “You mean who supports it? Only the two Leslies and Aristide are for it”--a reference to Central Bank chief Leslie Delatour, the plan’s author, and Leslie Voltaire, the president’s closest adviser.

As long as Aristide maintains his overwhelming popularity, that should be enough. And Aristide shows no sign of backing away. In fact, he has made privatization a hallmark of his administration.

Aristide said in an interview that--despite the opposition and his past opinions--”that one word, privatization . . . is my view, my position.”

Still, the battle goes on. Leading the assault against the program are the populist organizations that helped Aristide win the presidency in 1990 with 65% of the vote.

Their argument, that privatization will turn the country’s economy over to foreign capitalists who will ignore the needs of the people, echoes Aristide’s sermons and campaign speeches.

Joining the anti-privatization effort are some of Haiti’s richest and most powerful families, which supported Aristide’s overthrow in a 1991 military coup because of his leftist policies and now object to attempts to ban their participation in buying the government businesses.

The metamorphosis of Aristide the radical into Aristide the capitalist is attributed by aides to the recognition of a simple truth: Haiti and Aristide cannot otherwise survive.

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Haiti is far and away the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and its already beggared economy is being crushed by a 75% unemployment rate, a battered infrastructure and an income disparity ranked among the world’s severest.

“Things are coming to a crisis,” Delatour said. “We can’t go on this way.”

He said that while privatization is only one part of a major attempt to modernize Haiti, it is key.

“The question is,” he asked, “what are the options?”

To U.S. diplomats and international aid officials, the consequence of not privatizing would be the end of a $1.2-billion international aid program and large-scale withdrawal of hoped-for foreign private investment.

“If Haiti does not sell off its enterprises, there won’t be any money,” said an economist with an international development agency.

A U.S. official added that “non-profitability isn’t the only, and maybe not even the biggest, problem. These companies were the center of the corruption that paid for coups and made the military and their friends rich.”

The Delatour plan, widely praised and backed by most industrialized nations as well as the United Nations and the World Bank, calls for privatizing nine state-owned enterprises ranging from electric and telephone companies to the nation’s airports and seaports.

The idea is to rid the country of companies that provide few services and much corruption and to introduce market-driven competition that will provide jobs and services, Delatour said. The plan has brought a demand from the National Peasant Movement, once one of Aristide’s bedrock supporters, that the government “stop selling the state enterprises.”

Jean Chevanne Baptiste, the movement’s leader, has already staged one massive anti-government demonstration and promises more if the selloff continues.

Backing the anti-privatization effort is most of Aristide’s own Cabinet, led by Public Works Minister Georges Anglade, a onetime geography professor in Canada who argues that the enterprises represent national sovereignty.

Anglade also says the program is being rushed through without careful consideration, and he has called for a delay until “a global strategy” can be developed.

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The other part of the odd anti-privatization side of the equation is made up of several of Haiti’s richest families, whose tenacious pursuit of power and profit has put them in league with Haiti’s past military regimes.

“That group is led by the Mevs,” one of the elite business families, a Haitian political expert said. “They have built such monopolies of their own and have milked so much money from the state businesses that they can’t abide seeing them go to anyone else, particularly foreigners.”

What has turned these pillars of capitalism into supporters of nationalized businesses is a provision in the Delatour plan that would bar any Haitian person or group owning a substantial part of an existing business from buying a state enterprise.

Foreign investors who buy the companies would not be allowed to resell them to the excluded Haitians for an as-yet-undetermined number of years, most likely five.

The Mevs would not comment, but sources close to them say the family finds this discriminatory and blames personal animosity on the part of Delatour, a longtime opponent of the monopolistic policies of the elite.

“If we don’t do these things,” Delatour said, “we’ll simply have private monopolies instead of public ones. We don’t want to concentrate (the national economy) in the hands of a few.”

Besides, he argued, the plan does not exclude all Haitians, only those who already are largely in control of the economy. In addition, he proposes allowing investments by local pension funds representing workers in the affected businesses.

Another peace offering is a provision to use 10% of the income from the selloff to create education, health and environmental programs to compensate victims of the military regime that overthrew Aristide.

The selloff is tentatively set to begin by year’s end, pending parliamentary approval and an ongoing review by international agencies of the affected businesses’ worth.

The opponents are expected to push the legislators hard to turn back the plan, but most experts say it will prevail if Aristide stays firmly behind it.