Haiti’s Aristide, a Likely Winner, Urges Peace

Emerging after five years of virtual seclusion and a weekend election that almost certainly will return him to power, former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Monday reached out to an embittered opposition and a doubting international community with an appeal for peace and reconciliation in his isolated and violent land.

Speaking softly, his hands often folded before him, the former Roman Catholic priest rejected opposition charges that he will preside as yet another Haitian dictator in a one-party state if, as expected, he emerges the victor from Sunday’s presidential poll.

“It is not in my agenda,” Aristide replied when asked at his first news conference in more than five years whether he intends to use his overwhelming legislative majority to make himself president for life.

On a day when opposition leaders charged that Aristide’s Lavalas Family movement had stuffed ballot boxes to avoid a low turnout that might undercut his government’s legitimacy, the former president also insisted that a “huge majority of the Haitian people” had voted in the election, which pitted him against three unknown rivals. Three other candidates boycotted the balloting.

Official results are expected later this week.

Aristide asserted that independent poll watchers, dozens of journalists in the field and many average Haitians had concluded that turnout was far below 50% because of the “very intelligent tactics” by voters.

Many of Haiti’s 4 million registered voters, reacting to bombings last week and election day violence during May races for Parliament, chose to go to the polls a few at a time rather than risk standing in long lines, Aristide said to explain why most polling stations appeared empty.

Officials from Aristide’s party also insisted that polling places in this capital’s Cite Soleil slum, his traditional political bedrock, closed early because 100% of the voters had cast ballots.

Herve Denis, a former Aristide ally turned opposition leader, responded: “They are hallucinating. The election was illegitimate. Aristide does not have a mandate to govern.”

In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker noted, “Low voter turnout and preelection violence are strong indications of the need for reconciliation among all sectors of Haitian society.”

The Provisional Electoral Council, which the opposition contends is controlled by Aristide’s movement, has reported a nationwide turnout of more than 60%. Independent observers have put it at half that, at best.

Although Aristide’s tone and tenor throughout the more than one hour of questioning at his Foundation for Democracy headquarters were that of a president-elect--often invoking the spiritual metaphors of his religious past--the former president stopped far short of claiming a right to the National Palace.

“I’ll wait until the electoral council answers that question,” he said, as hundreds of his supporters danced and partied in the streets.

But he pledged to include officials from other parties in his government and to welcome opposition criticism. He vowed to work for peace for the next five years, although he brushed aside questions about taming Lavalas-backed thugs who have terrorized the capital and countryside.

And Aristide expressed hope of reconciling with the U.S., Europe and the Organization of American States, which have frozen most foreign aid to Haiti since the flawed election in May and one in July gave his party its lock on Parliament.

“It is a fact that you cannot want to isolate anything from the rest of the world,” he said. “We are and we will be open for dialogue--always, dialogue within the framework of mutual respect.

“I am convinced [that] soon we will have the opportunity to discuss these economic issues with the international community.”