Former Ruling Party Seeks to Keep Itself Afloat in Post-Aristide Haiti

When Jean-Bertrand Aristide named his political movement Lavalas in 1990, he said he chose the Creole word for “inundation” because the country needed a tidal wave to sweep away all that was associated with dictatorship and privilege.

But Aristide’s rule mired Haiti in more misery. The economy worsened. Life expectancy and living conditions plummeted.

Today, armed gangs that support and oppose the Lavalas founder kill in revenge and spread insecurity through much of the country, despite the presence of 3,500 foreign troops.

Since Aristide’s Feb. 29 departure, one of the most devastated institutions has been Lavalas itself. After a 14-year monopoly on power, its leaders are in hiding, under threat of arrest and forbidden to leave the country until they are cleared of corruption allegations.

Early Tuesday, Aristide’s interior minister, Jocelerme Privert, was arrested on charges of coordinating a massacre during the bloody revolt that toppled the government, the new justice minister said. Privert is the first minister of Aristide’s fallen government to be detained.

He was arrested the day after U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell visited the poorest country in the Americas to pledge Washington’s support for the interim government -- which has been criticized by rights groups for failing to arrest rebels who are accused of abuses.

Interim Justice Minister Bernard Gousse declined to say whether arrest warrants had been issued for other members of Aristide’s Cabinet.

Despite its setbacks, Lavalas is reorganizing, seeking to demonstrate that its mission is larger than the ambitions of one man.

“Now we are talking about a collective leadership and the need for self-criticism within the party,” said Leslie Voltaire, who was Aristide’s minister for emigre affairs.

Like other Aristide appointees, Voltaire has been keeping a low profile to avoid retaliation by armed rebels who drove the elected president into exile by threatening to march on the capital and capture him.

Aristide took temporary refuge in the Central African Republic after being flown out of Haiti on a U.S.-chartered jet. He returned to neighboring Jamaica two weeks later. He says he was abducted from Haiti by U.S. Marines, a scenario Washington calls ridiculous.

No one seems to know how many of Aristide’s Lavalas colleagues left with him. Gousse issued an order prohibiting former government officials from leaving the country, saying the move was necessary to prevent further theft of national assets and ensure that those who abused their offices faced prosecution.

Facing the prospect of criminal charges, senior Lavalas figures such as former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune have been staying out of the public eye.

Those willing to risk public appearances, however, have begun to accept Aristide’s departure as a fait accompli. They acknowledge that efforts to prosecute Lavalas officials are incentives to reform their party.

After Jamaican authorities confirmed last month that Aristide would leave in mid-April for permanent exile in South Africa, Lavalas members began bracing for a future without him.

“We are obliged to look ahead. We can’t let the party die,” said Immacula Bazile, one of a dozen Lavalas senators who still claim to be part of a legitimate legislative body despite the expiration of most parliament members’ mandates in January.

Other Lavalas leaders still cling to hopes of galvanizing international support for reinstating Aristide.

“Jean-Bertrand Aristide is still one of our principal leaders,” said Yvon Feuille, who was president of the Lavalas-dominated Senate. Feuille now acts as de facto party leader and has been arranging impromptu gatherings to discuss Lavalas’ renewal.

“We won our independence from France, but they never accepted that,” Feuille said, accusing Paris of orchestrating Aristide’s ouster to avoid paying $21 billion in restitution that Haiti was demanding from its former colonial ruler.

It is the rank and file of Lavalas that stands to lose the most. Aristide organizers from the slums were rewarded with low-level government jobs, enabling the poor to enter the civil service for the first time in Haiti’s 200 years of independence.

Interim leaders such as Commerce and Industry Minister Danielle St.-Lot contend that Lavalas supporters cannot and should not be dismissed from their jobs simply because their leaders are under scrutiny for alleged abuse of office.

“I can’t fire them because of the economic situation. They have families to support,” she said. “We first have to find a way to integrate them into the private sector.”

Times wire services contributed to this report.