27070: Hermantin(News)Exiles fret over chaos in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Exiles fret over chaos in Haiti


Another election delay adds to their worries.



By Tim Collie
Staff Writer

January 2, 2006



Like many Haitian exiles living in South Florida, Quetel Osterval dreams of a 
thriving, productive Haiti where companies like Microsoft and Intel will build 
factories and employ thousands.

The Boynton Beach businessman even had a laptop computer designed and built to 
help bring the country's remote schools and villages into the Information Age. 
But when he was approached with help from the U.S.-backed interim government of 
Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, Osterval didn't hesitate in turning the offer 
down.

Working too closely with any government in Haiti is just too dangerous.

"Once you become linked with any government, you become a target of the 
government that follows it," Osterval said. "They go after your factories, your 
house, your family. You can't have stability if people are running around 
burning things down every two or three years. It's just impossible."

It's a sentiment heard over and over in South Florida's Haitian exile community 
as the troubled nation struggles to organize its first election almost two 
years after a violent rebellion ousted its last president, Jean-Bertrand 
Aristide. Mired in bureaucratic incompetence, corruption and violence, the 
country's political crisis is taking a toll on Haitian enclaves from West Palm 
Beach to Miami.

Weary and cynical of getting involved in Haiti's politics, many exiles are 
holding back on the expertise and investment necessary for the country to grow.

The hope that greeted the interim government of Latortue, a former exile from 
Boca Raton, is largely gone. The promised funds and manpower that many expected 
with the departure of the controversial Aristide never materialized. Instead, 
the country's severe poverty has only deepened with the continuing leadership 
vacuum.

On Friday, election officials postponed presidential and parliamentary 
elections, scheduled for Jan. 8, for a fourth time. Delays in distributing 3.5 
million voter ID cards, disorganized voting centers and problems with the voter 
database were the main reasons for the latest cancellation, an election 
official told The Associated Press.

But confusion has confounded other aspects of the government, too. Half the 
country's Supreme Court was recently fired over an election ruling, and several 
candidates whom polls show commanding large support have been disqualified on 
technical grounds.

Some exiles fear that conducting elections in such a climate would guarantee 
failure and prompt another massive exodus of refugees to South Florida. Others 
are just as adamant that each delay makes it even more difficult for any 
elected government to gain the credibility needed for stability and foreign 
investment.

"Haiti needs these elections, and South Florida needs them just as badly," said 
Munir Mourra, a Haitian-American businessman in Miami and supporter of one of 
the presidential candidates, the industrialist Charles Henri Baker. "Because if 
things go bad for Haiti, then they're going to go bad for South Florida. It's 
just a fact that this is the place where Haitians look to. This is the closest 
refuge they have. This is why the election is essential."

But Mourra knows how hard it is to find any hope in his native country's 
despair. After devastating floods ravaged the city of Gonaives in 2004, Mourra 
and other South Florida Haitians organized a flotilla of food, clothing and 
other goods packed in 60 containers that weighed almost 600 tons.

"It never got to the people who needed it. Most of it is still sitting at the 
port, just rotting away in the containers," he said.

"I know it's very easy to give up, to turn your back on the situation. But we 
who have gained so much from Haiti must work now to fix it. The talent exists 
to fix the country, and there's no shortage of money in South Florida once you 
have a government in which people can trust."

But trust has become a victim of Haiti's politics. Since the monthlong 
rebellion that forced Aristide out in February 2004, Haiti has been engulfed in 
violence. Despite the presence of a 7,000-member United Nations peacekeeping 
force, about 1,500 people have been killed, and a wave of kidnappings for cash 
ransoms has plagued the capital, Port-au-Prince, according to the United 
Nations. Some international security companies now describe it as the most 
dangerous country in the Western hemisphere.

"People are tired and depressed, quite frankly," said Gepsie Metellus, 
executive director of Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center in Miami. "There's a 
feeling that Haiti's in crisis and it's just being ignored by the international 
community. Iraq with all its problems has had three elections in the last year, 
and Haiti hasn't been able to hold one."

Adding to the problems is the sheer number of candidates, and the rough 
conditions of the country. Thirty-five candidates are running for president 
alongside about 1,300 who are vying for 120 legislative seats. Because it seems 
unlikely that one candidate will win a simple majority, a runoff likely will 
follow the first vote.

Even though they cannot vote in Haiti's elections, Haitians who hold U.S. 
citizenship are a crucial force in Haiti's politics because of their money and 
influence. While most Haitians live on less than $1 a day, Haitians living in 
the United States and Canada send an estimated $800 million back to the island 
every year, according to surveys. Florida's exile community -- estimated to be 
at least 245,000 -- may be responsible for more than half that amount.

That's why several of the better-funded candidates have made campaign stops in 
South Florida, while others have designated representatives to make the rounds 
on Creole-language radio stations in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade 
counties.

"Every Haitian here is supporting 10 people back on the island, and that's 10 
votes," said Osterval, who is a member of a well-known political family in the 
town of St. Marc. His cousin, the former mayor of St. Marc, is living in 
self-exile in Boynton Beach now and studying English after groups on both sides 
of the political divide threatened his life in 2004.

"The candidates also know we have experience of democracy, those of us who live 
here," Osterval said. "We know what to listen for. We know if anything they're 
saying makes sense. So they come here and they try to convince us, so we'll 
call our families back home and tell them how to vote."

But Florida's Haitians -- a complex community of exiled political 
intellectuals, entrepreneurs, ex-farmers and former boat people -- remain 
divided over Aristide's legacy. The exiled president has been an issue in 
several political races in Miami-Dade County's Haitian community, where his 
supporters still hold sway in many neighborhoods.

Adding to the tension has been the jailing in Haiti of Gerard Jean-Juste, an 
Aristide loyalist and former South Florida activist who has been held without 
charges by the U.S.-backed government since July. Many have touted Jean-Juste 
as a potential presidential candidate.

"Aristide still has a lot of support here, for a variety of reasons," said 
state Rep. Philip Brutus, D-Miami, the first Haitian-American elected to the 
Florida House. "Many people in the South Florida community, especially the boat 
people, left Haiti in the 1980s, when he was a priest and the only one who 
really stood up to the Duvalier dictatorship. Their views of him are rooted in 
that period, and once you touch a Haitian's soul like he did, it's very hard to 
let go."

Aristide's party, the Lavalas Family, will be a force in the elections no 
matter what, observers say. Two of the better-known candidates, former 
President Rene Preval and former Cabinet minister Marc Bazin, are former 
Lavalas members. Preval was the first president in Haiti's history to complete 
his term of office, handing off power to his successor, Aristide, in February 
2001.

Both have distanced themselves from Aristide, who is now living in exile in 
Africa. But in the slums around the capital city, bands of Aristide partisans 
still claim the Lavalas banner. They consider Preval and Bazin turncoats and 
have disrupted election rallies.

Several polls have identified Preval as a front-runner, followed by Bazin and 
Baker. But two of the most popular candidates, according to polls, are not in 
the race: Jean-Juste and Texas food-service tycoon Dumarsais Simeus. When the 
Supreme Court recently approved the inclusion of Simeus' name on the ballot, 
Latortue's government fired five of the judges.

Such actions don't inspire confidence in South Florida.

"The country simply isn't ready for elections, that's clear to everyone," said 
Jean-Robert Lafortune of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition in Miami. 
"This fixation with holding elections no matter how bad the situation is, when 
you can hardly drive safely in the capital city, is ridiculous. The Latortue 
government has failed, that's clear. What they need now is someone else to take 
control, establish security on the ground, and then hold elections sometime 
down the road.

"Otherwise, what's going to happen after elections? Everyone is going to pack 
up and leave and leave Haitians to work it all out? The country needs help 
right now, not more elections."

Many among South Florida's Haitian leaders agree that before any improvement 
can come to Haiti, there must be some security on the ground.

Without it, the money flowing into Haiti is used mostly for consumption. It 
props up families and lifestyles but does little to build businesses, create 
products or grow jobs. For that to happen, economists say, Haiti's leaders will 
have to build safe streets and clean institutions that investors can trust.

"For most people, the big issue is security, so I don't think you'll be seeing 
many people returning for the elections," said Ancy Louis, an exiled Haitian 
journalist who edits his own magazine and teaches at Toussaint L'Ouverture High 
School for Arts & Social Justice in Delray Beach.

"They don't feel safe traveling there because they know they'll be targets for 
kidnapping."

Tim Collie can be reached at tcollie@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4573.


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