HAITI: The Once and Future President Breaks His Silence

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Amy Bracken

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 22 2006 (IPS) - Almost a week after he was declared president, Rene Garcia Preval broke his silence Wednesday, telling the press about his presidential mission.

Almost a week after he was declared president, Rene Garcia Preval broke his silence Wednesday, telling the press about his presidential mission.

Sitting in his sister’s back yard of dappled sunlight and scruffy grass, and flanked by his former prime minister and advisors from his former cabinet, past-and-future President Preval spoke to a mob of eager domestic and international journalists.

He began by comparing Haiti to a bottle. Resting on its small mouth, it will fall over. It won’t be stable. It must sit on its base, on the part that is largest, he said. In his first speech as president-elect, Preval was not basking in his glory. On the contrary, he was emphasising that he cannot hold up Haiti himself. He will need a complete government, and more.

“I’m frightened to see the passion that arose from the presidential election, and the joy of the Haitian people because a Haitian president had been elected, and the hope placed in the election of that president,” he said.

“I want to remind the Haitian people of the limited power of the president. The elections are still going on. If Parliament is not strong and cohesive, the president can’t respond to all the problems, to all the hopes we see the people expressing,” he said. “It’s the two chambers that ratify the prime minister, and it’s the prime minister who chooses all the civil servants.”

Haitians voted for members of Parliament the same day they voted for president, Feb. 7, but a second, run-off round will likely be necessary for every post next month, according to elections officials.

Haiti has not had a Parliament since January 2004, when a failure to hold legislative elections meant there were no replacements for the majority of legislators whose terms were expiring. For the following six weeks, until he was ousted, then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide ruled by decree.

As for his job, Preval said Haiti’s future presidency will have two fundamental missions: First, to build institutions that are provided by the constitution, such as municipal and national assemblies, which appoint judges. “That way we will put the bottle on its base, on these institutions, so everything is not concentrated in the presidency,” he said.

“The second mission is to create the conditions for private investment to create jobs,” he said. This means bringing roads and electricity, passing laws that favour investment, and reducing kidnappings and other criminal acts that scare off investors.

Preval emphasised that not only can the president not go it alone, but neither can the government as a whole.

In the run-up to and during the electoral process, countless Preval fans said they had no jobs and believed they would find employment under a Preval presidency. Many said they were employed by the Aristide government but laid off when he left power.

But during Preval’s campaign – which was characteristically more about listening than talking – the candidate asked crowds how many people wanted jobs, to which all hands were raised. When he asked if the government has the capacity to provide all those jobs, the crowds cried, “No!”

After Election Day, Rene Max Auguste, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti, predicted a Preval victory, and said that the business community must work with the president-to-be to bring “hope and work” to the Haitian people.

But he said he had one concern about Preval. “I think during [Preval’s first] presidency, he was undermined by Aristide,” he said. “I hope this time he can come back as a true president. I hope that Aristide will not interfere in any way in his presidency..”

The Aristide question was particularly pressing at the conference Wednesday. Aristide himself had spoken in a televised interview the day before in his current home of South Africa, saying he wants to return to Haiti as soon as possible, though when that will be is, in part, up to Preval.

Journalists asked Preval if he would allow this, and Preval replied as he had replied before: “My position is simple… Article 41.1 of the Constitution stipulates that no Haitian needs a visa to leave his country or to return to it.” As to what Aristide would do once back in Haiti, Preval said, “You’ll have to ask him, not me.”

The supporters of Preval – many of them also supporters of Aristide, who had burned tires and marched through the streets to protest what they charged were fraudulent vote counts – were quiet Wednesday.

And some violent parts of the city were more peaceful this week than they have been in months. But discontent within Haiti’s political class casts a shadow over upcoming elections and calls into question the possibility of a smooth transfer of power next month.

Charges of fraud by Preval supporters were hushed when Haiti’s electoral council decided to recount ballots left blank in a way that benefited Preval, pushing all the candidates’ percentages up, and Preval’s into the category of absolute majority, allowing him to win the first round.

This decision to alter the counting of blank ballots infuriated Leslie Manigat, the first runner-up in the presidential race. Manigat called the decision “an electoral coup d’etat.”

Charles Baker, the second runner-up, said the way Preval won calls into question his legitimacy as president. Manigat’s wife, Mirlande Manigat, a popular candidate for Senate, resigned in protest of what she called “a flagrant violation of the Constitution and of the electoral decree.”

Meanwhile, Jacques Bernard, the electoral council’s director, fled the country after receiving threats to his life and having his farmhouse burned.

Micha Gaillard, spokesman for FUSION, one of the main political parties, said he worries the rest of the electoral process will be even more fraught with problems in Bernard’s absence, but he said the opposition will march on.

Preval, for his part, said there are not enough candidates of his Lespwa party to win a majority in Parliament, and his arms are open to other candidates committed to making Haiti a better place.

Run-off legislative elections scheduled for Mar. 19 will most likely be pushed back because of delays in tallying the first round. Officials say the nation is still on schedule for Preval’s inauguration Mar. 29. But as Preval reminded us, a president is only part of the answer.