The ancient family Bible in the room of Charlito Baker’s heavily guarded presidential campaign headquarters is open at the page of Isaiah 54, verses 11 -17. ”O afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted,” runs the passage, ”no weapon forged against you will prevail and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.”
Just over two centuries after the revolt that made Haiti the first Caribbean island to escape colonialism and slavery, the afflicted nation is again lashed by storms real and metaphorical and there is no shortage of weapons and accusing tongues.
On January 8, three and half million registered voters are due to choose between 34 candidates for the presidency. The election has already been postponed three times and may still be delayed further because of the country’s problems. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, there will be a run-off in February between the first two. A new president should thus take office some two years after the forced departure in 2004 of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who will watch the election from exile in South Africa.
The race is under way, with posters splashed across the corrugated fences of the main cities, campaign songs blasting out on the radio and graffiti painted on battered walls of slums behind piles of rotting rubbish and scavenging dogs.
The biggest problem is security. The United Nations, in the shape of its mission, Minustah, now has 7 000 troops from Latin America and Asia on duty and life is calmer. But law and order is fragile and kidnappings are running at around 50 a month. One day last month, 14 people, including a United States missionary, were seized in Port-au-Prince. The kidnappings are for money, with up to $100 000 being demanded in ransom.
In the most violent part of the capital, Cité Soleil, there are daily gunfights between the chimeres or gangs, some still loyal to Aristide, and Minustah forces. Many Haitians, including Baker’s grown-up children, have left the country, joining the diaspora in the US, Canada, across the border in the Dominican Republic and in Europe.
”My children are very scared but very proud,” said Baker, the right’s most prominent candidate whose role models are Ronald Reagan, John F Kennedy and the Bushes and whose victory would be welcomed by the US government which engineered the removal of Aristide.
Baker would bring back the army, he said, reform agriculture, re-establish tourism. As for security, he said Cité Soleil and other violent areas could be sorted out by a determined military presence such as the US marines. ”It’s not that big a problem, there are probably only about 200 people terrorising 300 000. These guys will have to move on because I’m moving in.”
Baker is one nine hopeful candidates from across the political spectrum who at the end of last month announced a pact that would mean, in a run-off, that all of them would support whichever of them was in the top two.
This has been interpreted as a pact to defeat the current favourite, René Préval, the former president, described as ”Aristide’s twin”. He is seen as the likeliest to garner the votes of Aristide’s supporters, although he is deliberately not running under the banner of the exiled president’s old party.
At the launch of his campaign last week, Préval said he would welcome Aristide back, would respect the Constitution and deal with Cité Soleil by negotiation and force if necessary
The elections are dependent on the situation being calm enough for people to vote. The man responsible for ensuring this is the UN head of mission, Juan Valdés, a Chilean human rights activist who was in exile during Chile’s Pinochet years. ”I do not believe the elections will be a real solution but it will generate a new political scenario, it will generate a legitimate authority,” he said.
”The country is in an extremely difficult situation but we believe that these will be probably the cleanest and most transparent elections ever held here.”
Valdés is adamant the situation is improving and blames the media for exaggerating the violence in the country. ”They say there is total chaos. This is a lie. Cité Soleil is a wound but it is not the entire body. This is a city of rumours and conspiracies, a city full of echoes.”
He accused the media of painting ”a catastrophic image of Haiti … It is clear that military action will never solve the problems of Cité Soleil or the shanty towns. The majority of the population will not be free until there is a social policy that is worth the name.”
”There is a climate of insecurity on an alarming scale,” said Renan Hédouville, the lawyer who runs the human rights group Carli from a modest office which carries the Martin Niemöller credo (”First they came for the communists …”) on its door. ”The first human right is security”, he said, ”without it, the others cannot blossom.”
Up in Cap Haitien on the north coast, groups of young men are sceptical about it. ”Aristide is still the legal president so we won’t be participating,” said Tele, one of three young men sitting by a football pitch created by Minustah’s Chilean troops as part of an attempt to win hearts and minds. ”When Aristide was here at least there was hope but we don’t trust the people running.”
Outside the palace in Port-au-Prince, Jean Robert gestured at the statues of the heroes of the Haitian revolution of 200 years ago and said: ”We hear about those heroes and we see the leaders we have today. The guys today have no vision beyond filling up their pockets.”
For many the key issue is just having enough to eat. Manushka Joseph (26) unemployed, in Port-au-Prince, said: ”The first thing they have to do is lower the price of food, but I think the election is going to go fine. There’s a lot of will for it to happen.”
Other hopefuls
Marc Bazin
Both former ally and former adversary of Aristide. ”With the elections, not everything will be solved but without them nothing will be solved,” the economist and ex-World Bank official says. ”My aim is to put together a government of national unity to find a consensus.” Of the idea of Aristide’s return, he says: ”Nothing can work with him here.”
Guy Philippe
Ex-police commissioner who led the armed movement that triggered Aristide’s flight last year after Haiti became increasingly chaotic. But he is not seen as a likely winner. He says he would let Aristide return under an amnesty. ”The elections themselves are not going to change Haiti,” he says. ”But we need them because we need a legitimate government.” – Guardian Unlimited Â