Port-au- Prince, Haiti - The Haitian people are about to have another opportunity to elect a new House of Representatives and a new Senate. A few weeks from the general elections, the political party called Lafanmi Lavalasse, led by former president Jean Bertrand Aristide, seems to control more than 80% of the electoral vote.
According to many sources the Lavalasse organization is already the predicted winner of all the seats in both the House and the Senate due to the increasing popularity of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide. In 1990 Aristide won the general election carrying away 75% of the electoral vote becoming the first democratically elected president in Haiti.
Shortly after, the Haitian conservative business community and the Haitian Armed Forces overthrew his government and forced him to leave the country. Aristide remained in Washington for nearly three years where he managed to gather enough support to convince the Clinton Administration to restore him to power.
Aristide returned to his small island in 1995, escorted by thousands of U.S. Troops. After his return the opposition leaders became confused and intimidated by the popularity and the power of the president, so they kept quiet for a short period, then they began to try every trick possible to destroy his reputation. During that time Aristide lost a few of his close collaborators, mostly his old hometown boys who became jealous of his successful accomplishments.
After completing his presidential term, Aristide returned to community services and focused his efforts on developing community based economic projects and also towards reorganizing and extending his private non-profit organization called Lafami Se Lavi (Family is Life). The former president used the contacts that he made in the U.S. entertainment industry and other social groups while he was in Washington, D.C., utilizing personalities like Julia Roberts to raise funds on behalf of his impoverished nation.
During the past three years the former president and his wife have developed several farmers cooperatives and merchants associations. For the first time in Haiti, any small retailer or a small farmer can receive a subsidized loan to boost their business.
Aristide runs another special non-profit program, which allows farmers to receive grants to buy seeds and new equipment. Aristide's project also includes technical assistance, bringing with it hopes of ameliorating the working condition of the farmers and to make food production more competitive.
Aristide's dedication and commitment to fighting poverty in his country has impressed his friends as well as his enemies. Marc L. Bazin, one of the most credible leaders of the opposition and former Prime Minister of the fascist government of General Cedras has become Aristide's most loyal supporter.
Last month in a conference in Randolph, MA, Marc Bazin said if there is a minority and a majority in Haiti, Aristide represents the majority. And more recently, Bazin said on
Radio Vision 2000 in Port-au-Prince that Aristide's enemies are included among those who cannot do anything else than politics due to a lack of or no skills. He said that they better go to a training school or try to get a low skill job, because "We pa we Aristide President" a popular Creole phrase meaning "Aristide will be re-elected president whatsoever."
Bazin is a highly qualified European educated economist, with a strong political background, his track record as a former official of the World Bank granted him a lot of respect in the international business community.
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In general, the Haitian political parties exist only as a symbol, they do not have a structured organization and an electoral strategy. Presidential hopefuls are maneuvering to take over the power through fraudulent elections, spending more energy trying to convince the U.S. State Department about their ability to promote the U.S. policy in Haiti, than developing a trusting relationship with the community based popular organizations.
One of the major problems confronted by those political parties is a lack of resources. Due to the disastrous economic condition of the country, the Haitian people do not have the possibility to contribute economically to the political parties. The personalization of the parties makes the average middle class Haitian reluctant to donate their money.
Haitians living abroad have represented, in the past, a source of revenue to the Haitian political organizations through their different chapters established in cities all over the world where there is a large Haitian community. Nonetheless, what appears to be weird is that the person in charge of these chapters, instead of attracting new memberships, they prefer to chase away prospective members and run the political organization as a family affair. They have no shame at all for being responsible for the failure of their political organization. The same crew has continued to fail and fail again and still enjoy the pride of being in charge.
The most recent media campaign to expose the public opinion of the overwhelming popularity of Aristide's party Lafanmi Lavalass may certainly reduce the possibility of the unfortunate candidates to boycott the result of the upcoming election.
According to a poll conducted by a group from the Southern Christian Coalition, if the elections were held last week, Aristide's party Lafami Lavallass would have won every single precinct. One of the officials of the U.S. State Department, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Boston Connection, said: "From all prospectives the Lavalass party is likely to win all the open seats in the Haitian parliament. However, many wary citizens began to express their concerns about a one - party dominated government should these predictions withhold. ¨
