Democracy comes to the Black republic.

DEMOCRACY COMES TO THE BLACK REPUBLIC

IN THE SIX MONTHS since I left Haiti and described the events surrounding the February 7 revolution ("Exorcising Haiti: The Last Days of Baby Doc," April 25), a surprising turnabout has taken place. In May and June the three-man military junta headed by Lieutenant General Henry Namphy had still to set a date for elections and seemed to have lost control. Demonstrations by armed street gangs were demanding the ouster of Colonel Williams Regala from the junta, asking summary execution of those leaders of the Duvalierist Tontons Macoutes still unlynched, and leading bloody forays against the priests of the vaudou cult (houngans), with encouragement from fanatical Protestant and Catholic Rivals. But in July the threat of "anarchy" suddenly evaporated. A firm date for a presidential election (November 1987) was set, and revolutionary action predicted for July 29 never materialized.

What had happened? Certainly the setting of an election date helped: The rival parties, from the conservatives to the Marxists, did not wish to harm their election prospects by having their causes identified with mob action. But more importantly, it became clear that the junta itself had decided to stop sitting on its hands and take firm control in the streets. The leader in this reversal was the Defense and Interior Minister, Colonel Regala.

Who is Williams Regala? The facts--and the mythology, for in Haiti facts and myths are often interchangeable--are important. In the early 1960s Regala was a young army captain in Jeremie, at the tip of Haiti's southern peninsula. His enemies now charge him with carrying out orders from President Francois ("Papa Doc") Duvalier to round up and execute the president's mulatto enemies there. Regala denies the charge, pointing out that the arrests and executions were carried out not by the army but by Papa Doc's militia, the so-called Tontons Macoutes. On February 7, 1986, Colonel Regala, as Inspector General of the army, was present at the Palace with General Namphy when the latter broke the news to Jean-Claude Duvalier that there was no alternative to accepting the United States' offer of a plane to evacuate his family that night. The president's wife--subsequently notorious for telling Barbara Walters that "no one can live in Haiti without air conditioning"--was also present and she was outraged. The president drew his pistol and took aim at the presumptuous army chief. Regala stepped between them and seized Duvalier's arm before he could fire, and when Michele Duvalier attempted to intervene, he seized her too; with the result that the president thought better of his impulsive act and decided to go quietly.

In July, when a second occasion for a bloodbath seemed imminent, it was Regala who appeared on television and announced that he was offering a prize--his new Mitsubishi "Pajero" with four hundred gallons of free gass--to anyone who would bring him evidence of burning tires or other illegal mob action on the fateful 29th. The implication was clear. The army was taking a firm stand and would come out shooting this time at the slightest sign of rioting. A week later, when I spoke to General Namphy's brother Joe, he told me that when Colonel Regala appeared the week before with the ruling triumvirate at a mass rally in Gonaives, the "revolutionary capital," he had been hoisted shoulder-high and carried around the square.

Joe Namphy advised me to be in Jacmel early Friday morning to meet his brother, who was delivering a speech in that provincial capital--which I did. "He will be delivering it in Creole this time," Joe said, "not wishing to commit the error he made in Jeremie the week before. Like Baby Doc, he had spoken in French, with the result that few understood what he'd been saying."

In his speech at the Hotel de Ville (delivered in both languages this time) General Namphy explained, "Our program includes repair of the roads to Jacmel and its streets, a sports complex for Jacmel-Marigot, a TV transmission station, redirection of the Gossalines River to prevent flooding, a decentralization of tourism, and better schools." If he said anything about dredging the harbor--so long neglected by the Duvaliers for political reasons--to open it again to coffee freighters and cruise ships, I didn't catch it. But Jacmel, paved and painted as never before, already seemed to be reborn; and at a reception given afterward at the home of Colonel Gambetta Hyppolite, the local commander, who has become extremely popular, both army leaders received ovations.

BACK IN Port-au-Prince I had an extensive interview with Marc Bazin, for years an executive of the World Bank and now the leading candidate for the presidency.

Bazin, once Finance Minister during the Duvalier regime, was fired by Baby Doc because he refused to countersign presidential raids on public funds. He does not use "democracy" as a camouflage for power; he believes in it. If the public is willing to settle for something less than democracy--as it did throughout Haiti's dictator-ridden history--Bazin wants no part of that compromise.

An aristocrat from the north, tall and powerfully built, Bazin has the advantage of being black--making it difficult for his opponents on the Left to call him a tool of the mulatto capitalists. His charming wife, who comes from the prestigious Sam family in the capital, poured coffee at our early-morning talk in the headquarters of the nascent MIDH (Mouvement pour l'Instauration de la Democratie en Haiti). I opened with a provocative question, prompted by a visit to the highly educated houngan Max Beauvoir at his vaudou "peristyle." Since vaudou is the seedbed for the popular arts, Haiti's most significant export to the United States and Europe, I had a special reason to be concerned about the murderous attacks on the hounfors (vaudou temples) throughout Haiti last May.

"Max told us," I said, "that during the week he was under siege in Mariani, fending off the Protestant-Catholic mob with machetes and stones, not only did the police decline to intervene, but no political party or newspaper in Haiti expressed outrage or even reported what was going on."

"It was not clear at the time what was happening," Bazin said. "I assumed with most others--perhaps wrongly--that the attacks around the capital were directed only against houngans who had been members of the Duvaliers' Tontons Macoutes. Our party platform contains a promise of protection for all religious cults, vaudou included: freedom and religion without qualifications."

The current issue of Haiti Times, a fine new English-language newspaper edited by Pierre Bayard and Jean-Pierre Cloutier, featured a recent speech in Washington by Lesly Delatour, the junta's economics minister. The gist of it was that there will be a balanced budget from now on--no borrowings, no debt, no deficit spending--financed by business taxes and an income tax of up to 35 per cent, with stringent controls to ensure that everyone pays. Most of the money received will be used for health services and education--not for subsidies to agriculture and industry, which will be considered concerns of the private sector. Customs duties must be lowered. The value of the gourde (traditionally five to the dollar) must be maintained. "The government must not devalue the currency or print valueless paper," Delatour said. He estimated that in the past it cost 6.2 million gourdes a month to keep the National Palace going. "This money will now be used for Haiti's real needs," he promised. The devaluation of the gourde in the last months of the Duvaliers' reign was caused in part by the dictator's sending millions out of the country to his private accounts. As soon as this practice stopped, the gourde began to recover.

An August 4 dispatch in the New York Times quoted Jeffrey Lite of the American Embassy as saying that American military assistance to Haiti might be increased from $1 million to $6 million for training and equipping (not arming) the police, which in Haiti is a branch of the army. I asked Marc Bazin whether he shared the fear of human-rights activists that this increased aid might be used, as one of them put it, "to systemize the army's repressive force." He shook his head, commenting that "restructuring the army and police must precede full democracy, or the reformer who takes office will have no teeth, no power, nothing but words as his weapons."

I asked him what his major economic thrust would be. "My first effort," he answered, "will be to bring the cost of living down. But that can't be accomplished without widespread education." For example, Haitian peasants use charcoal for fuel; that has caused a serious deforestation problem. Bazin agrees that it would make more sense to import charcoal from the U.S. and Colombia and sell it to the peasants at cost. But he points out that "the peasant will still cut down trees as he has been doing for generations until he understands why doing so only adds to his impoverishment. If I pass a law making deforestation for charcoal illegal, it won't mean anything until that law is respected."

"Taxing is involved, too," he continued. "For example, I oppose the high tax on coffee, which has forced many peasants to grow corn, which has no export value at all. The Duvalier government had been getting 13 to 15 million annually out of those coffee taxes. Only 350,000 acres in the plain here (the Cul-de-Sac) can be easily irrigated. Those acres are now the property of the government. The question is: How will that valuable acreage be used? Landowners should be encouraged to produce the maximum possible by graduated taxes rewarding efficiency."

THE PROSPECT of Bazin is hopeful for Haiti. But the Haitians have already been lucky. Bad as the Duvaliers were, revolutions are a risky thing; there was no guarantee things wouldn't get worse. Yet life in Haiti has already improved. Prices have come down drastically. Diesel fuel, gasoline, and cooking oil (which everyone uses), cement, flour, and sugar, no longer have to be priced to reflect the Duvalier-Bennett rake-off. (The Bennetts are Baby Doc's wife's family.) Employment dropped in the capital's transformation industries after February--but not, as the New York Times reported, out of "fear" but as a reflection of the worldwide falloff in computer sales; and this drop is on the way to being balanced by an influx of new industries. The turn upward began June 15 at a White House conference of sixty businessmen operating in Haiti who were assured by Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldridge that "the Administration's commitment to U.S. investments in Haiti and the Caribbean Basin remains in full force, and will continue to be in this region so important to us strategically, geopolitically, and commercially." If Bazin can bring true democracy, and firm American support can help supply stability, Haiti, so long synonymous with despair, may have the future she deserves.