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01/02/2005:

"A Troubled Haiti Struggles to Gain Its Political Balance"

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Jacques Rafael stood in front of the Moderne Store in downtown Port-au-Prince where his boss, a 52-year-old woman, was recently shot to death by members of the gangs who control this city's slums.

"They say the former government was no good," he said, referring to the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, overthrown in February. "But when Aristide was here, we could stay open until 10 p.m. Now we can't even stay open until 4 in the afternoon."

Around the corner, at the nearby school, Lycée Pétion, the students were headed home at 9 a.m. The police recently wounded three students there during a shootout with gang members, and the fearful teachers had stayed home, as they do many days now.

"We're the ones paying for what is going on," said Franzo Caryce, 19. "We expected more from Latortue."

Nine months after taking office, the interim government of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue is besieged by mounting criticism from every sector of society. Recent street fighting, some of it involving gangs that supported Mr. Aristide, has claimed an estimated 200 lives and left much of Port-au-Prince's business district deserted. Many business owners are in hiding after a wave of kidnappings, and rebels control large swaths of the country.

"Latortue is not serious about the security situation," said a member of a government panel who insisted on anonymity. "The civil wars in Somalia and Lebanon started like this and that's where we are heading."

Many politicians and experts said in recent interviews that the election scheduled for next November to restore democracy here was in danger of being compromised or canceled.

"Latortue may or may not survive as prime minister - that's almost beside the point," said Henry Carey, a professor and Haiti scholar at the University of Georgia. "He shows no credible signs of holding elections. He doesn't have an election commission that is working."

Outside the country, there is also growing alarm. "Haiti is on the verge of becoming a permanently failed state hemorrhaging instability throughout the Caribbean in the form of refugees, violence and drugs," said a report in November from the International Crisis Group.

Two recent studies prepared by experts on Haiti for the United States Southern Command of the United States Army refer to "the now-discredited Latortue government" and recommend consideration of a plan to turn the country into an international protectorate, an idea openly debated in the Haitian media.
Full Article: nytimes.com