By JAMES C. McKINLEY JR.
PORT-AU-PRINCE,
Haiti -- The streets of this impoverished capital buzzed with the normal
hubbub of life
Thursday, but inside the corridors of power opposition leaders were accusing
the president
of trying to establish a virtual dictatorship. The president insisted he
was trying to build
a democracy.
So far, there
has been little outcry here over President Rene Preval's decision on Monday
to bypass
the Parliament
and form a government by decree. The only objections have come from some
businessmen
and opposition politicians.
Preval's choice
for prime minister, Jacques-Edouard Alexis, promised to form a government
and
hold parliamentary
elections as soon as possible. But some Haitians said they feared they
were
witnessing the
unraveling of the country's fragile democracy, this time not through a
military coup but
through the
political maneuvering of Preval and his mentor, the former president, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
"The president
should sit down and talk with these parliamentarians so that this thing
will not
explode," said
a clerk in a downtown business, echoing the views of many and insisting
on
anonymity. "What's
happening now is not good for anybody."
The disagreements
have paralyzed the government since June 1997, when Prime Minister Rosny
Smarth resigned
to protest the elections held that April.
Since then, parliamentary
leaders have rejected three of Preval's nominees for prime minister. The
fourth, Alexis,
a former education minister, was approved last year by both houses, but
was required
to present his
program and Cabinet for approval before being sworn in. Opposition leaders
threatened to
reject him unless they were given key Cabinet positions.
As the end of
the year approached, the legislators passed a law extending their terms
after they failed
to reach an
agreement with the president on the makeup of an election committee and
an election
date.
But Preval scotched
that plan on Monday. Saying he was upholding the constitution, he announced
he did not have
the authority to extend the lawmakers' terms. He also said Alexis had already
been
approved and
could form a government even though a new Parliament had yet to be elected.
"We are trying
to build something called democracy," Preval said. "Democracy, above all,
is the
respect for
the rules of the game. We can't every time a problem arises change the
rules of the game
in order to
solve the problem."
As a practical
matter, however, Preval's move dashed the opposition's hope that it would
control
some important
Cabinet positions. It also meant that the political faction supporting
Preval and
Aristide will
put together the committee to oversee the next elections without influence
from other
groups.
Political opponents
of Preval have accused him of what amounts to a bloodless coup, saying
he
eliminated the
legislature's influence with a stroke of the pen. "Preval has staged a
coup d'etat to
establish a
dictatorship," Myrlande Manigat, a constitutional law expert, told The
Associated Press.
"There are many
kinds of coups -- not only military."
Others have charged
that Preval is laying the groundwork for Aristide to run for President
in 2001,
hoping to control
the electoral committee and thus weaken the chance that factions opposed
to
Aristide might
gain a parliamentary majority. They say Preval delayed holding elections
in order to
bypass the Parliament.
But government
officials insist Preval is only trying to break a political deadlock that
has driven the
country deeper
into poverty. Despite four years of democracy, Haiti remains the poorest
country in
the Western
Hemisphere. The country has not had a budget for two years. Millions of
dollars in
foreign aid
have been placed on indefinite hold.
"There is a general
feeling among the people that this Parliament has been responsible for
the
gridlock as
opposed to seeing to the well-being of the country," the foreign minister,
Fritz
Longchamp, said.
"We have serious
problems in Haiti, economic and social," he added. "The only way we can
solve
these problems
is to have a government that has a majority in Parliament."
Longchamp rejected
suggestions that the president was trying to form a strongman government.
"Is
he trying to
become a dictator by observing the law?" he said.
Diplomats and
officials here said the root of the current crisis was a simple power struggle
between
two wings of
what was once Aristide's Lavalas movement: oneled by Aristide, called the
Lavalas
Family, and
the other, the Organization of the People in Struggle, which dominates
the Parliament.
The opposition fears that if Aristide is returned to power, Haiti will become a dictatorship.
For the moment,
Preval's maneuvering appears to have paid off. Few people among Haiti's
downtrodden
lower classes, the bulk of Aristide's supporters, are springing to Parliament's
defense.
The Parliament
has angered some people by passing an austere economic program backed by
international
lenders that calls for about 5,000 state employees to be laid off.
In addition,
Preval can count on the loyalty of the 6,000-member police force that replaced
the army
when Aristide
abolished the military in 1994. Some top commanders are Aristide supporters
and
Alexis, as prime
minister, will preside over the National Police Commission that controls
the force.
It is a measure
of the neutrality of the new police force that there has been no reprisal
for the
shooting on
Tuesday of Preval's sister, Marie-Claude Calvin, who was wounded when gunmen
attacked her
car.
The investigation
is following the theory that the attack was politically motivated, perhaps
by people
hoping to stir
up violence in the wake of Preval's announcement. Under past right-wing
governments,
retribution
killings would have been automatic, officials said.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company