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Aristide begins second term amid hope & criticism

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February 8, 2001 

PORT-AU-PRINCE-(AP) - Jean-Bertrand Aristide was sworn in Wednesday for a second term as Haiti's president, promising to bring change to a country devastated by poverty and divided by political allegiances.

Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, took the oath of office before Parliament while holding his hand on a Bible. Hundreds of supporters filled the streets outside the Legislative Palace, even though they had no view of the proceedings inside.

"We planted the seed, and now it's time to reap what's sown. We want to make sure all the work we've done for Aristide pays off," said Michel Frizner, a 28-year-old construction worker who waited outside the palace since sunrise.

But while Aristide's return is celebrated by much of Haiti's poor, it is being shunned by the international community, which was angered by the handling of May legislative and local elections. Of the few diplomats coming, most are ambassadors, not world leaders.

His return is also challenged by Haiti's opposition parties, which protested fraud in the May vote and have announced their own provisional president to head an alternative government.

In the vote, Aristide's Lavalas Family party won more than 80 percent of local and parliamentary seats. The Organization of American States said 10 Senate seats won by Aristide candidates should have gone to a second round vote, and some countries threatened to withhold aid.

Aristide, now 47, became Haiti's first democratically elected president in a landslide victory in 1990. The army ousted him in September 1991, and a U.S. military invasion restored him to power three years later.

Constitutionally barred from running for a consecutive term, Aristide spent only a few months in office before stepping down in 1996 and handing power to Rene Preval.

In a letter to former U.S. President Bill Clinton in December, Aristide offered to rectify the election results, include opposition figures in his government and appoint a new provisional electoral council. But the opposition rejected his offers, saying new elections are needed.

Now Aristide faces three challenges: deliver on promises so he can keep the support of Haiti's poor majority; patch up relations with the international community to secure aid for the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; and fix an impasse with the opposition.

Talks to find common ground with the opposition began Saturday and went on into early Tuesday. But they failed.

On Tuesday, the 15-party opposition alliance Convergence named former presidential candidate Gerard Gourgue, 75, as the country's provisional president in an alternative government. It also offered Aristide a seat on a three-member presidential council. An opposition premier would rule by decree, and general elections would be held by 2003, it said.

Gourgue was minister of justice following the ouster of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986. He was a presidential candidate in 1987 elections aborted by bloody attacks by the army.

Aristide's party chose to hold the inauguration on Feb. 7, a national holiday and the day that Duvalier was forced from power in 1986.

Children didn't attend school Wednesday, and many telephone poles had been painted in blue and white, the national colors, near the National Palace, where Aristide was to give his inaugural address later in the day.

Aristide's swearing-in was shown on television throughout the country, and Reynold Pierre, a 29-year-old hotel employee, said he was hopeful as he watched.

"I'm confident that now the country has a chance to develop," he said.