The left-wing Lavalas Family (FL) dominated the long-delayed legislative and local elections held in Haiti on May 21. According to partial results so far announced, it won 14 of the 19 Senate seats up for election and made a strong showing in the election of the 83 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, although many of these will be decided in a second round of voting on June 25.
The elections were scheduled to take place in 1998 but have been repeatedly delayed, initially by a constitutional crisis in which President Rene Preval and the legislature were unable to agree on the appointment of a prime minister, and since then by concerns about the electoral process.
Preval is an ally of previous president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, leader of the FL. The FL did not, however, have a majority in the legislature, in large part due to the split off of the Organisation of People in Struggle (OPL). Preval dissolved the legislature in January 1999 because its term had expired, and Haiti has been without a legislature ever since.
The FL and the left had campaigned for the elections to be postponed and called for the Provisional Electoral Council to resign. They charged that the council, under pressure from the United States and the Haitian right wing, tried to sabotage the elections.
In particular, the FL and the left were concerned that many people, especially in rural areas and poor neighbourhoods, had not been able to register and that the designation of electoral observers is under the control of a right-wing politician who had been involved in organising fraud in the 1990 elections. There was also concern that the location of polling places had not been published in time.
The US pressured for the vote to go ahead. Threats were made that the US would use the Organization of American States to take action against Haiti if the vote did not go ahead.
In the end, there was a high turn out for the elections (more than 60% of registered voters, compared to the low of 5% in the 1997 elections). Observers have said that the level of irregularities was not significant, although the right and the OPL have been accusing the FL of orchestrating fraud.
Aristide's FL is clearly the left of the FL-OPL split and its victory will be viewed dimly by the Haitian right wing and international imperialist forces. However, it is not likely to cause the same concern as did Aristide's victory in the 1990 election. His leftist politics appear to have moderated since then.
A former liberation theologist priest, Aristide won a landslide victory against the US-favoured candidate, former World Bank economist Marc Bazin in 1990. His Lavalas ("flood") movement was formed only several months before the elections, but his championing of the rights of Haiti's poor majority and his stringent anti-imperialist rhetoric rapidly won Lavalas a strong following.
During Aristide's nine months in power, before he was ousted by the military, he encouraged the political mobilisation and self-organisation of the poor (condemned as "mob rule" by Washington), but there were no dramatic achievements in social reform.
The US forced the military regime that replaced him to resign after three years, during which time right-wing death squads, organised by the US and Haitian militaries, killed thousands of Lavalas supporters. Aristide was reinstalled as president, but only after being forced to sign an International Monetary Fund-backed agreement to implement neo-liberal economic policies.
Aristide then wavered between championing unpopular neo-liberal measures, such as the privatisation of public enterprises and ending price controls, and infuriating Washington by postponing some of the measures until after the next presidential election, as well as letting loose with the occasional outburst of anti-imperialist and anti-US rhetoric.
Although Aristide spent most of his five-year term as president in exile, the 1995 presidential election took place on schedule. He was not able to stand for a second consecutive term, but Preval was seen as his anointed successor.
BY NEVILLE SPENCER