The World Won’t Be Fooled : Aristide may be no saint, but at least he was elected by the Haitian people

Under extreme pressure from the military units that helped oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s National Assembly has named a supreme court justice, Joseph Nerette, as interim president. That is a patently transparent attempt to fool the outside world into thinking that constitutional order has been restored in Haiti, and it won’t work.

Sadly, there are some--perhaps even officials in the Bush Administration--who wish it could work, for Aristide’s claim to moral superiority in the latest Haitian crisis has been badly undermined. There have been revelations that, in the weeks before the coup, he may have been at least indirectly responsible for human rights violations by encouraging or countenancing mob violence against his political opponents.

That is an embarrassment to all the democratic governments of the world that rallied after the coup to support Aristide, a young former priest who first gained popularity among Haiti’s poor masses as a fiery advocate of liberation theology.

One can only hope that Aristide has been sobered by the coup and will return to Haiti as a more truly democratic leader--one who sways political opponents through persuasion and compromise rather than threats of lynching or worse by violent mobs.

In any case, the constitutional standoff in Haiti won’t end until Aristide is either returned to power or agrees to some other resolution that allows him to step down voluntarily and peacefully, such as impeachment or another election.

Until then, the Haitian junta must not be allowed to ignore the uncontestable fact that Aristide just last year was popularly elected--indeed, by an overwhelming margin--in the first open and honest voting in Haitian history.

That is the main reason--not Aristide’s politics or personality--that the Organization of American States unanimously condemned the coup that ousted him. And that’s the key point OAS representatives must keep hammering at as they try to convince Haiti’s temporary powers that be that they must negotiate the conditions of the president’s return or be prepared to face continued economic and diplomatic isolation from their neighbors.