HAITI: Taking Charge

Into the big white presidential palace, over the rich red carpets, the sweating, ill-dressed black people of Port-au-Prince swarmed last week. They stood in the elegant corridors and squatted in the yellow-draped reception room, waiting for a glimpse of the slim mathematics professor who took power a few days before. When he left the palace, they ran alongside his car, shouting their affection for 42-year-old acting President Daniel Fignole.

After six months of chaos spent trying to elect a President, Haiti had found a leader with obvious popular support. The process of selection was rude: when the campaigning reached the shooting stage, other candidates backed out and pushed Fignole into office. He took hold vigorously, appointed a strong Cabinet, named a new army chief, produced pay for troops and other government employees who had gone wageless for a month. Banks, factories, docks, cable offices, radio stations reopened; peasant women hurried to the capital toting baskets of fruit and vegetables.

Fignole’s popular appeal is natural. He comes from poor peasant parents, struggled for an education, discovered a hypnotic gift of speech, organized the poor blacks of Port-au-Prince and turned them against the well-off mulatto elite. Preaching a race struggle, Rabble-Rouser Fignole promised the blacks cars, houses and the mistresses of the rich. “Haiti for the black Haitians!” he cried. In more recent years he has tried to forget such anti-elite demagoguery.

Last week he pointed out that “four of my ministers are light-skinned mulattoes. If I hated them, would I include them in my hand-picked Cabinet?”

Fignole promised “free, honest and sincere elections,” but set no date. He also promised “not to abuse” his present position as chief of state, but left no doubt that he intended to run and win. Presidential Candidate Louis Déjoie, a rich mulatto businessman, promptly charged that Fignole’s candidacy would be “illegal and undemocratic.” Fignole’s answer was an oblique warning. Said he to his followers: “I ask you people to remain calm— but also to watch everything that may threaten the government. I ask you to respect lives and property—but also to keep your eyes open.”