Greg Chamberlain, Paris, France
Préval: Long on Goodwill, Short on Results

After more than a year in office, President René Préval is no nearer to satisfying the urgent needs of Haiti's seven million people.

His appeals for patience while he tries to put into place the structures to "modernize" the poorest country in Latin America are angering Haitians who have even less to eat now than they did when he succeeded his mentor, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Préval warned from the start that he would not be able to deliver for some time, as he waited for a promised $500 million dollars in foreign aid to arrive.

But the international financial institutions are reportedly unimpressed with the government's efforts so far to make reforms ('structural adjustment') on which much of their aid is conditional. Parliament has been slow to pass laws enabling privatization of nine major state bodies, government bureaucracy has not yet been reduced and there is little capacity to administer the aid. Economic growth last year slowed to 2.8 percent.

About 7,000 civil servants in Port-au-Prince are likely to lose their often only titular jobs over the next year. Such fears, encouraged by opposition politicians, are producing demonstrations and strikes which could eventually knock Préval off his tightrope. Already, the resignation of Prime Minister Rosny Smarth is being loudly demanded.On March 26, a motion in parliament's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, to censure Smarth was defeated 37-29, with six abstentions

Former President Aristide, who wants to return to power in elections in three years time, has founded his own political party, The Lavalas Family. Aristide insists it only aims to "keep in touch with the grassroots," but the clan in-fighting is draining the energies of the ruling Lavalas (Creole for a "cleansing flood") movement Aristide founded when he ran for president in 1990.

The left charges that Préval has "sold out" to a "imperialist neo-liberal plan" that is destroying the country, which it is says is under "foreign occupation."

The pessimists also include some of the foreigners who, under the United Nations flag, fear that the new police force they have been training, with mixed results, to respect human rights will fall back into deep-rooted habits of violence once the 1,200-strong UN force pulls out of the country. Canada declared in March it intends to keep troops in Haiti under U.N. auspicies until the end of the year.

Although members of Préval's palace guard -- a police unit he inherited from the Aristide Administration -- have been linked with the murder of two opposition politicians, the present force is a notable improvement on any other police in recent Haitian memory.

In January, street protesters around the country accused the government of incompetence and burning barricades made a reappearance, this time against "the people's" government.

Préval admitted things were "far from what we would wish" and Smarth, in an allusion to the left and Aristide, lashed out at "systematic destabilizers of the transition to democracy" trying to divide Lavalas with their "private ambitions."

Préval said "the great challenge was to restore the authority of the state for the good of the country." His opponents accuse him of dismantling the state by privatization, but he has persuaded the IMF to accept a compromise solution of joint ventures to manage national utilities, which serve only a very small percentage of the population.

Préval has launched a modest and hastily organized agrarian reform, especially in the fertile Artibonite Valley, under which the state seizes disputed land and redistributes it to peasants. But lower import tariffs have seen local produce swamped by Dominican bananas and alcohol, as well as U.S. rice, and threaten the peasantry with ruin. Already a third of all Haitians are fed by international charities.

Other projects, such as rebuilding the country's main roads, are beginning. Préval promises foreign investors he will make Haiti "a vast construction site."

There is more electricity in the capital (though still almost none elsewhere), more taxes are being collected, the currency is stable, a number of small development projects have been started, judges are being trained and relations have been mended with the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

Préval has ended violence by ex-members of the disbanded army by promising them pensions. Trials of old regime figures have been set. The press is free. Haitians can speak out. But most political parties are likely to boycott senatorial and local elections in April. The country endured a horrific crime wave in February and March when more than 50 people were murdered, including 8 police officers, the Ministry of Justice's chief of security and a senator's bodyguard.

Préval has been no more successful than Aristide in breaking the hold of the big ruling families, such as the Mevs', but he seems to have imposed more discipline on his team in what Haitians like to call the battle to "change mentalities."

His more energetic, straight-talking approach, making constant visits around the country, has inspired those, especially abroad, who were irritated by Aristide's ethereal manner and lack of interest in economic matters.

Préval is squeezed between growing public desperation, the less than flexible demands of foreign creditors and his administration's poor communication skills and inability to deliver much of anything. Until the means to do so are in place, Haitians are being invited to endure the rigors of austerity Préval says is necessary for "a better tomorrow."

He hopes they will take the strain, and not rise up in a cycle of violence and political instability which he says would only postpone yet again a serious reform of Haiti's economy and society.

Chamberlain is editor of Haiti-Hebdo newsletter.