Now Haiti Needs a Good Uncle

For its nearly 200 years of nationhood, Haiti has been poor and deeply troubled. But there was a glimmer of hope Thursday when its first democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was inaugurated.

It was, by all accounts, a stirring event. Correspondents report that most of Port-Au-Prince’s 2 million people turned out to cheer Aristide, just one reflection of how genuinely popular the charismatic Roman Catholic priest is. He first made his reputation working among Haiti’s poor, preaching fiery sermons demanding justice on on their behalf.

He faces a daunting task. By almost any statistical measure, Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere. Most of its 6 million people are illiterate and underemployed. Even the farmers can barely feed themselves, much less all their countrymen.

And although Aristide was elected president by a landslide, with 66% of the vote, Haiti is still torn by divisions left over from almost three decades of the Duvalier dictatorship. There are those in the country’s elite who fear Aristide because of his past activism. He is endangered by violent thugs, once in the service of the Duvaliers, who have murdered several of his supporters. And the great unknown factor in Haiti’s political equation is the army, which overthrew several civilians who have tried to run the government since the last Duvalier fled in 1986.

But the army may also be Aristide’s best protection: It turned back one coup attempt just after he was elected. A key player that could keep the army behind Aristide now that he’s in office is the United States. Haiti gets all of its military aid from Washington, so it listens to what the Bush Administration has to say. Thus far the Administration has been friendly to Aristide but distinctly cool, perhaps also wondering about his activist past.

That’s understandable, but Washington can’t ignore the fact that Aristide was popularly--and overwhelmingly--elected. If we in this country mean all the nice things we say about democracy, we must not hesitate to offer Haitians all the help they need as their nation and new president struggle to make it work.