TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/012191/0121001.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 4KB | 81 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 50

HAITI

General Without an Army


The military surprises an old Duvalier crony by siding with the
government and crushing his coup attempt


    President Ertha Pascal-Trouillot was at home with her family
when an army tank driver knocked on her door at 10 p.m. As
gunfire echoed in the distance, he told her there was trouble
and that she would be safer at the presidential palace, three
miles away in Port-au-Prince, the capital. On the way, the
driver stopped to pick up a second passenger, a heavyset,
balding man whom Pascal-Trouillot could not identify in the
dark. Only after arriving at the palace did the President learn
that her companion was Dr. Roger Lafontant, former head of the
Tontons Macoutes militia, and that she was his hostage in a coup
attempt.

    Lafontant forced Pascal-Trouillot to resign and named
himself provisional President. He told reporters that his
putsch had the full backing of the military, blustering that
President-elect Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the radical priest
chosen by an overwhelming majority last month and scheduled to
take office Feb. 7, was a "nobody."

    But Lafontant, a gynecologist who was the muscle behind the
regime of exiled dictator Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier
from 1981 to 1985, turned out to be a general without an army.
In an unprecedented gesture of support for democracy, the
Haitian military, led by army Chief of Staff General Herard
Abraham, declared its allegiance to the government. Less than
12 hours after the coup began, soldiers stormed the palace,
freed Pascal-Trouillot and dragged off Lafontant and 15 of his
henchmen in handcuffs.

    The coup was quashed too late, however, to prevent a bloody
and destructive outburst of public anger. A mob scaled the
10-ft.-high walls of Lafontant's Port-au-Prince compound,
killing a dozen suspected Tontons Macoutes holed up inside.
Infuriated at what was seen as support for the coup makers by
the conservative Roman Catholic hierarchy, crowds torched
Haiti's 220-year-old cathedral and destroyed the Vatican
embassy, stripping the papal nuncio down to his shorts before
he was rescued and assaulting his chief aide with a machete.

    By the time it was over, more than 70 people had been killed
in four days of violence. Aristide helped to calm the rioting
throngs by calling for "vigilance without vengeance." In hiding
after several assassination attempts, he should benefit from
the capture of his main enemy, which leaves the Macoutes
without a central leader. But the public is still suspicious
of the army's loyalties, and has demanded a search for
Lafontant's accomplices.

    The military's backing for the constitutional process was
anything but certain when Lafontant initiated his coup. The
swaggering ex-Interior Minister had defiantly returned from
five years of exile in July, but the army had failed to act on
a warrant for his arrest, even after he declared that Aristide
would never take office as President. The defeat of the
takeover attempt apparently owes a great deal to U.S.
diplomacy. Ambassador Alvin Adams and other officials have spent
months trying to convince the military that staying out of
politics is in its best interest. When the soldiers heeded the
advice last week and sent Lafontant packing, Adams called it
a "glorious day for democracy." Aristide should now have his
chance to halt Haiti's long spiral into chaos.


By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by Bernard Diederich/
Port-au-Prince.