Aristide's Supporters See a Friend of the Poor

[La_Serpiente]

Aristide's Supporters See a Friend of the Poor

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Their attire of choice is T-shirts and other casual wear, their weapons chrome-plated pistols jammed in their belts and police billy clubs. If Jean-Bertrand Aristide manages to survive as Haiti's president, it may be thanks to these armed toughs who now effectively control the streets of the capital.

Although this Caribbean nation has been in the throes of an armed rebellion for three weeks, although the average Haitian is still the poorest denizen of the Americas, some of these partisans say they are sticking with Aristide because things could be much worse.

"The reason we're ready to die for Aristide is that he is the only one able to bring us a better future," Harry "Junior" Rejouis, the 30-year-old leader of the gang that is now master of one Port-au-Prince traffic circle, said Saturday. "His opponents want to put us back, not take us forward. But why should it always be their children who go abroad to university, and not us?"

"If Aristide leaves now, the country will fall into an abyss," said Wilbert Joseph, one of a score of underlings on duty with Rejouis. When a coup forced Aristide from power in 1991, Joseph said, soldiers burned down his house, and he tried in vain to reach the United States but was interned at the Guantanamo base in Cuba and sent back.

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Aristide's Supporters See a Friend of the Poor

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[cspiguy]

1. and unbiased human rights observers see just another dictator strongman

...he had so much potential but like Ortega, and maybe Chavez, the lure of power and greed may have been too much for him to resist as a cult hero figure. He should have remembered his roots as a servant to his brothers rather than becoming their demigod.