Great Expectations

By Jill Smolowe

For three years, they have wept and cowered, despairing of the empty hopelessness of their days, terrified of the senseless brutality of their nights. Now, in the brief moment between the rule of thugs and the rule of law, under the reassuring protection of U.S. troops, the impoverished of Haiti are finally able to sleep -- and dream -- again. When Jean-Bertrand Aristide returns, they say, everything will be possible. "First there will be food, and then life will be easier," says Clemence Chaperone, 37, an unmarried mother who sells hard candy to feed her three children. When the money begins to come in again, Chaperone plans to buy her kids notebooks and pens, shoes and school uniforms.

Great expectations bewitch the slum of Cite Soleil. Markets and workshops are springing up as residents revel in their release from fear. People are chipping in pennies to buy paint and new fluorescent lights to spruce up their decrepit neighborhood. "Since he is the President of the people, I'm sure he won't leave us in the street," says Tiol Losa, a carpenter whose home was one of 1,300 leveled last December by soldiers who tore through the neighborhood on a rampage of revenge. "When Aristide comes, we'll be able to eat," says Mona Numa, a mother of five. "We won't be beaten for nothing." She will find work; her children will attend school. Pay will go up; prices will come down. All will be well.

While the poor feast on hope, the elite who live up in the cool hills of Petionville and control 40% of the economy are preparing for nothing short of apocalypse. "They look at Aristide and what do they see?" says a businessman. "They see their cook, their gardener, their maid." The rich have stepped up private patrols of their flower-fringed villas and sleep with pistols beneath their beds. "Everybody is afraid," says Raymond Roy, president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "Aristide's people can destroy everything in three hours."

Haiti's other elite, the families of Lebanese and Palestinian immigrants who grew rich enough during the years of junta rule to corner an additional 40% of the economy, also curse Aristide and his American patrons. As they guard their corrugated-steel warehouses, crammed full of the contraband goods that made them the junta's most powerful allies, they foresee disaster under the new regime. "When the U.S. disarmed the paramilitaries, they totally eliminated what little security this country had," says Rudy Chemaly, a recent millionaire. "I am sorry they didn't kill Aristide."

Yet there were signs of a less drastic outlook among a few of the elite at a Mass to commemorate Guy Malary, the young Justice Minister gunned down outside Sacre Coeur Church a year ago. Malary, who had attempted to restructure the ^ corrupt police force during Aristide's absence, had also been a pillar of the business community for 20 years. So inside the simple white church, rich and poor sat shoulder to shoulder in remembrance of a man who had tried to straddle the social divide. Although the poor far outnumbered the rich, the accent of the service was on lawful justice, with staunch warnings against vigilante-style retribution, or dechoukage. "We have to be patient," intoned Father Gerard Jean-Juste, a Roman Catholic priest. "We can't be struggling and fighting each other."

Members of the private sector who were present saw in those words a promising turn. "There was a sense today that some lessons have been learned," said Lionel Delatour, who heads a group of pro-democracy businessmen, "a recognition that radical extreme positions have not paid, a sense of maturity." Although only 25 businessmen attended the service, there were indications that the monied community was also maturing in its outlook. By the reckoning of some business leaders, 20% of their colleagues are trying to reach out to Aristide in a spirit of reconciliation, including one or two of the seven families who make up the most entrenched elite.

Because Haiti is a society where the divide between the haves and the have- nots is so stark, it was inevitable that the rich and the poor would herald Aristide's return in all-or-nothing terms. Yet some recognize that the future belongs neither to Aristide the Redeemer nor Aristide the Avenger. Rather, these quieter voices suggest, the country's fate rests on the shoulders of all Haitians: not only the rich and the poor, but the unsung bureaucrats of the middle class. These civil servants, who lack the unity and political passion of the rich and the poor, have kept their heads down through years of political convulsion, siding first with Aristide, then with the military.

Though their safety is not threatened, something just as precious is at stake: their jobs. The civil servant ranks have swollen from 27,000 during the days of the Duvalier dictatorship to 55,000 under the junta. With so many to do so little, government work days are often filled with cups of coffee and idle chatter. Yet their salaries gobble up 80% of the national treasury. To comply with the demands of the International Monetary Fund, Aristide must pare those ranks to 34,000. Whether these bureaucrats will back Aristide's efforts or try to gridlock his attempts to cut jobs is anybody's guess.

With reporting by Cathy Booth and Marguerite Michaels/Port-au-Prince