Aristide's Populist Appeal Dwindles in Haiti | L A Times

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November 29, 2003

THE WORLD
Aristide's Populist Appeal Dwindles in Haiti
-Once an inspiration to a nation of have-nots, the president has built a legacy of dashed hopes and a reputation for illicit gain.

By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — No trace of extraordinary vision appears on the face of the bespectacled 13-year-old in the back row of a 1966 class picture from the Salesian Seminary in Cap Haitien.

Nor was the demure young priest seen as particularly ambitious as he churned out political leaflets two decades later in the underground movement to oust dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

Only after Duvalier was driven into exile in 1986 and some hope for democracy appeared on the horizon did Haitians see the political agenda in the cleric's moving oration as he stirred a nation of have-nots to choose him as their first democratically elected leader.

No one seems to know whether President Jean-Bertrand Aristide ever intended to lead his people out of the abject poverty that once consumed his own life. The more charitable among his detractors impute initial good intentions but say the allure of wealth and power led him astray somewhere between the pulpit and the presidential palace.

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