1990, October 18 – December 16: (Sou Se Lavalas — The Gully-Washing Torrent: Roger Lafontant Returns from Santo Domingo and Rallies Duvalierists, Disqualifie…

1990, October 18 – December 16: (Sou Se Lavalas — The Gully-Washing Torrent: Roger Lafontant Returns from Santo Domingo and Rallies Duvalierists, Disqualified by the Electoral Council He Threatens to Disrupt Elections as in 1987, Bazin Regarded as America’s Man, Victor Benoit Lackluster, Aristide Enters the Race on October 18 Under the Banner of Lavalas — Participation Transparency Justice but Nowhere a Call for Reconciliation, a Cross Between Fidel and the Ayatollah, Foreign Investors Put Decisions on Hold, a December 5 Grenade Attack Kills Seven and Wounds Fifty-Three, Aristide Tells His Followers the Macoutes Will Disappear on the 16th, a Thousand Foreign Observers Including Jimmy Carter, Kok Kalite the Small but Tough Rooster, Red Thumbs and Indelible Ink, and 67% for Aristide — Three Times the Runner-Up): Another ill omen was the return from Santo Domingo of Roger Lafontant — kept at bay as long as his mortal enemy Prosper Avril was in the palace, Lafontant lost no time in returning once Avril was gone. By October he was rallying Duvalierists throughout the country; after announcing his candidacy, he was disqualified by the Trouillot-appointed electoral council. He and others barred by the 1987 constitution from running for office immediately clamored for a change in the rules with the implicit threat that if they did not get their way, the 1990 elections would be disrupted as in 1987. Among those eligible, none seemed to capture the popular imagination — Marc Bazin, polished and accomplished, was regarded as America’s man and thus discredited in the eyes of many; the leading leftist candidate Victor Benoit was regarded as lackluster; none of the remaining nine candidates had enough name recognition to govern even with a plurality. In many minds there existed the real possibility of a Lafontant-Bazin contest, a prospect that threw the left into a frenzy, for it knew Bazin would inevitably emerge victorious. At the eleventh hour, on October 18, 1990, the liberation theologian whose principal preoccupation since his expulsion from his order had been the running of his orphanage made an announcement that electrified the race. Jean-Bertrand Aristide became the candidate of the FNCD, which had quickly discarded Benoit once Aristide became available. Running under the banner of Lavalas — the Creole word for gully-washing torrents that sweep clean all before them — he electrified the country with his Creole oratory and petrified the elite. His program, he said, could be summed in three words: participation, transparency, justice. Nowhere, many noted, was there a call for reconciliation. Foreign investors, already at a premium, put investment decisions on hold pending the December 16 vote. Duvalierist forces stepped up attacks — a grenade attack on an Aristide crowd on December 5 narrowly missed the firebrand priest, killing seven and wounding fifty-three, resulting in a ban on large rallies for the duration of the campaign. By radio, Aristide told his followers to take heart and dry their tears, for on the sixteenth of December the macoutes would disappear from Haiti. And still the army stayed in its barracks. In preparation for the election, more than a thousand foreign observers from the UN, the OAS, and private groups — and yet again, former President Jimmy Carter — swarmed into Haiti. As Election Day dawned, officials of the electoral council arrived at polling places to find large crowds already lined up, many apprehensive but determined to cast their ballot for Kok kalite, the small but tough rooster that was the symbol of Lavalas. Other than logistical snafus, this election went relatively smoothly — ballots arrived late in many places including Cité Soleil, but anxious residents were reassured that the polls would stay open until all who wished to vote had done so. In Port-au-Prince and other cities the fashion of the day was a red thumb — the indelible ink keeping voters from going back for another vote. True to its name, the Lavalas torrent swept all before it: when the vote was counted, Aristide had captured sixty-seven percent — three times as many votes as the runner-up, Marc Bazin. The Aristide landslide — a liberation theology priest expelled from his order, surviving multiple assassination attempts, entering the race at the eleventh hour and sweeping to victory on a wave of Creole oratory that bypassed every institution of the Haitian establishment — was the most revolutionary electoral event in Haitian history since universal suffrage was proclaimed in 1950: for the first time, the Haitian masses had chosen their own president in a genuinely contested election observed by the world, and the man they chose was the one figure in Haitian public life who had consistently refused to accommodate himself to the army, the elite, the Church hierarchy, or the United States — a choice whose radicalism lay not in Aristide’s program, which was moderate enough, but in the act of choosing itself, the assertion by the peuple souverain that it existed as a political force independent of every patron and every intermediary, the ballot box for once serving as what it had always pretended to be: an instrument of popular will rather than an instrument of elite management.