Global Policy Forum

By Paisley Dodds

Haiti's new prime minister, Gerard Latortue, believes only free elections can save his traumatized homeland. A former U.N. official who served in Africa and as an international business consultant in Miami, Latortue was chosen Tuesday to head a transitional government and organize elections in a country that only once in its 200 years of independence had a democratic election.

"He's a pacifist. He's a good person. He's a man of compromise," Leslie Voltaire, a Cabinet minister in the government of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, said of Latortue. "The plan was asking for an independent prime minister and (one) competent at a professional level. I think he does both."

He said Latortue's extensive knowledge of international organizations, in particular the United Nations, would prove invaluable once the world body takes over the U.S.-led force in Haiti. Latortue will head a government of former enemies — Aristide's Lavalas party and an opposition coalition — who for years have been at loggerheads. And he will have to pacify disparate armed factions: pro-Aristide loyalists and the rebels who helped oust him.

Some fighters told The Associated Press they were not happy with the choice of Latortue. Former coup plotter and Haitian army Col. Himler Rebu said the council made a "tactical mistake" by not choosing former army chief-of-staff Gen. Herard Abraham, who was on a shortlist of three candidates.

"The immediate priority was to avoid armed disorder ... (Abraham) would have been a calming element for the soldiers, as well as for the chimeres," Rebu said, using the French word for "ghosts" that in Haiti has come to mean the angry young men who violently support Aristide. Rebu said Latortue would have to find "a strong figure" as defense and interior minister.

Latortue has emphasized the need for a professional and depoliticized civilian police force in Haiti — indicating he supported the idea that a country without external enemies but in internal chaos needs police not soldiers. Aristide was accused of using police to oppress and kill his opponents.

Latortue served as Haiti's foreign minister in 1988 to President Leslie Manigat, who was installed by the military. Latortue lost his job in one of the 32 coups Haiti's army fomented. "Our country is bankrupt," Latortue wrote in a French-language paper for a conference in Washington D.C. in March 2003. "The entire nation opens its arms to those who can and want to help us organize viable, free and fair elections, to install a lawful state, as well as justice and security for all, and to disarm the gangs."