Campaigning for the presidency, Candidate Louis Déjoie, a rich planter, has been advertising himself as "a production engineer, not a politician." To the humble Haitian voters, Déjoie may be a haughty aristocrat, but his promises have made him a leading candidate. Last week, abundantly proving that he is not a politician, Déjoie threw away his lead.
Haiti is supposed to elect its next President in April, although no exact date has been set. Holding down the office until then was Joseph Nemours Pierre-Louis, the Supreme Court justice who constitutionally succeeded ousted President Paul Magloire (TIME, Dec. 24). Inoffensive President Pierre-Louis sat tight and did not attempt the sweeping government cleanup that Déjoie urged. Impatient, Déjoie last week called a general strike and forced Pierre-Louis out.
The lack of a President put Haiti at the mercy of its ambiguous constitution. Article 81, an all-things-to-all-men clause, provides that replacements for an elected President who is missing for any reason shall be drawn from among Supreme Court justices in order of their rank and seniority. Six of the seven presidential candidates argued that the elected President, i.e., Magloire, had already been replaced, i.e., by Pierre-Louis, and that therefore the constitutional recourses had been "exhausted." They favored naming a "revolutionary" President to stand in until elections. But Déjoie, the exception, insisted that the temporary presidency should fall to the next eligible justice, who by a stroke of luck was a supporter of Déjoie. He ordered that the strike be continued until his friend took office.
With that ill-judged order, Déjoie's prestige began to drop. As it fell, up went the fortunes of another candidate, Daniel Fignole, a leftist spellbinder with a strong latent hold on the lowly blacks of Port-au-Prince. Smoothly maneuvering what he called his rouleau compresseur, a human steam roller of sweating supporters, Fignole pressured the National Assembly as it tried to choose between a "revolutionary" or a "constitutional" successor to the presidency. "A bas Déjoie!" shouted the throng. Déjoie hastily called off the dying strike. Unimpressed, the Assembly chose for provisional President a neutral lawyer named Franck Sylvain. It was a popular choice: as a judge during Magloire's regime, Sylvain earned a reputation for courage by ruling in an important lawsuit against a presidential favorite.
The effect of the crisis that Déjoie imprudently touched off was to transfer much of his support to Leftist Fignole, and make the government less stable than ever. Moreover the week's tumult crippled the winter's tourist business, Haiti's second after coffee, and hundreds of hotel workers were laid off.