RIGHT OF CENTER: ELECTION CONFIRMS POLICY DISASTER

At some point in the next week or so the world will know the results of the recent elections in Haiti. Now that Haiti is a bastion of human rights with the popular president and defender of liberty Jean-Bertrand Aristide placed back in power by U.S. troops, the recent elections -- and upcoming presidential race -- are a shining example of emerging democracy, right? Not exactly.

What hundreds of international election observers saw in Haiti this week falls far short of anyone's definition of democracy. Polling places opened hours late while others didn't open at all. Many polling booths that did open didn't have the necessary registration roles to permit Haitians to vote. To top it off, hundreds of thousands of filled ballots were lost or destroyed in the hours after polls closed. "Experts" say Aristide's political party is expected to win by a landslide. No kidding.

Of the island's nearly four million residents, about 3.5 million were registered to vote. Turnout was thought to be about 50 percent for this week's election. No one knows for sure, but some reports have the number of ballots either ruined or invalid exceeding half a million. In other words, close to a third of the votes cast are useless. Even Bill Clinton could ensure his own re-election in 1996 if he could quash a third of GOP ballots.

And yet Clinton administration officials and Aristide himself lauded the elections as a great improvement over past votes under military dictators. Election observers noted a lack of violence, despite at least two murders linked to local races. But then everything is relative, isn't it? Past elections in Haiti were no more chaotic or fraudulent than this one, but were marred by the misfortune of voter beatings and murders. As long as only a few people were killed, the argument goes, the election is a success and deserves praise for propelling Haiti toward true democracy.

But since when do we judge democratic elections by authoritarian standards? We don't expect tyrants who hold ersatz elections to measure up to democratic ideals. But we must demand that a professed representative democracy execute a fair and open vote -- particularly when we put American lives on the line to restore that government to power as we did during President Clinton's proudest foreign policy triumph -- last year's Haitian Vacation.

If the Reagan administration had similarly intervened in Nicaragua and the Contra freedom fighters were put in power, that nation's first national election would have been held by the same election observers to the loftiest democratic standards. And yet when Haiti's election this week fell short of even the loose standards of a typical Cook County, Ill., race or a Democratic primary in Missouri's Bootheel, there was only praise from the so-called guarantors of rights and liberties.

Only Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., has demanded a Congressional inquiry into Haiti's fraudulent and, Clinton officials' temerity notwithstanding, violent election. Why hasn't anyone else objected to the fiasco?

I believe there are two possible explanations. One is that we really can expect no better than chaos from a democratic nation only recent given its independence. In which case we may ask what interest we had in military intervention rather than economic sanctions against the tyrants coupled with moral, humanitarian and, if necessary, military support for the democratic dissidents. From the start of the Haiti conflict, we were assured that Aristide's return to power would usher in true liberty and democracy. That he hasn't delivered is an indictment of that notion and of the actions our nation took to make it so.

The other explanation, which I believe is closer to the truth, stems from evidence that Aristide is little better than those he replaced. Instead of thug military coup leaders, a leftist despot now calls the shots in the island nation. For those who promised third-world political nirvana in Haiti with Aristide's return, the light of truth must be cloaked in obfuscation so as to avoid the embarrassing realization that the single foreign policy choice in this administration that wasn't overtly so, turns out also to be a disaster.

~Jay Eastlick is the news editor of the Southeast Missourian.