Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

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Haiti: Government and Politics
sympathizers who lost their jobs when ministries were downsized
in 1990. Still others included the sons of past military and
makout leaders, who, in 1993, organized the Revolutionary
Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (Front
Revolutionnaire pour l'Avancement et le Progres d'Haiti
FRAPH) , a paramilitary group that backed the military regime.
Following the MNF intervention, decommissioned members of
the FAd'H and some of their political allies joined this loose,
anti-democracy network. With the abolition of the FAd'H, however,
the disparate groups and individuals that make up this
network, although representing a destabilizing factor, have no
established institutional base for coordination or support.
The Elite
The system of public and private monopolies, including parastatals
and import-substitution industries, developed under
the Duvaliers and sustained by subsequent military regimes
generated great wealth for a handful of powerful families in
Port-au-Prince. Viewing itself threatened by changes in the
political status quo, this elite sector backed the military governments
likely to protect their lucrative business privileges established
under the old regime. Characterized as MREs (Morally
Repugnant Elites) by international actors during the de facto
military period, Haiti's upper crust has had to adapt to the
country's altered political framework following an international
intervention that came not to their assistance, but to the
assistance of those they opposed.
Not all of Haiti's elite can be assigned MRE status. Some,
feeling the pinch of international sanctions and perhaps disgust
with the FAd'H's mounting human rights atrocities, exhibited
a willingness to work toward the restoration of the Aristide
government prior to the intervention, as evidenced by their
participation in a widely publicized meeting in Miami with Aristide
and his supporters in early 1994. Since the restoration of
democratic governance, they and others have opened relations
with the Aristide and Preval administrations, seeking mutually
beneficial relations and upholding the deeply established practice
of politique de doublure (political understudies) (see Early
Years of Independence, 1804-43, ch. 6). Since 1994 some government
officials have privately expressed displeasure with the
MRE characterization, feeling that it maintains polarization at
a time when reconciliation is required. "This country will not
develop without their participation," one high-ranking official
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