How to Get Re-Elected

The Caribbean island of Hispaniola is divided into two nations--Haiti, where the politics is bad; and the Dominican Republic, where it is worse. Over the past four years, Haiti's President Franc,ois Duvalier, a onetime physician, has done little to improve the lot of a country that depends on a $5,000,000 annual U.S. dole to balance its budget and whose ragged peasants still exist on a per capita income of less than $100, lowest in the hemisphere. But he has obviously learned a great deal about how to stay in power from his neighbor, Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.

Last week Duvalier called the citizens of his impoverished Negro nation to the polls, ostensibly to choose a new Parliament. Duvalier, like all strongmen, thought Parliament talkative, unfriendly and obstructionist (he eviled five members, jailed five others). Then he dissolved both houses and decreed the election of a single, 58-seat chamber. The only candidates who managed to get on the ballots were well-known Duvalier partisans. Only one candidate came out swinging against the regime, and he withdrew for "personal reasons" on election eve. Voting-day squads of police spread a dragnet for anti-Duvalier Haitians, most of whom had prudently gone into hiding. Only a fraction of Haiti's 1,000,000 voters bothered to turn out. Most of those who voted were civil servants, who had to.

The strongman did not run officially, but the words "Doctor Franc,ois Duvalier--President" appeared on every ballot throughout the republic. After it was all over, Haitians learned to their surprise that they had not only elected a new Parliament but--announced Haiti's attorney general--had also voted Duvalier a second six-year term as President.

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