'Baby Doc' Duvalier returns to Haiti

So he is back. The little one they all called “Pudgy Face”. Or they did until, at 19, his father and President-for-Life, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, made the boy Baby Doc the new President-for-Life.

A chaotic night-time re-entry to Port-au-Prince airport. Although the Duvalierists, working hard during all these years of exile, for just this moment, made sure the word was out and a few hundred singing and chanting supporters were bashing the airport fence and brandishing photos of the man they want back.

A symmetry here, since much larger crowds were also singing and dancing in the streets back in 1986 when Baby Doc finally fled at 3am on February 7th – allegedly with 80 million dollars in cash already stashed away in Swiss banks. He has always denied the kleptocrat moniker – but many Haitians – possibly most – know what the Duvalier name was all about.

At the airport, his people are saying little. He himself just a brief balcony appearance at an hotel last night  to say “demain…demain…” to gathered supporters. “Tomorrow…tomorrow” taken as a reference, we think, to a press conference which he will likely hold later today.

For years now the Duvalierists have been lobbying away through various Haitian govenments to get their man back. Jean-Claude himself has helped to set up a foundation in Haiti in order to try and re-accommodate the Duvalier name with the Haitian people.

That will be some job for a family dynasty so closely and rightly associated with absolute power underpinned by its notorious secret police force the Tonton Macoute. The rich, the Duvalierists, got a lot lot richer during the years when the Macoute was out and about disappearing people, or leaving their bodies on the streets at first light “pour encourager les autres”.

So it is that several Haitian governments during Baby Doc’s 25 years exile, have called for him to come back and face justice. Today various human rights groups said they want him arrested.

No signs of that on the ground. The UN there at the airport to oversee the homecoming. Duvalier himself travelling on a diplomatic passport, first-class in Air France. Sure sign then that there is at least some degree of official sanction to this bizarre and deeeply unexpected homecoming.

Duvalier has let it be known that he wants to return because “I know the people are suffering”.

And suffering they are. Cholera has killed around 3,500 people since the autumn. About one million are still in tented cities after the earthquake devastated much of the country one year ago. And the November elections appear stalled after round one, with nobody sure how to unlock the current deadlock.

Years of ineffectual government have of course, merely played into the desperation of people. Some of whom will yearn back for the days when the Duvalierists at least brought a kind of stability to the country. Others will question that stability and the price it exacted – a people mired in poverty and suffering at the hands of their playboy President-for-Life.

And they will not want him back. Not now. Not ever.

But he is there. He has come home. And come – it is clear – at least some degree of official support.