Editorials
Saturday, January 16, 1999

U.S. should defend
democracy in Haiti

THE democracy that the United States defended when Washington dispatched a military contingent to Haiti in 1994 to restore an elected president to office is dissolving into chaos. President Rene Preval's nominee as prime minister has taken office without parliamentary approval. Preval declared that Parliament's term had expired and he had the right to install Jacques Alexis and approve his cabinet by decree.

Preval nominated Alexis, his education minister, as prime minister last July, to replace Rosny Smarth, who resigned in June 1997, and end a standoff that has crippled democracy in that impoverished country. Parliament, controlled by a rival party, rejected Preval's first three nominations. It approved Alexis' nomination last December. But before he could take office, Parliament also had to approve his cabinet and program.

Under a 1995 law, all but a handful of legislators' terms were to have expired on Jan. 11. But Haiti had not held elections to replace the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, so the Senate voted last autumn to extend legislators' terms. The Chamber of Deputies did not act on the term extensions.

On Monday, hundreds of protesters burned tires and barricaded streets in Port-au-Prince in an unsuccessful bid to keep Parliament from opening, saying the legislators' terms had ended. On Tuesday Preval's sister was wounded and her driver killed when her car was sprayed with bullets in a daylight attack in Port-au-Prince, spawning fears of more violence.

Preval is only the second democratically elected president of Haiti. Jean Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first freely elected president, was ousted in a military coup in 1991. The United States led an international force that restored him to power in 1994.

Alexis has expressed an intention to hold elections shortly. The electoral process appears to be the only way to end this impasse. One consequence of the 1994 military intervention is that the United States has assumed a commitment to defend democracy in Haiti. Washington should prod Preval and Alexis to conduct elections and install a new Parliament.

An Oscar for Kazan

ELIA Kazan, one of the nation's most accomplished film directors, has been rejected for several lifetime achievement awards because he exposed movie industry friends who had been fellow members of the Communist Party in testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952. That snub will now be corrected. The board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has voted to give Kazan an honorary Academy Award at the Oscar ceremonies on March 21.

Kazan won two Oscars, for his direction of "Gentleman's Agreement" in 1947 and "On the Waterfront" in 1954. He also directed "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Viva Zapata!" and "East of Eden" and was perhaps Hollywood's foremost director of the 1950s and '60s. Now 89 and ailing, Kazan surely deserves a lifetime achievement award. However, two years ago the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the American Film Institute rejected proposals to honor him.

The intent was to punish Kazan for testifying against his friends in what has become known as the McCarthy era, named after the senator who was notorious for making reckless, unfounded accusations of Communist influence in government.

The label is a misnomer. Not all accusations of Communist Party membership were unfounded, although Soviet sympathizers tried to discredit them by associating them with McCarthy. Communist attempts to infiltrate the U.S. government and the film industry did occur. Kazan was a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s and knew others who were.

Much sympathy has been lavished in recent years on writers who were blackballed by the movie industry in the 1950s because of their Communist affiliations. Kazan has been treated as a pariah for identifying people who were trying to use films to further the Soviet cause. He deserves better.

Seized property

SEARCHES and seizures conducted by law enforcement agencies have been subjected to strict standards over the years to prevent abuse and provide protection against unreasonable intrusions. There is a limit to those protections, however. The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a California couple's complaint that authorities didn't advise them how to get their seized property back. Assuring legal assistance to all targets of searches would have been unwieldy.

Lawrence and Clara Perkins seem to have had a legitimate complaint. Police conducted a search of their West Covina, Calif., home in May 1993 because a suspected gang member wanted for questioning about a murder had been renting a room in their house. While the Perkinses were away from home, police gained entrance and seized photographs and an address book belonging to the suspected gang member, as well as $2,469 in cash and other items belonging to the couple.

Police left a note informing the occupants about the search, including the detectives' names and telephone numbers. But when Lawrence Perkins called the officers, they gave him no help in retrieving his property. They said he would have to go to court to get it back. The judge handling the warrant had gone on vacation, and it ended up taking the hiring of a lawyer and more than a year for the Perkinses to retrieve their property.

"Neither the federal government nor any state agency requires officers to provide individualized notice of the procedures for seeking return of seized property," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy explained in the high court's decision. He said the Constitution does not require that owners of seized property be given help getting it back.

The Perkinses deserve empathy for the problems created by their tenant. Law-enforcement agencies should try to assist the victims in such cases within the limits of their capacity. But the Constitution doesn't compel them to do so.

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Rupert E. Phillips, CEO

John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

David Shapiro, Managing Editor

Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor

Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors

A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor