Cambridge, Massachusetts - Radical leftist Aristide. Ah, yes. He founded and presides as leader-for-life of Family Lavalas political party. Most members of his party, which a great many Haitians call the "party of death," are well known drug barons. When party members - no kidding, many of them pederasts - pretend to be discussing politics sex mingles freely in their minds.

The tyrant, Aristide turns to be, kidnaps and burns alive political opponents, and often has many of them raped, tortured, or dispossessed of their assets, both tangible and non-tangible. Even assumed women political opponents often have electric shots administered to their vaginas while being held in detention for years without ever appearing before a judge. And this, in the pursuit of false confessions.

The necklace painting, above, was presented to tyrant Aristide at his Feb. 7, 1991 inauguration as president of the Republic of Haiti.

Tyrant Aristide has committed plenty of other crimes. He, including his political godson, Rene Preval, a man who drinks vodka for breakfast, held a series of largely fraudulent elections, including legislative, last year. For example, Leon Manus, the the Haitian National Provisional Electoral Council president, could have been assassinated, or burn alive like many others, for refusing to publish fictive results for those elections. At his best, he wrote in English to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on December 27, 2000, providing him a detailed explanation of what exactly happened during and after those elections.

"On election night, after the polls closed and the international observers went home, ballots boxes were stolen and replaced with stuff substitute boxes. The replacement boxes were full of ballots in favor of former president Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas (FL). Many members of the police forces betrayed their mission of ensuring the security of the electoral process, participating in fraudulent maneuvers. Overall, the night of the elections was one of fraud, with the goal of ensuring the absolute success of the Fanmi Lavalas party. I was summoned to the national palace, where both President Preval and former President Aristide threatened me with death if I did not publish the manipulated results. I refused to commit such an infamy against the Haitian people, and with the support of the international community, I was taken out of Haiti and into exile in the United States."   

Mr. Manus, then 74, who until a few years ago was a respected Haitian Supreme Court judge, also told Secretary of State Powell: "Subsequent to my departure, Presidents Preval and Aristide published the bogus results, which do not reflect the will of the Haitian people. My deepest concern is that Haiti once again has become a one-party de facto dictatorship."

Mr. Manus' plea for help to Secretary of State Powell is for the latter to be as instrumental as possible in helping Haiti achieves democracy.  

"In the name of my country, I call on you to do all you can to help Haitians organize free and fair local, legislative, and presidential elections as soon as possible and with the participation of the whole of our democratic society. Because you understand the meaning of honor, decency, and democracy, I am confident you will hear the call of the Haitian people. We want peace and democracy. The Haitian people deserve no less," he said as he was about to end his letter.   

Mr. Manus ended his letter by thanking Secretary of State Powell for his consideration of the Haitian political problem. He also wished him all of the best for the year 2001 and beyond, and that he achieves "great success as the Secretary of State of the new administration."  

But committing what I may call "another grand fraud worthy of Stalin, worthy of Castro" continued to be only what radical leftist Aristide and the unarticulated Preval believed in. For instance, after a Nov. 26th presidential election that was so clumsily fraudulent that the democratic opposition, better known as the Convergence Democratique, and the international community refused to accept the results published for, on Feb. 7th he declared himself president of the Republic of Haiti. It is possible after consolidating further the dictatorship of the proletariat, which he first instituted, in 1991, only to be briefly interrupted months later, he will coronate himself emperor.  

As if those were not enough, last week radical leftist Aristide told the opposition, which has refused to recognize him as president, including the so clumsily fraudulent elected members of Congress and mayors, "the business of politics is conducted in the Haitian national palace, not at the Hotel el Rancho," where he was supposed to participate in a meeting called by the opposition, in an effort to find a solution to the long Haitian political crisis.  

True, such a statement resonates that of Marcus Tullius Cicero - not only was he a lawyer but ferocious dictator, philosopher, rhetorician, brilliant orator and connoisseur of art, and above all a writer: one who relied upon the art of writing as both self-advertisement and self-consolation - who, in 66 B.C., declared: "The business of politics is conducted in the cesspits of Rome, not Plato's perfect state."           

In another speech, entitled: Pro Lege Manila, and this, according to a book entitled: Cicero: A Turbulent Life, by John Murray, to be published by Random House in June 2002, the Roman emperor declared: "Now since and authority in me so much should be, how much you with honors conferring to be you wished, and to the doing of faculties so much, how much to vigilant men out of the courts quite daily use of speaking is able to bring."  

After reading Pro Legre Manila, but with a critical eye, and capturing the essence of it, the reader would certainly acknowledge that the excerpt selected from Cicero's speech is a rendering of part of an exemplary passage by the finest sharper of Latin prose.  

In fact, the contents of Pro Legre Manila also reflect, in part, many of other radical leftist Aristide's speeches, who recently compared himself to Cicero when he threatened members of the democratic opposition with arrest and death.

But, what exactly was radical leftist Aristide saying? You my bandits I urge you all to burn my political opponents alive, but first put used car tires around their necks and then pour gasoline all over their bodies. Besides that, he said the odor that resulted from the burning of their bodies smelled good.   

Not long ago, in ordering his bandits, including Ronald Camille, whose surname has long been changed, though unofficially so, to Cadaver, in tribute for killing an innumerable number of political opponents, to burn to the ground a grade school, where more than 200 children were attending classes, one may conclude radical leftist Aristide prides himself on being the first ever Black Cicero, the first ever Caribbean Cicero.   

It was the prompt intervention of the U.S. Ambassador in Haiti that prevented bandits, radical leftist Aristide's instruments of terror, from having the school consumed by flames.

The grade school was owned by Gerard Gourgue, a prominent attorney and former law professor, who was installed on Feb. 7th as an alternative president by the opposition.   

Oh, one other thing: radical leftist Aristide now has more of the Haitian taxpayers' moneys - like many of his partners in crimes, by fraudulent means.   

The allege sale of his vast and sumptuous residence in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabare - where the main road is so much crime infested and an exorbitant number of citizens are killed there on a daily basis as flies - to the state of Haiti last week at the supposedly inflated cost of U.S.$12 million clearly suggests that his days as a de facto president, as a tyrannical president are numbered.   

There are reasons to assume so. So, too, there are reasons for him to be ultracautious. Wouldn't you ... if you were him? A growing number of Haitians harbor hates of the name Aristide because of the abject poverty he has long caused them to endure. They also harbor hates of the name Aristide because he has committed a multitude of other crimes, as first listed above. More importantly so, he has presided over the collapse of the Republic of Haiti. As a result, many no longer consider it as a country, rather a place that happens to figure on the world map by mistake.  

After all, it is not hard at all to borrow from one of the great works of Voltaire in which he said: "History is a tableau of crimes" to sum-up radical leftist Aristide and his innumerable number of crimes. Certainly Aristide is a "tableau of crimes."  

Are there signs that his last sentences may be curt instructions, as were those of Cicero - the ferocious Roman dictator he so admires and who a few years before his tragical end was blasted with sadness after the death of his daughter Tullia - to his assassin?  "Don't make a mess in decapitating me," he told his killer. 

A Radical leftist Aristide's turbulent life, too? Quite so: as an advocate of democracy and human rights I hope it doesn't end in a similar tragical fashion.

Yves A. Isidor teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and is spokesperson for We Haitians United We Stand For Democracy, a Cambridge, MA non-partisan political pressure group. Through his firm, Cambridge Financial Corp, he often serves in the capacity of economic adviser to foreign governments, including multinational corporations.                                                                                                                                                                                     .