If all goes according to the latest plan, “free and honest” municipal elections will have been held in Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince on August 14, capping a three-phase process that began in the provinces six months ago. Can a quarter-century-old dictatorship hold “free” elections? What are the advantages of staggered balloting in a country the size of Maryland and with a mere five million inhabitants?

Plans for any type of election in a poverty-stricken, politically repressed island nation ruled by a “president for- life” are subject to skepticism. Yet an analysis of the “elections” may indicate something of the mood of Haiti's citizens and also reveal the nature of a regime that claims to be a “bulwark against communism” in the Caribbean and Central America.

On April 22, 1982, Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc“) Duvalier was commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Duvalierist rule and wishing his subjects many more years of the same, when he dropped a bombshell.