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.

A group of New Yorkers meet in a spacious apartment off Central Park West to discuss the welfare of Paulus Kenop, an Indonesian arrested for raising a separatist flag outside a government building in his country. None of the thirteen people present has ever met Kenop and probably never will. None shares his political beliefs, yet all are willing to do their best to free him.

These educated, affluent professionals form one of Amnesty International's most effective New York "adoption groups"–Group 26. They are all volunteers who meet once a month to work on particular cases involving political prisoners.

What do machine tools, motorcycles, and mushrooms have in common? All are industries that, threatened by foreign competition, have recently applied to Washington for import protection. And American manufacturers are not alone. Industries across the globe are pressing their governments to restrict purchases from abroad as a way of saving jobs at home. The story is an old one; When times are bad, cut imports; export unemployment instead.

That times are bad is obvious. Since the first oil shock a decade ago, global economic growth has slowed to a snail's pace. Not even the erstwhile “miracle” economies of Japan and Germany have been able to escape the harsh grip of recession. In the United States, one worker in ten is out of a job. In the industrial world as a whole, 30 million people are now looking for work.

The government of the Philippines finds itself in the midst of a major political crisis, brought on by long-standing popular discontent and increasing economic difficulties. The rising tide of disaffection with the Marcos regime over suspicions of its complicity in the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino has not yet reached its crest. The present situation is fraught with danger and opportunity.

In early March of last year I received an invitation to meet with the leaders of the Salvadoran guerrillas in Managua, Nicaragua. I was told that they had already translated and discussed the testimony on Central America I had prepared for a congressional subcommittee the previous September and had found it "educational." Now they wanted a "broad exchange of views" and also to transmit a "message" to the State Department before the Salvadoran elections scheduled for March 28.

In the Horn of Africa the stubborn politics of military regimes have caused as many as 750,000 people to seek sanctuary across international frontiers. They will remain in refugee camps until the various antagonists decide to compromise what they term “unnegotiable” national interests, the centerpiece of the tale is Ethiopia, which, until the revolution of 1974, worked to create a nation out of an empire by transforming its many peoples into a typical Christian peasantry, thereby alienating the Muslims and pastoralists of the south, east, and north. Under Haile Selassie it also brought great wealth to a tiny oligarchy while impoverishing the masses, a process spurred during the ’50s and ’60s as the country was being integrated in the world economy.