Mr. DODD. I was not in Haiti this past weekend as part of an observer group, but as I think most of my colleagues know, I have been there on numerous occasions. In fact, I lived on the border of that country for 2 1/2 years and have a more than passing interest in the awareness of Haiti .

As I have listened this afternoon to several speeches now made about the events in Haiti over the past several days, I find it stunning in many ways. My colleagues, by their remarks, almost imply that the situation in Haiti would have been preferable had there not been an election or had there not been the decision by the administration in previous months to go back to intercede, along with the support of the international community, to try to restore the democratically elected government of that country.

This was not a perfect election in Haiti . There were serious problems. But, remember, this is a country that can count free elections on one hand--fewer fingers in fact--that they have had over the years. The last free one was 4 or 5 years ago when President Aristide was elected. And then we watched that election be ripped from the people of that country through a coup.

President Clinton, the administration, took the courageous decision to restore President Aristide to power in that country. And I recall back in those days during that debate the almost apparent disappointment that there was not more of a tragedy. We did not lose a single soldier in that effort. In fact, the President deserves great commendation, mind you, for the courage he showed in making an unpopular move. It was not popular at the time. Today, interestingly, the majority of people in this country think the President did the right thing.

Now, over the weekend, they had an election. It is a poor country with a tremendous level of illiteracy and staggering economic problems. So it did not look like a perfect election in this country. But it is an effort of poor people to get out and freely choose its leadership, literally hundreds and hundreds of candidates for local office and national office in that country. And rather than castigate and denounce the effort for the shortcomings that certainly were obvious and apparent, why are we not applauding the fact that this country was trying to embrace democracy and do so in a noble way?

Granted they had problems with ballot boxes and people abused the process. Votes were not counted. There were shortcomings, to put it mildly, in the process. All of that I accept. But instead of picking this process apart, there ought to be at least some underlying statements that indicate that we support this effort. We hope it is not just a one-time effort, but that in coming months and years we will see democracy take hold in this poor, little country to our south.

And so I have been disappointed. It is just a continuum of almost the disappointment people expressed over the last year over the President's decision to go in and restore President Aristide, which was a success. It seems to be a continuation of that. I am disappointed by these remarks. This is working. It is not perfect. We have watched what happened in other countries, including what we are watching in the former Soviet Union, the New Independent Republics. Countries that are struggling to find their democratic feet do not do so instantaneously. It takes time.

So I commend President Aristide and commend the people of Haiti for the courageous attempt to have a free and fair election. I am terribly disappointed it did not meet our high standards of a perfect election. But rather than spend our time denouncing the imperfections, we ought to take a moment out and commend these people. Some people walked literally miles and miles to get to a polling place in order to exercise their rights. Most of them are illiterate, cannot read or write. They have to vote by looking at colors or symbols on a ballot in order to choose their party or candidates. And to watch people get out with, I think, the returns somewhere around 60 or 70 percent--in our elections in 1974 we had 38 percent that turned out to vote.