Most scholars and politicians agree that exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide is the country's only legitimate leader. However, what he will do if he returns to Haiti is anybody's guess.

Aristide has not presented a clear vision of Haiti's future. But there's probably no way around it -- he must be part of the equation to restore democracy.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Miami Lakes, predicts intervention within 30 days.

"Aristide is a prerequisite to have a potential to bring Haiti back to normalcy," he said.

Removing Haiti's military would be the easy part. Then an international peacekeeping force could enter Haiti, and the United States would lead in helping the desperately poor country get back on its feet. But if U.S. soldiers remain for years, there could be growing resentment.

"A minority of Haitians are fiercely opposed to any U.S. occupation, and the question is how widespread are they going to make that feeling," said retired Air Force Col. Bob Gaskin of Business Executives for National Security, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

Key Latin American and Caribbean countries expressed opposition last week to an invasion of Haiti, saying diplomacy and sanctions need more time to work. But on Sunday the United States won the approval of the U.N. Security Council for using "all necessary means" to restore democracy in Haiti. The language paves the way for a multinational military force.

15,000 TROOPS

Aristide won Haiti's first free elections by a landslide vote in 1990; his five-year term expires Feb. 7, 1996. He was ousted by the junta nearly three years ago.

Three things must happen, Graham said, for Aristide's return to succeed.

First, U.N. peacekeepers must secure Haiti.

Next comes political reform, beginning with separation of police from the military.

Then will come basic necessities -- new roads and bridges, telephone service, medical care and food -- and economic improvement, including the resurgence of private industry.

The United States doesn't plan to be an occupying force after Haiti's military is removed, Graham said. A U.N. peacekeeping force would step in after bullets stop flying.

The United States has taken the lead against Haiti since the overthrow of Aristide nearly three years ago. Soon after the coup, America and other countries began clamping down on the Caribbean country.

A worldwide trade and oil embargo imposed to force the military to step down has destroyed Haiti's economy but hasn't budged the leaders. It will take up to 15 years to revitalize the country, Preeg said.

The issue becomes whether Aristide's supporters and the country's military-backed elite can reconcile peacefully and begin rebuilding.

Preeg fears they will stay at each other's throats. He supports a government of reconciliation before Aristide returns and estimates one-third of Haitians are opposed to Aristide.

"It's hard to see them working with Aristide after all this," Preeg said.

There would be light casualties with the invasion, he predicted, but as time goes by, more Haitians would be killed. Aristide's supporters could go back to burning buildings and necklacing -- igniting a gasoline-soaked tire around someone's head and burning the victim alive.

Keeping peace

"Clearly, Aristide will be a target from day one," he said. "He is not the kind of person to reach out and reconcile."

After becoming president, instead of broadening his base in Parliament, Aristide -- a political neophyte -- chose nonpoliticians for important posts. Many see him as a communist revolutionary.

Haiti's democracy differs from America's because Aristide ran as an outsider whose revolutionary program threatened the country's elite, said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, another Washington, D.C., think tank.

Gaskin predicts an invasion could spawn a resistance movement within Haiti, with possible support from Cuba.

Haiti has an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 young men who could be recruited to challenge the U.S. military. There also are 50,000 to 75,000 weapons stockpiled in Haiti, Gaskin said.

"Haiti has a real scary history of young men being politically motivated when taken over," he said. "This isn't going to be a benign event. There's going to be a lot of people killed."

It didn't work the last time American forces occupied Haiti -- for 19 years ending in 1934, Gaskin said. Marines were sent in then to protect American residents and property and restore order after a mob lynched an unpopular president.

Within weeks, the United States designated a puppet president and seized Haiti's customs services. Later, Marines seized the main bank, turning it over to the National City Bank of New York.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, then-assistant secretary of state, wrote Haiti's new constitution, formalizing the powers of the occupiers. A nationalist revolt was brutally repressed. The Marines killed up to 13,000 guerrillas and peasants.

The Marines did build roads, sewers and hospitals and balanced the budget. But their arrogance and unabashed racism left the elite humiliated and hostile.

Peasants forced to labor to rebuild the country felt the same way. Faced with such widespread resentment, the Marines went home.

This time, the United States must make sure Haitians have a good feeling about what's going on once the fighting stops, Gaskin said. Better yet, he said, just leave Haiti alone to solve its own problems.

"The whole idea of us invading Haiti and installing a leader who we like is ridiculous," Gaskin said. "Still, it's inevitable. Clinton's got to do it. He's got himself in a corner."

Gaskin said Clinton doesn't have the support of the U.S. military, whose worst nightmare is to be stuck in Haiti without a strategy while soldiers are dying. The military would have its hands tied with no ability to leave, Gaskin said.

"In the military, you can't cut and run like politicians can," he said. "The military is afraid to intervene in these small little wars because it can turn into another Vietnam."

DO IT FAST

"It's a mistake for the U.S. to take a high-profile role with Haiti, and this is precisely the role they are formulating," Birns said. "The Clinton administration is working to get Aristide's political legitimacy back in Haiti, not his political views.

"Washington is on the eve of making a tragic mistake."

Those who have struggled for political freedom here for decades fear it might disappear before it's fully realized.

Many Haitians fear the exercise in democracy will be skewed to favor President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's party, known as the Lavalas Political Organization.

They're probably right.

Despite half a billion dollars of aid this year, Haiti remains a miserable place, and the joy accompanying Aristide's return is gone. He has done little to curb the chaos in government or reorganize the economy.

Haiti can't seem to rise above its political cesspool to help its people live like human beings. And an international embargo during the Haitian military's three-year reign of terror has crippled the country almost beyond repair.

As many as 4,000 civilians were killed before a U.S.-led multinational force disarmed and disbanded the Haitian army and brought Aristide back in October 1994.

This election bears none of the fervor and promise of Haiti's first democratic election in 1990. Aristide is constitutionally prohibited from running again until 2000, and the extreme enthusiasm for him has not passed to his protege and heir apparent, former prime minister Rene Preval.

Aristide's immense popularity has, in fact, hindered Haiti's slow move toward democracy because the election isn't openly contested. Political opponents resent the way the election is being conducted and probably won't work with Preval to improve conditions.

Already, an influential minority resistant to Aristide's governance has thwarted hopes for a national reconciliation and economic reform. Such polarization leaves Haiti politically unstable. That means more refugees, one of Florida's greatest fears. Already the tide has surged; last month the U.S. Coast Guard rescued 1,100 Haitians at sea.

Too, a weakened Haiti deters potential investors. Further instability could ensnare the U.S.-led peacekeeping force of 6,000 troops.

There's the risk of the return of the Tonton Macoutes, the band of thugs created by dictator Francois Duvalier that terrorized Haitians on behalf of the traditional elite and the military. Residual support for the Macoutes and other violent dissenters leads some to believe Haiti's democracy won't last, that the watchful minority will regain control after Aristide's successor takes office Feb. 7 and the U.N. peacekeepers leave, possibly soon afterward.

In 1990 there were contesting parties and an acceptable electoral council. This year there is neither, and most of the biggest political parties have boycotted the election, for which the international community -- including the United States -- is paying the $7.9 million cost.

The parties accuse the electoral council of having rigged the June legislative election in Lavalas' favor.

"The presidential election is more a consolidation of the radical-left Aristide following than a democratic election," said Ernest Preeg, a former U.S. ambassador to Haiti.

Of the 14 presidential candidates, Preval has only two serious challengers. They are socialist Victor Benoit, leader of the National Congress of Democratic Movements, and Leon Jeune, a former chief of Haiti's new civilian police.

Preval is considered somewhat militant and is closely associated with the violence that occurred shortly before the September 1991 military coup.

"There's always the risk to return to dictatorship, even with a popular leader," Benoit said. "We want democracy, but we are not into democracy."

Even elections aren't the cure-all. Education is. So are businesses creating jobs and building confidence in people so desperately poor that thousands don't know whether they will eat for the day.

Haitians need to be informed; they need not to cling desperately to autocratic leaders. Institutions must be in place for the wheels of democracy to grind forward, but that's proceeding achingly slowly, if at all.

Aristide says his country is progressing. "We don't have this army, so we have weapons to protect life instead of having weapons killing people as it was last year," he said. "We have an economy which is sick, but at the same time it is a peaceful climate with political stability."

But beyond the white-columned grandeur and wrought-iron fencing of the president's palace are despair and chaos. More than half of the 7 million working-age people are unemployed or work only a few days a month.

To rise from its economic ruins, Haiti needs energetic, privately run industries that could create jobs and pay taxes to help Haiti address some of its institutional problems.

But many Haitians distrust privatization and the government.

"This place is hell. I don't have any faith in Haiti," said a 23-year-old Port-au-Prince man.

He and millions of other Haitians want to succeed but don't have the resources to do it. They fill the streets of Port-au-Prince by dawn to earn a meal by shining shoes and selling vegetables. School-age girls earn a few cents to carry 5-gallon jugs of water on their heads. Boys dart from colorful buildings to wipe cars stopped in traffic for maybe a few coins.

This is all they know.

Surviving.

They know nothing about how government works and its mission, said Smarck Michel, who resigned in October as Haiti's prime minister, under fire for a sweeping plan to sell off state-run enterprises.

"We need the understanding of what government is about, what parliament is about," Michel said.

That knowledge, however, is just an abstraction in many parts of Haiti.

Along the shores of a tidal basin in northern Cap Haitien live up to 30,000 of Haiti's poorest of the poor. The murky, malodorous water meanders between tiny houses amid refuse and hogs.

A humanitarian worker estimates that 50 people die weekly of typhoid.

Nixon Mercedes, 24, lives with his wife and three children in a house he built from corroded aluminum sheets. People defecate in the water behind the home, leaving the foulness to fester.

He looks from his doorway to a crudely made pig pen where the huge animals languish in the refuse.

"When we sleep, the mosquitoes get to us," said Mercedes, whose children are 5 and 3 years and 1 month old. "In the rainy season, every day when I get out of bed, I have to cover my nose because it's too much smell."

The children often have fevers, diarrhea and malaria.

Mercedes worked a long time ago but now relies on friends to give him a little money so he can buy breadfruit and avocados for 20 to 40 cents apiece. Occasionally they eat rice and beans.

This day there is no money, and at dusk his emaciated family waits outside for a meal that will not come. They stare blankly.

The presidential election isn't on their minds.