A year after the return of President Jean Bertrand Aristide, Haiti is inexorably becoming Haiti again, a place of unreasonable expectations, frantic maneuvering, stagnation on the ground. So the crowds, which have no real experience with constitutions and democracy, ask why Titid can't just go on as President to make up for the period when he was in exile. PNS writer Herbert Gold is the author of "Best Nightmare on Earth: A Life in Haiti."

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Today President Jean Bertrand Aristide can proudly, freely, democratically flush his toilet in the National Palace. When the U.S.-led intervention restored legitimate government a year ago, nothing worked in Haiti -- not the economy, not the justice system, not even the plumbing. The only functioning entities were the Army and the Army-linked smugglers.

Now, one year after Aristide's return, the level of political murder has dipped below Latin American standards. The Army has been dissolved and a cleaner police force is being trained. Justice and electoral commissions have begun to contend with traditional Haitian inertia. Even the moneyed and land-holding elite, the Bon Macoutes, which supported the coup, now rent their houses to the international teams trying to undo the damage done by the coup. In the grand tradition, the MRE's -- the Morally Repugnant Elite -- gets its cut, no matter what.

Only an economy is lacking. At the Hotel Oloffson, international bankers, international do-gooders, international ecologists, and intergalactic religious salvationists wander disconsolately on the verandah, looking for someone to save. But having solved the problem of the Palais National john, the rest of the government is still straining to function. Private enterprise is tainted by its history of corruption. A delegate from a tree-planting sect laments that he has all these trees just dying to grow on the hillsides, but no one had told him the trees would need armed guards.

Haiti, says a Creole proverb, is crumpled in God's fist. This describes the geography; it also describes the problems of life among a people sorely squeezed.

"We're doing this for religion," announce the international improvementologists, or to save the environment, or to make up for a history of racism, or to jumpstart the economy, or maybe just -- narrow-eyed realism -- to keep the refugees from washing up on Florida's beaches.

Their Haitian colleagues answer with long helpful speeches of welcome, in charming French or lilting English, which boil down to one word: "Whatever." Whatever you say. Whatever you want. Whatever brings the money in and keeps the spigot open.

In the meantime, the exhausted land lies there in the tropical heat, gasping for breath. A United Nations fish-farming project once grew carp until the Israeli fishing expert and the UN money went away, then grew frogs. Today it grows dried mud.

Brave talk is the classic Haitian remedy for starvation, anarchy, oppression. When General Prosper Avril, Temporary Permanent Maximum Boss, returned home from a money-raising tour of Taiwan accompanied by the girlfriends and wives of anyone who might try funny business during his absence, bands greeted him at the airport, ecstatic processions, oaths of loyalty, families in silks, satins, and sidearms. Nevertheless, he was soon kicked into the Crying Suite of Deposed Haitian Presidents in the Dominican Hilton Hotel.

General Cedras lasted longer, a philosopher who murmured that in Haiti life is more terrible than death. Jimmy Carter invited him to teach Sunday School in Atlanta. When he left, the toilets were blockaded (life is more terrible than death).

Even Baby Doc, a few days before he fled in panic with his bride -- the lovely nicotine-stained Michelle who air-conditioned the Palais National so her girlfriends could wear their new fur coats in comfort -- even Baby Doc said, "I'm strong as a monkey's tail." (Some people thought he meant strong-smelling.)

President Aristide, not an oppressor, not corrupt, and genuinely the popular choice, is nevertheless following a tradition of using words and symbols in place of bread, housing, water, health and jobs. He drove his car himself to the polls in the recent elections because voting is "the wheel of the machine of democracy." Titid, as he is known to his followers, has his slim hands firmly on the wheel. But his modest and touching pledge to lift Haitians from misery to poverty is yet to be fulfilled.

Aristide also promised his foreign supporters that he would follow the Haitian Constitution -- the Republic's 21st irrevocable constitution -- and step down after elections this December. Perhaps he really hoped to make his mark and retreat to a life of monastic contemplation, homily writing, with an occasional fiery broadcast.

It isn't happening. There is no logical successor. He has quarreled with Evans Paul, the former mayor of Port-au-Prince, who went into hiding for his support of Aristide during the coup. Haiti is inexorably becoming Haiti again, a place of unreasonable expectations, frantic maneuvering, stagnation on the ground. So the crowds, which have no real experience with constitutions and democracy, ask why Titid can't just go on as President to make up for the period when he was in exile.

People see the alternatives as either Aristide with his priestly aura or the return to chaos and oppression. "Liberte, oui," cried a taptap driver. "Mais ca...ca...ca c'est (searching for the proper insult)...democracie!"

Perhaps Haiti's traditional inventiveness will come up with a Creole version of a democratic-constitutional-priestly monarchy, Aristide reigning on high while he offers an agreeable surrogate to serve as the next President. It's not a perfect solution, but even such better-established societies as that of England have found that paradoxical forms of government can be made to limp along, plumbing a-flow.