Hti: Plus ça change...

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- The streets are choking with garbage. There hasn't been electricity for weeks, and justice remains at the mercy of corrupt judges and armed rebels.

That's what a $100 million budget deficit, frozen foreign aid and virtually no local government infrastructure has led to as Haiti's interim government struggles to provide even the most basic of services.

''Right now, they don't have the key to restart the car,'' said Jean-Marie Vorbe, a Haitian in the energy and road construction business. ``The battery is down, the tires are flat and it's all out of gas.''

The jalopy is Haiti, a grindingly poor country of nearly eight million people where months of upheaval and weeks of deadly political violence led to the Feb. 29 departure of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The driver is an interim government whose members, including several Haitian Americans, are moving so slowly that some here joke that Prime Minister Gerard Latortue may be trying to live up to his name -- ''the turtle'' in French.

''We didn't think they would perform a miracle, but we did think it would move much faster,'' said Paul Denis, a former opposition senator with the Organization of People in the Struggle.

Indeed, government promises to resolve the garbage and electricity problems have gone unfulfilled despite attempts early on. Security also remains a problem, despite scattered police checkpoints that have been largely ineffective in disarming the rebels or Aristide supporters.