12657: Re: Haiti's immutable laws (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Felix Edouard <loveayiti@hotmail.com>

Aug. 08, 2002
Miami Herald


DON BOHNING
Haiti's immutable laws

In the course of more than three decades covering Haiti, three informal
rules of thumb helped keep things in perspective:

• Nothing logical ever happens.

• Hope for the best but expect the worst.

• Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see.

Given the continuing downward spiral that began in earnest with the flawed
May 2000 legislative elections and accelerated by recent events, a fourth
rule might be added:

• When you think that things can't get any worse, they often do.

That's increasingly apparent as the tragic Caribbean country of eight
million people spins dangerously toward total anarchy. The precariousness of
the situation was both dramatized and fueled last week by a massive
jailbreak in Gonaives, a longtime hotbed of insurrection against existing
governments.

The central figures emerging from the jailbreak were a couple of well-known
thugs -- Jean Tatoune and Amiot Metayer -- at odds with each other until
Friday when a stolen tractor crashed through the prison walls to free them
along with 157 other prisoners.


Tatoune was serving a life sentence for involvement in a 1994 massacre while
the country was under military rule. Metayer, leader of a so-called Popular
Organization (subsidized gang) supporting President Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
was jailed July 2 -- under pressure from the Organization of American States
-- for his role in retaliating against Aristide opponents after a Dec. 17
attack on the National Palace.

Now the two have joined forces in calling for Aristide's ouster -- with
police reluctant to move against them and the situation still unresolved --
accentuating again Haiti's continuing social, economic and political
deterioration.

Two years of efforts by the OAS -- including 21 visits to the country by OAS
Assistant Secretary General Luigi Einaudi -- to negotiate a solution to the
political crisis provoked by the disputed May 2000 elections, are dead in
the water, although Einaudi says that he hasn't yet given up.

The OAS mediation effort, as so many things before it that could have
benefited the country, is hung up by that destructive Haitian political
trait: winner-takes-all with no grounds for compromise.

This time much of the blame is attributed to the Democratic Convergence, a
coalition of opposition political leaders with virtually no popular
following, which again injected the question of Aristide's presidency into
the mix after a formula for agreement apparently had been within reach.

Aristide remains Haiti's most popular figure, but the breadth and depth of
that popularity are increasingly coming into question. A large amount of his
influential domestic and foreign support -- those who lobbied hard for his
1994 return on the wings of a U.S.-led invasion -- has abandoned him.

Many of the government's recent efforts have been aimed at release of some
$500 million in international aid held up as a result of the ongoing
political standoff. An acrimonious de- bate last week on a resolution before
the OAS Permanent Council asking for release of the aid ended without a
vote. Meanwhile, in Haiti lawlessness is rampant, with security a concern
for virtually all Haitians, who have no confidence in the country's police.

A report released last month by a three-member, OAS-mandated commission
investigating the Dec. 17 palace attack, noted: ''Not only is the [police]
force undermanned and under-equipped but also -- lacks the motivation and
determination to discharge its duties in a situation of crisis. To these
must be added a lack of direction and control and excessive political
interference'' in its management. The Dec. 17 attack, it said, ``could not
have taken place without the complicity of some police officers from
different units.''

NO COUP ATTEMPT

The commission said that it also found no evidence that the Dec. 17 palace
attack was a coup attempt against Aristide. ''The commission,'' added the
report, ``was particularly struck by the weakness of governance in Haiti.
There seems to be little conformity with the rule of law, no respect for an
independent judiciary, and little regard for a competent law-enforcement
system.''

Given the present circumstances, it's difficult to see how the Aristide
government can survive the more than three years remaining on his five-year
presidential term. And the tragedy is that there is no viable and peaceful
alternative in sight other than a negotiated settlement to the political
standoff, a prospect that looks more distant than ever.

When it seems that things can't get worse, they often do.

Don Bohning, now retired, was a longtime Latin America editor for The
Herald.




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