15810: Benodin: Just Say No: How the OAS's General Assembly Can Stop the Descent into Dictatorship (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Robert Benodin <r.benodin@worldnet.att.net>

Just Say No: How the OAS's General Assembly Can Stop the Descent into
Dictatorship
Haiti Democracy Project, 2003-06-09
Haiti Democracy Project web page item #742 (http://www.haitipolicy.org)
As the Organization of American States convenes its General Assembly in
Santiago, Chile the situation in Haiti is high on their agenda.  The
hemispheric organization’s most recent efforts to jump-start a solution to
the endemic political crisis there by increasing pressure on the President
Aristide and his Lavalas regime to undertake previously agreed-upon,
concrete actions to improve the security climate and increase public
confidence in the prospects for free-and-fair elections have come to naught.
Two more difficult months have passed as the OAS’s Permanent Council chose
to defer action in response to the regime’s continued intransigence until
the Santiago meeting.

On the eve of that meeting, the Haiti Democracy Project is compelled to
reprise its April 2 recommendations to the Permanent Council calling for a
new approach to the problem, and call upon the General Assembly to act
definitively and appropriately in this matter.  If anything, the thrust of
these recommendations is of even greater urgency and relevance today, since
Aristide’s Lavalas party has now clearly announced its intention to amend
Haiti’s 1987 Constitution, vitiating a number of key provisions expressly
designed to prevent the resurgence of presidential primacy and authoritarian
rule.

1.  The General Assembly should invoke Article 21 of the Inter-American
Democratic Charter, suspending the Haitian state from “the exercise of its
right to participate in the OAS.

In fact, the precise wording of Article 21 strongly suggests that the
General Assembly once it has determined, in special session, that there has
been an unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order of a member
state, and that diplomatic initiatives have failed must take this step
(“…the special session shall take the decision). HDP submits that both of
these pre-conditions have, at this point, been met; and that this has
already been duly documented and reported upon by various instances of the
OAS itself, including the Special Mission for Strengthening Democracy in
Haiti, the Commission of Inquiry that investigated the events of December
17, 2001, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In the matter of an unconstitutional interruption of democratic order,
Article 3 of the Charter defines “the essential elements of representative
democracy” as including, inter alia, respect for human rights and
fundamental freedoms, access to and exercise of power in accordance with the
rule of law, and the separation of powers and independence of the branches
of government.  Reports issued by the OAS’s own organs, cited immediately
above, catalogue numerous instances in which the state, through its formal
and informal agents, has sponsored actions that have systematically impaired
each of these three essential elements of democratic order.  These
state-sponsored actions also constitute material breaches of substantial
portions of Titles III, V and XI of the Haitian Constitution, among others.

As to the determination that diplomatic initiatives, including good offices,
have failed “to foster the restoration of democracy, as the Charter puts it,
the public record of almost three years of frustrated efforts speaks for
itself.  Here again, it is the OAS’s own reporting including most notably
the Secretary Generals most recent report to the Permanent Council in this
matter, dated May 20, 2003 (CP/doc. 3750/03)—that unequivocally documents
this failure in considerable detail, rather than the observations or
criticisms of the crisis protagonists or third parties to the process, which
might be more readily dismissed.

It is also of note that those who have publicly objected to this
recommendation since it was initially put forward by the HDP have done so
not on substantive grounds—not, that is, because they take issue with the
indisputable facts of the case—but because the presumed impact of such an
action would be to “isolate” Haiti by prompting the disengagement of the
OAS.  In effect, they argue, Haiti and her people would be abandoned to
whatever fate the ruling party has in store for them.  Yet Article 21 is
perfectly clear on this point as well, defining the continuing obligations
of both the affected member state and the hemispheric body in its final
provisions:

  The suspended state shall continue to fulfil its obligations to the
Organization, in particular its human rights obligations.

Notwithstanding the suspension of the member state, the Organization will
maintain diplomatic initiatives to restore democracy in that state.

In effect, then, the invocation and application of Article 21 does nothing
more than redefine the nature of the crisis in light of its evolution over
the past three years, reassert its gravity in light of the continued
deterioration of the situation on the ground, and reopen the question of how
best to address it proactively and with an appropriate sense of urgency
given these developments.

Surely the time has come for a new approach to the Haitian dilemma.  Surely
the time has come to acknowledge the determinant role that continues to be
played by the president, his government and his party in the perpetuation
and aggravation of the crisis.  Surely the time has come to rethink the
roles, responsibilities and mutual obligations of every one of the major
parties to this conflict.

Article 21 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter is the most carefully
crafted instrument that the OAS has afforded itself for doing precisely
this.  At the very least, it would appear to be incumbent upon the General
Assembly to give the most careful consideration to its immediate application
in this instance.

2.  Independent of its final disposition with respect to the Inter-American
Democratic Charter, the General Assembly should draft and adopt a new
resolution on Haiti that calls for the expeditious implementation of the
terms of CP/RES. 822 (1331/02) under the aegis of a non-partisan
transitional administration in Haiti, and according to an amended timetable
that will make the organization of free-and-fair national elections both
technically and practically feasible.

Such an administration would be technocratic in nature, non-partisan in
composition and in keeping with the Haitian Constitution functionally
autonomous of the presidency.  It would be charged with addressing the
country’s immediate humanitarian, economic and security crises and leading
the nation to free-and-fair elections within a more reasonable time frame
than that currently ensconced in Resolution 822; perhaps as much as two
years may be required.

Modeled on the OAS-brokered formula that provided the consensual basis for
constituting a new Provisional Electoral Council the Initial Accord to which
all parties agreed almost two years ago any formula for creating such a
transitional government would have to be anchored by a significant measure
of civil society participation, input and oversight.  It would also properly
include political party participation across the board, in keeping with the
admirably balanced approach of the Initial Accord.  (Under similarly
difficult circumstances in 1990, an internationally-backed government and
CEP based on an essentially extra-constitutional political compromise
succeeded in leading the country to its first and arguably most credible
post-Duvalierist national elections, those that brought Aristide to his
first presidency on February 7, 1991.)

A transitional administration, overseen by a consensus-based council of some
sort to ensure the advise-and-consent and watchdog roles normally played by
a parliament, and supported technically by foreign donors, would immediately
enhance the prospects of a normalization of Haiti’s relationships with the
international financial institutions, based on an IMF staff-monitored
lending agreement and pursuant to a clearance of Haiti’s current arrears to
the World Bank and the IDB.  Bilateral assistance would also likely be
resumed at levels that would make it possible to address the country’s most
pressing immediate needs effectively and adequately prepare the nation for
elections.

Furthermore, a call for the formation of a transitional administration to
shepherd the country through the next national elections neither prejudges
the outcome of Aristide’s presidency, nor the future of the Lavalas party.
If he is willing to accede to the 1987 Constitution’s strict limits on
presidential prerogatives and to cede his constitutionally mandated role in
forming a government as part of an historic political compromise he would be
free to cohabit with a transitional administration in which his party
participates alongside its peers in the opposition, to preside over the
commemoration of Haiti’s bicentennial, and to serve out his full mandate.
Should he prove to be incapable or unwilling to do so, on the other hand,
his continued role in blocking a resolution to the crisis he played so great
a part in engendering would likely prompt a more rigorous scrutiny of his
suitability for office by both national and international players.

In the final analysis, President Aristide today finds himself caught in a
device of his own making, hoist upon his own proverbial petard.  Given his
particular style of personalized governance, it may well be unreasonable for
anyone to expect that he be either willing or capable of actually
dismantling the formal and informal apparatuses that he has constructed to
consolidate and maintain his power.  If the thinly veiled threats implicit
in the declarations of popular organization leaders like Amyot Métayer, René
Civil and Paul Raymond are any guide, the president has considerably more to
lose at their hands than in any action that the OAS or any single nation,
acting bilaterally, may ultimately be forced to take against him.

A transitional administration, enjoying a full measure of material and moral
support from the international community particularly in matters of public
safety and security resolves this conundrum for both the president himself
and all those who would like to see the political climate in Haiti become
one that is palpably more propitious for the practice of representative
democracy.  The General Assembly’s resolve in this connection, then, is best
expressed in the passage of a resolution in keeping with this specific
recommendation.
_______________

The time has come, then, to just say no.  No to the continued nullification
of Haiti’s constitutional guarantees by the state and its agents.  No to the
planned amendment of the Constitution to restore and perpetuate one-man,
one-party rule.  No, finally, to maintaining the no-longer-terribly-useful
fiction that a Lavalas-dominated government can or will implement the
changes required to restore even a modicum of security and public confidence
to Haiti.

But let us trust, too, that the General Assembly is finally ready to say yes
as well.  Yes to the urgency of making some very difficult decisions.  Yes
to the awesome responsibility of temporarily impairing the sovereignty of a
state in the name of its people.  Yes to the daunting challenge of
accompanying and assisting that people as it seeks to emerge from this
debilitating national crisis and to reapply itself to the construction of a
democratic polity and a developing nation.