16042: Marina: Road to Democracy in Haiti Hits an Impasse (LA Times) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Marina <marinawus@yahoo.com>

http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-haiti26jun26,0,328307.story

THE WORLD

Road to Democracy in Haiti Hits an Impasse
Progress is stymied by a political stalemate and
reduced foreign aid. Critics blame President Aristide
and his chokehold on power.
By Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writer

June 26, 2003

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — It's known to most Haitians as
the American Highway, but Route Neuf might better be
called the Road Not Taken.

Its few miles of pavement are cratered and plagued by
bandits, and the asphalt peters out altogether as the
road evaporates before it reaches Cite Soleil, a slum
where tens of thousands of people live in squalor.

Construction of what was supposed to be a vital modern
link began after Washington's 1994 military
intervention and ended two years later along with
other efforts to build democracy in this, the poorest
nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Route Neuf, or New Road in Creole, has become a symbol
of the abandoned U.S. effort to wrest Haiti from 200
years of despotism and dashed expectations.

"I'm not going to sit here and say that we didn't make
mistakes," said U.S. Ambassador Brian Dean Curran, a
Clinton appointee who will be replaced next month.
"But part of it is that Haiti is a very difficult
place to understand. Not everything flowed naturally
from that restoration of constitutional democracy."

Paralyzed by political stalemate and reduced foreign
aid, Haiti has fallen even further behind its Latin
American neighbors in the eight years since exiled
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was reinstalled with
U.S. help. Per capita income has been halved.
Malnutrition afflicts two-thirds of the 8.3 million
people, of whom 55% are illiterate. The national
currency, the gourde, has lost half its value and
foreign investment has disappeared, even with a labor
force eager to work for sweatshop wages.

Critics put the blame for Haiti's worsening condition
on Aristide and his chokehold on power. A former
priest, Aristide mobilized the poorest of the poor
against the previous dictatorship, but his current
opponents describe him as Machiavellian and a master
at exploiting Haitian racial and economic resentment.

"The United States will have to come back to Haiti to
get rid of Aristide, because they are the ones who
brought him here," said Maurice Lafortune, head of the
Haitian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "They
thought they were bringing democracy to Haiti, but
they were wrong and they, too, realize that now."

With Washington's diplomatic energies concentrated on
Iraq and the Middle East, Haiti and Latin America in
general have fallen off the U.S. foreign policy map,
complain both the Haitian government and its
opponents. But the increasing number of Haitian
refugees taking to the seas may force a change,
especially as the U.S. elections approach. Haitian
Americans and the Congressional Black Caucus have
accused the Bush administration of racism in its
treatment of asylum-seekers from Haiti, who are
returned without hearings. Cubans, by contrast, are
allowed to stay if they reach U.S. soil.

"Haiti is not a communist country and it's not a
terrorism threat to the United States," said biology
professor Micha Gaillard, an activist with the
opposition movement Democratic Convergence. "Our only
hope is to somehow become a nuisance."

Opposition politicians say they have to do more than
pose a threat of diplomatic annoyance.

"Unless we in Haiti are able to show a certain level
of unity and resolve, this crisis will last quite a
while longer," said Andre Apaid. He is a businessman
from one of the country's most powerful families and a
key supporter of the Civil Society, a coalition of 184
professional, religious and social groups opposed to
Aristide. Referring to the wealthy elite,
intellectuals, the Catholic Church hierarchy, labor
and human rights organizations, he noted that "people
who used to be mad at each other are talking now."

Such advocates saw a glimmer of renewed U.S. interest
in Haiti this month when Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell, meeting with counterparts from the
Organization of American States at a summit in Chile
called on Aristide to clear the way for elections.

Powell gave Aristide until Sept. 30 to clean up the
security forces so that opposition parties can
campaign without fear of the chimeres, the armed gangs
who take their name from mythical fire-breathing
monsters and who terrorize those seen as a threat to
Aristide's rule. Many of the thugs are holdovers from
the Tontons Macoutes, the terror squad that helped
keep the Duvalier dictatorship in power for 29 years
before Aristide.

No one expects a vote even as soon as next year.
Aristide's Lavalas Family Party activists blame the
opposition for holding up new elections with what they
consider exaggerated claims that insecurity prevents
fair campaigning. Lavalas dismissed as wrong, or
irrelevant, reports that thugs within the national
police force have beaten opponents, shot into crowds
at rallies and killed independent journalists.

"The Americans have their own political agenda and are
trying to weaken the Lavalas party so the opposition
can win," party spokesman Mario Dupuy said, echoing
the anti-American sentiment that pervades the Aristide
leadership. Held in awe by the poor, Aristide has
turned them against the United States by casting the
democratic reforms laid out by Washington and the OAS
as pressure by capitalist poachers for a Haitian
national sellout.

Aristide was never Washington's preference for leading
this country after three decades of dictatorship under
Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son and
successor, Jean-Claude, who has been living in France
since his 1986 ouster. The administration of the first
President Bush openly backed former World Bank
official Marc Bazin in the 1990 election won by
Aristide with a 67% landslide.

Aristide was deposed seven months later by a military
coup backed by some of Haiti's most powerful families,
who were in turn closely aligned with U.S.
intelligence forces. Returning Aristide to power,
armed with an agenda of political reforms, was seen at
the time as the best way to restore constitutional
order and turn back the tide of refugees storming
Florida's shores.

A short-term peacekeeping force followed the U.S.
intervention, as did an aid plan aimed at repairing
the collapsed national infrastructure with projects
like Route Neuf. But the American Highway ran out of
political steam and funding as it approached Cite
Soleil, a slum so densely populated that thousands of
shanties would have to have been destroyed or
residents relocated.

One U.S. official here, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said Aristide contributed to the failure of
the project by dragging his feet on relocations and
presenting the road as an imperialist disruption.

About the time the half- finished highway hit the Cite
Soleil roadblock in 1996, Republicans had gained the
upper hand in Congress and forced a cutoff of U.S. aid
to Haiti as a form of political censure. The Clinton
administration, embarrassed by the diplomatic debacle
following intervention, dropped the road project along
with the rest of its attention to Haiti.

Disputed elections that gave the Lavalas party
unfettered control over the country in May 2000
spurred fresh efforts by the OAS to intervene in the
political impasse. More recently, musings by Aristide
supporters about possibly amending the constitution to
allow him to seek another term have jolted Latin
American policymakers in Washington to rethink their
hands-off approach.

"They're of two minds on what to do with Haiti," James
Morrell, head of the Haiti Democracy Project in
Washington, said of the current Bush administration.

"There are some who feel like let's go with what we've
got, while others have come to the realization that
that could lead to further instability. They are
oscillating between those two positions."

Some U.S. officials have accused Aristide of deceiving
American backers to get U.S. diplomatic and military
muscle behind him just long enough for him to
reinforce his populist posturing, disband the Haitian
army and create a national police force with the
primary task of ensuring that he stays in power.

Roger Noriega, the designated assistant secretary of
State for Western Hemisphere affairs, said in his
capacity as OAS ambassador late last year that
Washington's opportunity to build democracy in Haiti
through collaboration with Aristide had been
"absolutely squandered." Haitian economist and
businessman Hans Tippenhauer accused Washington of
having handed Aristide "a blank check" and then
turning a blind eye when he went back on promises to
build a foundation for democracy.

"The Americans didn't understand that he wasn't going
to be a team player, and Aristide didn't understand
that he had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a
difference," Tippenhauer said.

He sees little near-term hope of resolving what he
calls a Catch-22 situation, with no chance of
elections while Aristide is at the helm and no
peaceful means of getting rid of him without
elections.

Some moves are underway to get funding for development
projects, as donor states realize that withholding
loans reinforces propaganda that the international
community is out to harm Haitians.

At the Inter-American Development Bank office here,
regional representative Gerard Johnson explains that
Haiti suffered "a macroeconomic meltdown" last fall,
just as international sentiment was changing toward
easing the financial embargo. Haiti ceased paying the
interest on its existing foreign debts three years
ago, and the back-to-back crises have left it unable
to pay the arrears, so it is ineligible for new
credits.

Johnson doubts any of the frozen loans, which amount
to less than $200 million, will be forthcoming soon
because Aristide has portrayed meeting the conditions
as moral capitulation.

"Aristide has said to me that 'poverty is how we
guarantee our freedom today.' He will join in
combating suffering but not poverty," recalled the
nonplused banker.

"How can you address development needs when poverty is
equated with freedom?"


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