18427: Esser: Don't let them play with Haiti's democracy (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. E s s e r <torx@mail.joimail.com>

The Jamaica Observer

Editorial
Don't let them play fast and loose with Haiti's democracy

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

This is no time for beating around the bush.

The voices have to be loud, clear and unambiguous.
The Haitian opposition must be told, and be made to understand, that
it will not be rewarded for violence and for any anti-democratic or
unconstitutional seizure of power. Which is what it seems that events
in Haiti are leading to.

Whatever anyone of us, including the government of the United States,
may think of Haiti's president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, and even with
the flaws in the Haitian electoral system, there is no doubt that Mr
Aristide's election in 2000 was legitimate. It, by and large,
reflected the will of the Haitian people.

The Haitian opposition has had other issues with elections in Haiti,
including an earlier vote for members of the Senate that caused seven
members of the legislative body to resign because of questions over
their legitimacy. These include members of Mr Aristide's own Lavalas
movement.

Unfortunately, the Haitian opposition has since then refused to name
members to the electoral commission so that there can be reforms to
allow for elections that meet the standards of a credible democracy.

Since last November, however, with expiry of the life of two-thirds
of the Senate imminent, the opposition has mounted daily, and
increasingly violent, demonstrations in Haiti, demanding that Mr
Aristide step down as part of the package. Mr Aristide's own
supporters have been on the streets in this cycle of violence.

Now, armed thugs have taken over several Haitian towns seeking what
was not achieved via the ballot box - the departure of Mr Aristide
two years ahead of the completion of his term.

It seems to us that the stage is being set, with the tacit if not
overt support of the Haitian official opposition, for a coup against
Mr Aristide, which would be a repeat of what happened in the early
1990s. And in the shadows lurk the same types who backed the previous
anti-Aristide putsch and who have backed the more recent
dictatorships in Haiti.

All this is not to suggest that we approve of Mr Aristide and
everything that he has done. Not by any means. Indeed, we believe
that he has moved far too slowly and has been too inflexible. He has
not shown a grand capacity for reconciliation. He has therefore been
unable to drive a speedy entrenchment of democracy.

Nonetheless, what is taking place in Haiti represents neither the
basis or the form for the removal of an elected leader and has the
imprint of an attempt at oligarchic ascendancy.

We cannot, and we will not, support this unfolding opportunistic
approach to democracy, backing it when our friends are in office and
playing fast and loose with it when those who we dislike, or do not
approve of, are the ones being turfed out.

This kind of candy-store democracy must not be countenanced and those
who attempt to practice it must hear the echoes from all around, that
they will not be welcomed at the table of democrats.

In the case of our region, the Caribbean Community (Caricom)
extracted from Mr Aristide undertakings for a series of
confidence-building measures to help ease the country's political
crisis. It now seems clear that the Haitian opposition had no
interest in having them work.

Caricom has to speak loudly to the Haitian opposition, via back
channels and publicly: the community will have no place for a Haiti
with a government born in a coup.

But that message must not only come from Caricom. The foreign
ministers of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) should be
called urgently together to issue such a declaration.

The bald fact is though, that the most important voice is the one
that comes from Washington.

We may not hear from President Bush or Secretary Powell, but at the
very least there should be some signal from Mr Roger Noriega, the
State Department's man for the Western Hemisphere, that the tactic
being used to force out Mr Aristide is frowned upon by the United
States.

Hopefully, Uncle Sam will not make the same miscalculation it did in
Venezuela. And whereas Venezuela may bounce back with relative ease
from their debacle, Haiti's weak institutions will take a very long
time to recover. In the meantime it is the Haitian people whose
existence is being imperiled.

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