19205: Esser: Haiti: Thrown to the Wolves (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

COHA Opinion:  Haiti

The following op-ed, authored by COHA Research Fellow Jessica Leight,
appeared on February 25, 2004 in the South African daily newspaper
“This Day,” as well as in three other dailies in that country.

Haiti: Thrown to the Wolves

Over the past two hundred years, Haiti has been no stranger to
political violence, coups and the perversion of democracy.  This was
a sad betrayal of its proud heritage as the world’s first black
republic and the Western Hemisphere’s second oldest independent
nation, having won its freedom in 1804 after a nine-year uprising by
the island’s slaves against their French colonial masters.  However,
this initial revolutionary triumph gave way almost immediately to the
harsh realities of grinding poverty and a dreary succession of
repressive governments that came to office by coups rather than
honest elections.  This dreary legacy culminated in the brutal
father-and-son dictatorships of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier,
who enjoyed Washington’s enthusiastic blessings throughout most of
their brutal tenure.

Haiti experienced its first lingering taste of authentic democracy
only fourteen years ago, when the populist priest Jean-Bertrand
Aristide was elected president in 1990 by two-thirds of all votes
cast.  Ousted by a military coup only nine months after his
inauguration, he was restored via a U.S.-led military intervention in
1994, to serve the final year of his original five-year term.  In
November 2000, Aristide was reelected president, though the balloting
was boycotted by the main Haitian opposition coalition, the
Democratic Convergence, which contended that there was no possibility
for a fair election because of the supposed fraud in the senate
elections held earlier that year.

In fact, those elections were widely acknowledged at the time to be
generally free and fair; the only dispute focused on the status of
seven senators, some of whom should have been required to go to a
runoff round, even though almost all of them had achieved strong
pluralities.  This relatively minor imperfection has been blown out
of proportion and repeatedly brandished by the ironically-labeled
“democratic opposition” in Haiti—both the Democratic Convergence and
the subsequently formed Group of 184—as evidence of the illegitimacy
of the Aristide government.  In fact, the opposition was elected by
no one and the offending senators all have long since resigned, at
the president’s urging.  Aristide repeatedly has offered new
elections, which the opposition persistently has refused, preferring
instead to stage provocative protests in the capital,
Port-au-Prince.  Even after the terms of one third of the lower house
of Haiti’s parliament expired in January of this year, rendering the
legislative body without a quorum and stalling all legitimate
political processes – forcing Aristide to rule by decree – the
opposition continues to refuse to nominate representatives to the
provisional electoral council, an essential prerequisite for the
holding of new elections, according to Resolution 822 of the
Organization of American States, passed in 2000.

The reasons for the opposition’s persistent political obstructionism
have long been well-known to the vast majority of Haitians, and in
recent months opposition leaders have openly acknowledged their
strategy: they have no agenda whatsoever other than the ousting of
President Aristide, who they regard as a suspect because of his
demobilization of the Haitian army, long the tool of repression
sanctioned by the Haitian elite that is the backbone of his
Port-au-Prince based opposition, as well as due to his clear
identification with the cause of the Haitian poor.  Democratic
Convergence and Group of 184 are not political parties with a
platform of demands over which they are willing to negotiate and
compromise; rather, they are vehicles for achieving the ambitions of
a small group of leaders, mainly drawn from Haiti’s tiny economic
elite, who hope to gain through a violent power grab what they will
never have or are likely to win through elections.  Accordingly,
prominent opposition leaders including Evans Paul, Gerard
Pierre-Charles and Victor Benoit have openly stated their preference
for a violent revolt or uprooting (dechoukaj) of the current
government rather than elections.

The opposition’s hopes seem dangerously close to coming to fruition
in light of the recent rebellions in Gonaive, Sant Marc, Henche, and
now the takeover of the country’s second largest city, Cap Haitien. 
It now controls huge swaths of the northern and central regions of
the country.   The “non-violent” opposition has been joined by a
number of notorious officials from the country’s former heavily
discredited military and scores of ex-paramilitaries who together are
responsible for the murder of upwards of 5,000 innocent civilians
during the period of military rule, 1991-94.  In fact, the recent
sacking of Gonaive was led by a group formerly known as the Cannibal
Army and renamed the Artibonite Resistance Front, some of whose
leaders are now prominent members of FRAPH, the murderous
aforementioned paramilitary organization, as well as pro-Aristide
renegades.

 Even more importantly, the attacks have highlighted the drastic
inadequacy of the Haitian police force, which has been undermanned,
undertrained, and undersupplied ever since the United States and
Canada prematurely abandoned its police training program in 1996 and
Washington, together with other international donors, cut off direct
aid entirely in 2000 to the Aristide government, citing vague
accusations of corruption and mismanagement.  The insurmountable
obstacles facing the police force as it attempts to maintain basic
civil order highlights the utter irrelevance of the repeated
accusations made by both the opposition and Washington in recent
years that the Aristide government has failed to make sufficient
efforts to establish a “climate of security.”   Clearly, there is a
limit to how much security can be purchased on a government budget of
less than US$300 million a year.

The end game is now approaching with prospects being bleak for
Aristide and even bleaker for Haiti.  The explanation for this
disastrous outcome is not different to divine.  Rather than see
Aristide as a societal asset whose cause needed to be counseled as
well as aided, Washington looked at the Haitian leader as a dangerous
radical whose rule required it to be contained and hobbled. 

The denial of aid to Haiti, which has been based on a calculated
exaggeration of the flawed elections in 2000, totally prevented
Aristide from honoring his pledge to improve the population’s living
standard.  This set the stage for the rapid plummet of Aristide’s
standing with the public and the increasing debasement of his
presidency.  This fatal disaffection together with the collapse of
his police force and the disbanding of many street gangs loyal to
him, allowed the return of the thugs from the era of military rule. 
As for U.S. policy, all along it has been characterized by malign
neglect and, at best, exhibits only bare tolerance for the Haitian
leader.  As a result of a strategy of too little and too late, the
White House has left Haiti to the wolves, with little prospect that
the benighted country has a prayer of a chance to achieve stability
or democracy, ostensibly Washington’s goals for the island.

 
This analysis, prepared by Research Fellow Jessica Leight, appeared in
This Day

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