20162: Joseph: Fatton-Of Bayonets and Constitutions: Haiti's Sad Tale (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dotie Joseph <dotiej@hotmail.com>

This article is written by Robert Fatton, a Haitian-American who is chair of
the political science department at the University of Virginia. Let me know
what you think!



Of Bayonets and Constitutions: Haiti's Sad Tale

By ROBERT FATTON JR.

The tragedy of the last decade in Haiti is that Jean-Bertrand Aristide
squandered a historic opportunity to create a popular movement that might
have begun to equalize life's chances among Haitians. That the armed
insurgents, former members of the disbanded and despised military, are now
welcome as liberators not just by the traditional elite but by broad
segments of the population is a symbol of Mr. Aristide's utter failure.

The story, however, has to go beyond Mr. Aristide's failures and persona.
Haiti's predicament is symptomatic of a deeper, structural and systemic
problem. The country suffers from acute economic, moral and political
crises. The three are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. The economic
crisis reflects not only the incompetent venality of the Aristide
government, but also the absence of a productive entrepreneurial class, and
the failure of structural adjustment policies in an environment of squalor
and poverty. In addition, the freezing of international assistance during
the past four years aggravated both the disastrous legacy of the preceding
Duvalier period and the catastrophic consequences of the embargo of the
early 1990s. In short, the economy is on the verge of complete collapse.

The pervasive reality of acute material scarcity has in turn exacerbated the
zero-sum game that has marked the island's politics. In Haiti, where
destitution is the norm and private avenues to wealth are rare, politics is
an entrepreneurial vocation, virtually the sole means of advancement for
those not born into wealth. Controlling the state has turned into a fight to
the death to monopolize the sinecures of power.

Thus, the tragedy of Haiti's systemic foundation is that it literally eats
the decency of perfectly honest men and women, transforming them into a
rapacious species of office-holders who devour public resources for private
gain. Rather than inviting moral redemption, the immense poverty plaguing
the country has generated a generalized pattern of callous indifference and
a thoroughly individualistic "sauve qui peut." This environment is conducive
to political prevarication and fragmentation. Political alliances are ever
shifting; the enemy of today is the potential supporter of tomorrow. These
harsh realities did not spare the Aristide regime, and it is likely that
they will overwhelm the triumphant civil opposition.

Viscerally antagonistic to Mr. Aristide, the opposition rejected a
power-sharing compromise that would have emasculated Mr. Aristide and given
it real power. The gamble paid off: Both the Chirac and Bush
administrations, which disliked Mr. Aristide profoundly, abandoned him. This
should have come as no surprise. The Bush administration had an ultimately
contradictory policy toward Mr. Aristide. On the one hand, while it was
antagonistic to him and starved his regime of badly needed foreign
assistance, it acknowledged his legitimacy as president of Haiti. On the
other hand, it supported -- financially and diplomatically -- a civil
opposition which never recognized him as president. Once chaos engulfed the
country, Paris and Washington decided that Mr. Aristide was dispensable.
Confronting a declining popularity, an armed insurrection, the unmitigated
hostility of the civil opposition, and French and American demands for his
resignation, Mr. Aristide had no choice but to depart into exile.

This departure, however, would not have happened had it not been for the
armed insurgency, whose sources of financing and training remain opaque.
Once again, the old Creole proverb, "Konstitisyon se papye, bayonet se fe"
(A constitution is made up of paper, but bayonets are made up of steel),
defined Haitian politics.


* * *


Haiti now faces great uncertainties. Paradoxically, the departure of Mr.
Aristide may cause the first serious cracks in the unity of the civil
opposition. Under the weight of tactical, ideological and personalistic
differences, the opposition may soon fragment. Moreover, how will it react
to the armed insurgents with whom it did not want to be associated? Will the
old army reconstitute and become part of a new government? What economic
plan, if any, has the opposition generated for rebuilding a devastated
country? Is its vaunted "new social contract" a mere slogan or a real
commitment to reduce the chasm dividing the haves and the have-nots? In
fact, Haiti will fall again into the abyss if the new powers-that-be fail to
address the appalling inequalities between the destitute majority and the
affluent minority. It is this divide that nurtures the tensions of Haitian
society.

There is a small window of opportunity for the next regime. Having been on
the brink of a civil war, it may be that the Haitian political class will
finally realize that it should accept the logic of democracy. Yet there is
little to indicate that this will be so and that the old demons will not
resurface. Given the constellation of internal and external forces, the best
that can be hoped for is that the more progressive sectors of civil society
will come to dominate the post-Aristide order and push forward a modicum of
social reform. On the other hand, there is the strong possibility that power
will return to the most reactionary elements of Haitian society.

What is clear, however, is that without a sustained long-term commitment
from the international community, the country has little chance to extricate
itself from its current predicament. Past experience bodes poorly for such a
commitment. The international community, and the U.S. in particular, have
always tended to intervene to impose order and then exited as quickly as
possible until the next crisis. Moreover, faced with the vicissitudes of
Iraq and the realities of a presidential election, the Bush administration
has neither the will nor the desire to engage in another attempt at
nation-building.

>From the safe and affluent shores of America it is easy to pass moral
judgment and to engage in ruthless criticisms; but until Haitians themselves
confront the stark realities of their situation, they will continue to
dabble with catastrophe and live in baleful times.

Mr. Fatton, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, is the
author of "Haiti's Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy"
(Lynn Rienner, 2002).

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