23517: Esser: Haiti-'skid row' for Caricom (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

Trinidad & Tobago Express
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/

Haiti-'skid row' for Caricom
by Rickey Singh

October 20, 2004


AS Haiti goes through a fresh orgy of political violence, with wild
claims and counter-claims from both opponents and supporters of
deposed President Jean Bertrand Aristide, the Caribbean Community
maintains a studied public silence while monitoring the troubling
events in that most poor, unstable and wretched of Caribbean states.

Political barbarism, wreaking horrors with lives in places like Iraq,
Sudan, Afghanistan and across Israeli and Palestinian borders, may
perhaps cause Caribbean governments, organisations and institutions
to ignore political violence and tremendous human suffering in Haiti
whose problems have been made so much worse by the ravages of
Hurricane Jeanne last month.

But Caricom cannot and must not become numb to the violence, hunger
and stark deprivation in Haiti.

While at least 200,000 Haitians remain homeless from the devastation
of Hurricane Jeanne, which killed as many 2,000, there have been
approximately 50 murders in just over the past two weeks of renewed
clashes involving armed militants of Aristide's Lavalas party and
former soldiers and other activists who had helped to terminate his
presidency on February 29.

Among those killed were policemen, some of them decapitated.
Supporters and opponents of Aristide live in fear while others of
their countrymen continue to threaten violence and chaos.

The tragedies are occurring with some 3,000 UN peacekeepers on the
ground and official calls are being made for the hasty arrival of an
originally promised 8,000-strong force of military and police
personnel.

Caricom's public silence is understandable, though not easy to
defend. A question of its own credibility is at stake in the crisis
in which Haiti, its newest, most populous and most unstable member,
has been gripped while Aristide was still in power, and right up to
this week with a US-installed interim regime, lacking in legitimacy,
with the loquacious Gerard Latortue as Prime Minister.

For a start, having failed to collectively hold the line for an
independent international probe into the circumstances of Aristide's
departure from power, Caricom has since been on political skid row.

Failure to move urgently and decisively as a community, either at the
UN or at the OAS for the independent probe, may have been related to
the kind of division that had existed at the time when open,
principled criticisms of human rights violations and undemocratic
practices by Aristide's government and party seemed quite appropriate.

The division was to resurface following the 25th Caricom Summit in
Grenada over the conditionalities for collective "full engagement''
with the interim Haitian regime so that Haiti could occupy its empty
seat in the councils of the community.

St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Lucia and Guyana were to insist on
resolving sensitive issues of security, human rights and the rule of
law prior to collective "full engagement''.

Barbados, on the other hand, was favouring full engagement without
further delay while, at the same time, strangely breaking ranks at
the OAS for a probe into Aristide's departure from office.

For its part, Jamaica came to be subsequently perceived in a
surprising show of political choreography over the "full engagement''
issue, and inconsistent with the official mood when Prime Minister PJ
Patterson hosted the emergency Caricom summit in March and later
granted temporary asylum to Aristide and family before they could be
sent to South Africa, where they are at present.

It may now be of academic interest for a critical assessment of the
quality and scope of the technical preparations that went into
arrangements to have Haiti in readiness for accessing full membership
of Caricom.

There are those who feel evidence suggests serious flaws in the
readiness-arrangements, including an unnecessarily hasty timetable
for membership accession. Caricom, the then Aristide administration,
as well as that of the previous government headed by Rene Preval,
must share the blame.

Earlier this week, I spoke with Caricom Secretary General Edwin
Carrington to ascertain what, if any, statement would be forthcoming
on the community's position on the current unrest in Haiti and of any
specific initiative with which the community may be involved.

The telephone conversation took place against the background of PM
Latortue's latest public verbal blast against South Africa's
President Thabo Mbeki for allowing, as he claimed, Aristide to
"organise violence'' now occurring in Haiti in violation of
international law. Of course, he provided no supporting evidence.

Carrington side-stepped the allegations by Latortue, who appears to
have an enormous capacity for controversial public utterances devoid
of hard data, and little regard for structured consultation and
promoting dialogue:

"Naturally, we are distressed by what's going on in Haiti...'' said
Carrington.

Expressing similar sentiments when I spoke with him shortly after for
a comment on the current scenario in Haiti, Reginald Dumas, the
retired T&T diplomat who, until last month, had served for six months
as Special Adviser on Haiti to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said:

"It is very painful to follow the suffering of the Haitian people.
The people-focused concerns and need for meaningful dialogue have
been reflected in my report to the UN Secretary General''.

Dumas said his own commitment to the dialogue process had led him to
organise a meeting between Latortue and representatives of Aristide's
Lavalas party.

Regrettably, there was no follow-up to that dialogue; and with the
prevailing climate of violence and fear, confrontation politics
dominates the news with no promise of peace and democratic governance
in the immediate future.
.