26590: Blanchet: Haiti Un regard jamaicain (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Max Blanchet <MaxBlanchet@worldnet.att.net>


A lament for Haiti



Franklin W. Knight
Jamaican Observer Wednesday, November 02, 2005



Haiti has enormous symbolic significance for every Caribbean person. After the
United States of America, Haiti was the second free country anywhere in the
Americas. It was the first independent Caribbean state. It was the first
Caribbean state to defy the world successfully and the first state to abolish
slavery in the history of the world. It was also the first state to try to
reconcile the spirit and the letter of the law by establishing universal
principles of human rights.



The first Haitian constitution declared all people equal regardless of race,
colour, creed, condition or occupation.


Those mighty ideals strongly challenged the prevailing political thought in
the powerful states of the 19th century world, and Haiti paid dearly
throughout the following centuries for its audacity. Haiti, however, deserves
better, especially from the neighbouring Caribbean people who owe a lot to
early Haitian initiatives.



The good news is that Haiti is at present establishing a procedure for
implementing national elections in late 2005.


The United States ushered out the last elected head of state two years ago and
the country has not had general elections in five years. The unwarranted
presumption on the part of the United Nations and the Organisation of American
States is that new elections will now produce a battery of elected and
appointed leaders who will usher in an era of democracy.



The idea of using general elections as a sort of litmus test of democracy is a
peculiarly North American misconception. Almost all countries hold elections
of some sort. Only a handful can be considered to be genuinely democratic.
Nevertheless in Washington supreme confidence exists that holding elections
represents the best milestone-marking movement on the road to democracy. In
the case of Haiti, the interim government of designated prime minister Gerard
Latortue has been haemorrhaging public confidence like a decapitated chicken
on the run. Elections driven more by political desperation than intelligent
design are not, however, the panacea for Haiti.



The problems of Haiti are threefold. It is poor and economically undeveloped.
It lacks a strong civil society. And its political culture is virtually non-
existent. All three problems are intimately connected and that is the bad news.



Haiti is dismally poor, with about 80 per cent of its people living below the
poverty line. With a population of almost eight million, Haiti has more than
three times the population of Jamaica. Its area of 10, 714 square miles makes
it more than two and one-half times the size of Jamaica. In all the basic
indices that measure social and economic well-being Haiti falls far behind
Jamaica.



The Gross Domestic Product per capita in Haiti amounts to merely US$1,600, or
about one-third the figure for Jamaica. The unemployment rate exceeds 65 per
cent of the labour force. The country exported a mere US$321 million worth of
products in 2003, about one-seventh of the exports of Jamaica. Haiti also
imported far more goods proportional to the value of its exports than its
neighbouring island. Jamaica has about 6,000 more motor vehicles than Haiti
and more than 18,700 miles of road compared to Haiti's 4,160 miles for a far
larger geographical area.

Other statistics on Haiti are equally dismal. The illiteracy rate hovers
around 50 per cent compared with Jamaica's 15 per cent. Haiti has roughly four
television sets per thousand people compared with 306 in Jamaica, and 80,000
legal internet users versus more than 600,000 in Jamaica. The life expectancy
in Haiti is 50 years and 73 years for Jamaica.



Political stability has continually evaded Haiti since 1804 when it became a
free state. At present, there is a deep thirst for political expression
reflected in the large number of active political parties. These include Fanmi
Lavalas (Lavalas Family) the party founded by ex-president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, the National Front for Change and Democracy, the National Congress
of Democratic Movements, the Movement for the Installation of Democracy in
Haiti, the Haitian Christian Democratic Party, and the National Progressive
Revolutionary Party. These parties, however, all lack broad popular support
and, given Haiti's tragic political history, any track record of open
political participation. In any case, political legitimacy is hard to
establish without common allegiance to the rule of law, and that is manifestly
absent in Haiti today.



Holding elections in Haiti will be no easy accomplishment. Early in 2005 the
Organisation of American States proposed spending more than US$22 million to
support the Haitian electoral council. The goal was to set up hundreds of
voter registration stations around the country. Voter registration was
hampered, however, by the fact that some 40 per cent of Haitians have no birth
certificates. Moreover, the plan to use American-made electronic voter
machines disregarded the scarce and unreliable supply of electricity in most
communities.



Can Haiti then be saved? Of course it can. More important, it should. The
international agencies, led by the Caribbean states, are vital to any
permanent change in Haiti, but they should have their priorities straightened
out. Elections should not be the top priority. Building a sound economic and
social base should be. The foremost Haitian needs are in education, the police
force, and poverty relief. The money devoted to elections should be directed
to building schools, health centres and roads as well as training a police
force.


Those are the basic needs. The country should be entirely disarmed, a task
that would require boosting the United Nations armed forces and possibly
supplementing that with recruits from the Caribbean states. That would be a
signal effort in good neighbourliness.



Haitian exile communities in North America and Europe can provide the basis
for civilian reconstruction, not just for employment in the political process.
Just as Cubans are helping out with medical personnel, the Caricom states
should help train Haitian teachers, bureaucrats and the police. Haiti should
be as much a regional responsibility as an international one. Helping to
rebuild Haiti is a long-term engagement. But it would be worth it in the long
run, not just for Haitians but for the entire Caribbean. After all, the
success of Haiti should be important for all Caribbean states.



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