27025: (news) Chamberlain: Constitution loses in Haiti election fight-analysts (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

     By Jim Loney

     MIAMI, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Haiti's constitution is being violated by
both the U.S.-backed interim government and by the candidacy of a Haitian
American millionaire running strongly in the polls in a long delayed
election, analysts say.
     "The government has not been paying much attention to the
constitution," said Brian Concannon, a U.S. lawyer who worked in Haiti and
helped prosecute military leaders accused of a peasant massacre.
     The first round of voting in the troubled Caribbean nation is
scheduled for Jan. 8 with a run-off, if needed, on Feb. 15. But elections
officials have said another delay seems likely.
     Dumarsais Simeus, the Haiti-born founder of a Texas food company, has
been running second to former President Rene Preval, but the Provisional
Electoral Council, which organizes elections, has twice said Simeus cannot
run because he is an American citizen.
     Haiti's 1987 constitution, a point of pride when it was written in an
impoverished nation struggling to recover from decades of dictatorship,
requires presidential candidates to be Haitian citizens. It also says
citizenship is lost by "naturalization in a foreign country."
     Yet Haiti's Supreme Court has twice ruled that Simeus should be put on
the ballot.
     On Dec. 9, the day after the Supreme Court's latest ruling on Simeus,
Prime Minister Gerard Latortue fired five high court justices. Latortue was
chosen by a council of elders after elected President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide was forced into exile 22 months ago.
     "It's a little ironic that he (Latortue) is saying Simeus isn't
legitimate. To be a prime minister or president you should have to have
five years residency (in Haiti)," said Concannon. Latortue lived in Florida
before taking office.
     Asked about the controversy, Simeus said tersely in a recent
interview: "I don't want to debate the constitution. The Supreme Court
reviewed the case."
     "I have Haitian nationality of origin. My grandparents and parents
were descendants of slaves. This Haitian nationality cannot be lost," he
added, describing Latortue's interim government as one of "total anarchy,
total lawlessness, total dictatorship."
     The machinations over Simeus' candidacy and the jailing without
charges of hundreds of Aristide supporters, widely criticized by human
rights groups, are symptoms of disrespect for institutions of democracy
that have been slow to take root in the former slave colony, analysts say.
     Jean-Germain Gros, a Haitian-born assistant professor of political
science at the University of Missouri, said Haitians seem to believe the
constitution is only "suggestive."
     "The clauses of the constitution are suggestions only. They are not
things that are binding," he said.
     "Haiti is a failed state and when you have a failed state, nothing
else works. Not the constitution, not the economy," Gros added. "The real
issue in Haiti is the absence of a state."
     Analysts say Latortue's interim government has already violated a key
provision of the constitution by failing to hold elections within 90 days
of Aristide's ouster in February 2004, and seems destined to violate
another by failing to inaugurate an elected president by Feb. 7.
     "The rule of law is thin in Haiti," said Harvard University professor
Robert Rotberg, who has written extensively on Haiti. "I think if you asked
a cross section of a lot of Haitians if they had a constitution, they would
not know how to answer you."