=?x-unknown?q?28095=3A__Haiti-Progr=E8s_=28News=29_This_Week_?==?x-unknown?q?In_Haiti___23=3A52__3=2F8=2F2006_=28fwd=29?=

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Haïti Progrès <editor@haiti-progres.com>

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
newsweekly. For the complete edition with other news in French
and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100,
(fax) 718-434-5551 or e-mail at editor@haitiprogres.com.
Also visit our website at <www.haitiprogres.com>.

                    HAITI PROGRES
          "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

               * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                March 8 - 14, 2006
                 Vol. 23, No. 52

AS U.N. SECRETLY SEEKS A PROTECTORATE:
PRÉVAL'S MANEUVERING ROOM DWINDLES
BY BRIAN CONCANNON JR.

Haiti's de facto Prime Minister has just secretly and illegally signed
an accord which puts the Haitian police, and much of the Haitian state,
under U.N. supervision and control. On Feb. 25, the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel editorialized that ""Haiti would be a perfect laboratory" for
the U.N.'s newly formed Peace-building Commission, conceived for the
long-term occupation of "strife-torn" nations.

Meanwhile, 800 combat-ready U.S. soldiers are positioned 83 miles
southeast of Port-au-Prince in the Dominican town of Barahona. Thousands
of Dominicans marched in the town on Feb. 27 to demand the immediate
departure of the U.S. troops. They are poised for an invasion of Haiti,
some of the Dominican leaders charged.

In this ominous scenario, we present lawyer Brian Concannon's analysis.



"Naje pou soti" in Haitian creole means "swim your way out." Haiti sits
on an island, where rivers swell and rage after rain, few people know
how to swim, and many die trying to flee the country in rickety boats.
So hard experience makes the saying less theoretical and more
disconcerting than Americans' "sink or swim."

Haiti's President-Elect, René Préval, famously invoked the saying
towards the end of his first term in office, which ran from 1996 to
2001. Préval had been elected to pursue progressive economic and social
policies- building schools, roads and hospitals, reforming and
supporting Haiti's agricultural base, developing a judiciary responsive
to the majority of Haitians who are poor, etc. - but had struggled to
implement the mandate.

PARLIAMENTARY PARALYSIS

Préval's biggest obstacle was the Parliament, even though most
legislators were elected on the same progressive platform. The OPL
party, the largest party in the legislature, changed course after the
election and opted for the policies championed by the International
Financial Institutions and the U.S. - cutting government spending,
allowing the private sector more control of the economy and reducing
tariffs that protected Haitian agriculture.

The policy dispute spilled beyond Parliament into the streets, where
protests forced the resignation of the OPL Prime Minister in June, 1997.
For the next 19 months Parliament refused to confirm any of President
Préval's nominations for a replacement Prime Minister. The International
Community took the legislators' side, and withheld urgently-needed
development assistance to force the administration to give in to the
opposition's demands.

The dispute turned into an impasse, and for the next three years endless
negotiations diverted the Administration's energy and paralyzed
government operations. Even officials not involved in the talks were
reluctant to initiate long-term projects, because they expected the
negotiations would at any time replace them with a new team with new
plans. The impasse was eventually broken not by talks, but by
Parliamentary suicide- the legislators' intransigence led to their terms
expiring without new elections being held. But in the meantime Haiti's
poor became poorer and more numerous.

DESPERATE MEASURES FOR DESPERATE TIMES

Mr. Préval invoked "naje pou soti" in a meeting with peasants who were
complaining about the difficulty of their situation- complaints that the
President was hearing everywhere he went. An agronomist by training,
Préval knew how bad things were in the countryside, but as President he
also knew that there was no easy solution. He invoked the saying to
dispel any false hopes: the peasants needed to know that the government
did not have the resources to elevate them out of their misery, and that
the International Community would not come through with the promised
development assistance. But President Préval also wanted to instill a
hope that was more limited and desperate, but more real- that Haitians
could at least survive by relying on their own resources.

The President turned out to be right on both counts. No one did help -
throughout the remaining time of his Administration, the International
Community increased its pressure and decreased its development
assistance. But Haiti also did manage to swim - not out of danger, but
enough to keep alive and fighting. President Préval found ways to build
hundreds of miles of roads, dozens of schools and a few health centers.
He transferred thousands of acres of land into peasants' hands and he
organized the two best human rights trials in Haiti's history.

It appears that Préval will once again be President, once again with a
mandate to implement progressive policies. But despite the strength of
his landslide election victory on February 7 - he won 4 times more votes
than his nearest competitor - President Préval and the citizens who
elected him will need to start swimming from the very beginning. An
impressive array of forces and obstacles has already assembled to delay,
frustrate and block his implementation of progressive policies.

PARLIAMENTARY PARALYSIS II

Préval may have even more trouble with Parliament this time around.
Although the results of the legislative elections will not be decided
until the second round (which is still not scheduled, a month after the
first round), it is clear that Parliament will be fragmented, with many
parties each having a few seats. Perhaps more important, a large
percentage of legislators will be from conservative parties opposing
Préval's progressive agenda.

Both the parliamentary fragmentation and the conservative success are
the product of two years of repression against progressive political
activists. Many top leaders, including the last Constitutional Prime
Minister, were kept out of politics by being kept in jail, illegally.
Grassroots activists were arrested or killed, police routinely fired at
peaceful, legal demonstrations and critical news outlets were closed or
intimidated. Paramilitary groups, including groups of former soldiers
who had led the 2004 coup d'état, harassed, intimidated and even killed
progressive activists with impunity.

The repression was particularly focused against Haiti's largest
political party, Fanmi Lavalas, which won large majorities in both the
Senate and the Chambre des Deputés in Haiti's last election, in 2000.
The FL refused to participate because the Interim Government of Haiti
(IGH) refused to free its political prisoners - including former
Ministers and parliamentarians - or to stop the brutal repression of
grassroots activists (some individual candidates claimed the Fanmi
Lavalas banner, without the approval of the organization, or for the
most part, the voters). As a result, the party with the best
organization throughout the country, the most electoral support and the
most legislative experience was removed from the contest.

Other parties close to Fanmi Lavalas, including Préval's Espwa (Hope)
party ran candidates in some races, but not all. They lacked Lavalas'
organization and name recognition, and the repression forced them to run
a very limited campaign. Even Préval, with the international spotlight
on him, planned very few public campaign activities and was forced to
curtail this limited schedule when mobs destroyed the podium for one
appearance and attacked his supporters at another.

The low-key campaign was adequate for the former President with
universal name recognition and a five-year record. But it was not
adequate for less experienced and prominent local candidates, who were
unable to conduct the grassroots organizing work necessary to build a
political base. Allies of the IGH, on the other hand, were able to
organize freely at the local level, and often had the benefit of
political patronage to attract campaign workers and supporters.

Many areas that voted overwhelmingly for President Préval's progressive
policies will be represented in Parliament by conservatives committed to
opposing the policies. As a result, to have any of his program passed,
Préval will need to compromise away from the platform he was elected on.
Préval will not have much opportunity to increase Parliamentary support
during his term either. There are legislative elections scheduled for
late 2007, but only for 1/3 of the Senate. Broader elections for the
entire House of Deputies and another third of the Senate are scheduled
for 2009, but even if Préval's candidates win that one, they will take
office with only a year left in the Presidential term.

Fragmentation in the legislature will make it extremely difficult to
assemble a majority on even uncontroversial legislation. The
fragmentation is compounded by inexperience - only a tiny percentage of
those in the second round have served in a legislature before. The
Senators and Deputies will need to learn their jobs, choose leaders,
find ways of working with people from across the political spectrum, and
draft and pass the legislation that the Haitian people urgently need,
all under extreme pressure.

The fragmentation will almost certainly be compounded by yet another
political crisis following the runoff elections. The first round on Feb.
7 was plagued by poor organization and a vote count that was unruly, and
by many accounts fraudulent. Thousands of ballots were missing, many of
which turned up partially burned in a dump. Electoral officials and
political parties claim the count was manipulated and information
concealed.

Many of the irregularities were rendered irrelevant in the Presidential
contest by Préval's landslide, but they will loom larger in close
legislative contests. The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) is also in
disarray - its General Director, Jacques Bernard, fled to the U.S. ahead
of fraud allegations, and spent two weeks on a lecture circuit sponsored
by Lavalas opponents in the U.S., claiming that others were responsible
for fraud, and that his farm was burned in retaliation for his work. He
claimed he would return only after three CEP members were fired, but he
returned to Haiti in early March to the same Council (and according to
an investigation, to an undamaged farm).

Under these circumstances anyone who loses, especially in a close race,
will have grounds to contest the results. So many first round candidates
complained that the CEP indefinitely postponed the runoffs scheduled for
Mar. 19. To effectively deal with these complaints, the CEP should
organize a transparent and precise retabulation of the results, and
reconstitute results that were destroyed using the election code's
backup systems. The CEP declined to take these measures to resolve the
dispute over the Presidential election, preferring a negotiated
settlement that preserved everyone's right to complain. It is likely
that the CEP will take a similar path with the legislative results,
planting the seeds for the next political crisis in fertile ground.

JUDICIAL REFORM?

The judicial branch may be equally problematic. Haiti's justice system
has evolved for three centuries to serve the needs of dictatorships. As
President Préval found out in his first administration, effective
judicial reform is a long-term project. Substantial progress requires
patiently training a new generation of judges, prosecutors and lawyers
and persistently integrating them into the system with enough support
for them to do their jobs honestly and well.

But this time around President Préval will find the job harder than
before. Many of the promising judges and prosecutors trained in his
first term have been pushed out of the system, illegally, by the IGH.
Some have been beaten, or their houses burned. Some may be lured back by
renewed opportunities to build a democratic justice system, but many
will be reluctant to stick their necks out a second time. The IGH has
also packed the judiciary with officials whose main qualification was a
willingness to comply with the IGH's orders, especially when the orders
conflicted with the law's requirements. The most notorious court-packing
incident came in December 2005, when Prime Minister Gerard Latortue
illegally fired five Supreme Court justices and replaced them with his
henchmen. But the same process has been repeated more quietly throughout
the judicial ranks for two years.

COBBLING TOGETHER A GOVERNMENT

Préval's most difficult battle of all may be within his own Executive
Branch. Haiti's Constitution grants the Prime Minister and the Ministers
a large share of executive power. They hire most officials, run most
government programs and manage the lion's share of the national budget.
Although the President nominates the Prime Minister, he must choose
someone from the majority party in Parliament (if there is no majority
party, as is likely to be the case, the President chooses someone in
consultation with Parliamentary leaders). Both the Prime Minister and
his cabinet must be ratified by Parliament, and a legislative vote of no
confidence will cause the government to fall.

In order to cobble together enough votes for ratification, Préval will
most likely be forced to assemble a cabinet from many disparate parts-
political parties that have no common political vision, just a shared
agreement to vote for ratification in return for the power of
controlling a ministry. Just getting a government ratified by a
fractured Parliament will take much effort, and perhaps more
importantly, time. Organizing the government to advance a coherent
policy will be extremely difficult. In the best case scenario, Ministers
of good faith but diverse ideologies will struggle hard to find
consensus on a few key issues. In a more likely scenario, broad
agreement on anything will be impossible, and many Ministers will spend
their time and energies implementing their own, often contradictory,
policies and expanding their patronage base.

CONTROLLING THE POLICE

Managing the cabinet may, however, be easy compared to getting a handle
on the police force. Haiti's police have become highly politicized,
corrupt and violent over the two years under the IGH. Many good officers
have been forced out or killed; others have been turned into killers by
the violence. Former soldiers, many of them violent, have been
integrated into the force, bypassing normal recruitment and promotion
regulations. The population, especially in poor neighborhoods, is deeply
distrustful of the police, for good reason- police regularly conduct
murderous raids in their areas and routinely make illegal warrantless
arrests. Even the police force's General Director complains that at
least a quarter of his officers are criminals.

Reforming the police will take time, and money, both of which are in
short supply. Reform will also need to be balanced with the urgent need
to fight increasing common crime. Haiti's police force is already
dangerously understaffed, which will be exacerbated in the short term by
diverting human resources to reform efforts, and even by the process of
removing crooked officers.

DEMOTING DEMOCRACY, SELLING SOVEREIGNTY

Préval's authority with the police was severely limited by a
controversial and far-reaching agreement reached between Prime Minister
Latortue and Juan Gabriel Valdes, the head of the United Nations
Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). The agreement grants MINUSTAH
extensive authority over the police and government, including a) a right
of consultation before any police operation; b) veto power over police
promotions; c) access to all files of any government official or entity
relating to the police; and d) veto power over international agreements
relating to the police.

The deal has been controversial because it was reached quietly - it was
signed in New York and not even the police chief or Justice Minister
even knew about it until a week after the signing - and because it hands
an immense amount of national sovereignty to MINUSTAH. But it should be
equally controversial because it demonstrates a deep disrespect for
Haiti's voters, its Constitution and its democracy. The deal was signed
on Feb. 22, a week after the announcement of Préval's victory, and five
weeks before his (then) scheduled inauguration. If the agreement was
appropriate to negotiate at all, it would have been appropriate to
negotiate it with the President who would have to abide by it, and who
also had the electoral and constitutional legitimacy to bind his
country.

There was no reason why the deal could not have been negotiated with the
elected President, other than a fear that the voters' choice would not
agree to it. It is not hard to understand why Prime Minister Latortue,
who was never elected and is on his way out after two disastrous and
unconstitutional years in office, would be willing to pull a fast one on
his country and his Constitution. But the UN should be above such
underhanded stunts.

MINUSTAH's bad faith is magnified by the fact that the agreement grants
it extraordinary control over a police force under an elected President,
when the Mission refused to exercise even ordinary oversight over the
force under the unelected dictatorship. Time and again MINUSTAH forces
stood by while the police massacred prisoners, invaded neighborhoods and
made illegal political arrests, insisting that their mandate prevented
them from interfering in the police force's internal affairs. The
Mission that did not issue a single investigative report in almost two
years of Mr. Latortue's reign will now have access to President Préval's
personal diary if he writes in it about the police.

The agreement is unconstitutional and illegal, as Mr. Latortue was
forced to concede once it became public, so President Préval is not
legally required to recognize it. But he may be politically required to
do so -- MINUSTAH currently intends to stay for at least half of Préval'
s term, and there is not much he can effectively do about it. With
little money, a police force loyal to his unelected predecessor and the
example of his predecessor flown to exile by the International
Community, Mr. Préval's bargaining position is weak.

MORE DESPERATE TIMES

In the meantime, life will get harder for Haiti's poor. The life
expectancy for men has dropped to 48 years, infant mortality and AIDS
are by far the worst in the hemisphere. Most Haitians struggle to get by
on little more than $1 a day, over half are malnourished.

As before, President Préval will not be able to count on the
International Community to help fight Haiti's poverty with the necessary
consistency. There will be some development assistance sent to Haiti,
and much of it will have a positive impact on the ground. But this aid
will, sooner rather than later, become contingent on the Préval
administration implementing the International Community's economic
policies. The U.S. government, among others, has already declared that
Préval must compromise with his political opponents, who the voters
resoundingly rejected. Those pressures will increase with the disputes
likely to arise from the legislative elections and the choice of
ministers, with the International Community consistently taking the side
of Lavalas opponents.

Right now President Préval does not even know when his new job starts.
Although the Constitution called for the inauguration of a new President
on Feb. 7, and the latest electoral decree scheduled it for Mar. 29, the
inauguration is now held hostage to the second round of legislative
elections. The Constitution requires the President to take his oath of
office in front of Parliament. The IGH, which was itself installed
without Parliament and which ignored constitutional election deadlines
in June 2004 and November 2005 as well as the Feb. 7 inauguration
deadline, is insisting that it needs a parliament to hand over power.
The best likely scenario has the inauguration in early May, three months
late and 5% through the Constitutional term.

ELUSIVE VICTORIES

February 7 was the fourth consecutive landslide victory for a
Presidential candidate from the Lavalas movement. In any other country,
such electoral success would translate into a long period of stability,
and an opportunity for the victors to implement the policies they were
elected on. Instead, for three of those terms, there have been two coup
d'etats leading to five years of exile for the elected President, a
nearly perpetual controversy over legislative elections and very little
progress on the root causes of Haiti's misery. Time will tell whether
President Préval can escape this cycle of instability in the fourth of
these terms, but one thing is certain: he and the people who voted for
him had better start swimming now.

Brian Concannon Jr. directs the Institute for Justice & Democracy in
Haiti, www.ijdh.org.

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.

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