#1397: Haitians turn their backs on President Preval-and politics

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: Backer, Laurette M <lbacker@kpmg.com>

> 	4th December 1999 THE AMERICAS
> 	
> 		
> 	Haitians turn their backs on President Preval-and politics 
> 
> 	P O R T - A U - P R I N C E  
> 		
> 
> 	Any country that puts off an election is in trouble. In the past
> year-and-a-half, Haiti has postponed three
> 
> 	 	 Search archive
> 	  	
> 	IT WAS going to hold elections this month. It was going to hold them
> last month. It was going to hold them last year. Recently, a few banners
> have been strung above the traffic-choked main avenues of Port-au-Prince,
> Haiti’s capital, proclaiming that the elections will at last take place on
> March 19th 2000. “Another victory for democracy”, declare the banners in
> Creole. The irony would be tempered if Haiti’s elections were actually to
> happen. But, even if they are held as promised this time, there is no
> guarantee that they will counter popular disenchantment with democratic
> politics. 
> 
> 	 [Image]
> <http://vh1.economist.com/eco_images/editorial/freeforall/19991204/3am7.jp
> g>	 EPA
> <http://vh1.economist.com/eco_images/editorial/editorial_gifs/caption_EPA.
> gif>	
> 		
> 	Preval the unready	  	
> 		
> 	The last time Haitians were consulted at the polls was in April
> 1997, when an election was held for a third of the Senate seats. Only 7%
> of voters bothered to turn out. A dispute then broke out, not about the
> election’s legitimacy but over alleged vote-rigging by supporters of
> Lavalas Family, the party of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first
> democratically elected president, who had handed over power to his
> successor, René Preval, at a presidential election in 1995. 
> 
> 	Lavalas Family had hoped, but failed, to wrest control of the Senate
> from the Organisation of People in Struggle (OPL)-a rump of the original
> Lavalas movement that had first carried Mr Aristide to power in 1990. In
> protest at the alleged vote-rigging, Rosny Smarth, then prime minister,
> resigned and the OPL-dominated parliament blocked all President Preval’s
> subsequent nominations for prime minister, as well as most legislative
> business. It also failed to ensure that a fresh parliamentary election
> took place as promised in November 1998, and its mandate duly expired the
> following January. 
> 
> 	That was only the first postponement. The elections, both
> parliamentary and local, were then scheduled for November this year.
> President Preval formed a provisional government with one purpose: to hold
> the elections. But, with an electoral commission still not ready to hold a
> poll, the elections were deferred first to December, and have now been put
> off again. 
> 
> 	The upshot is that Haiti’s government has been practically paralysed
> for 30 months. New budgets have not been passed, so a lot of promised
> foreign money has been suspended. Total aid and loans to the country,
> according to the UNDP, fell from $534m in 1995 to $356m last year, while
> the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank together have a
> further $570m-equivalent to 18% of Haiti’s GDP-on hold. Many structural
> reforms, such as an overhaul of the judicial system and the privatisation
> of creaking state enterprises, have been halted. 
> 
> 	The economy remains in a dire state. It was crushed by international
> sanctions, which were imposed after Mr Aristide was deposed by a military
> coup only nine months after his election in 1990, and before American
> troops reinstalled him three years later. During those years, GDP was cut
> by a third. Hopes of rebuilding the economy quickly are now dust. Though
> inflation is down, public spending is under control and there is some,
> albeit weak, economic growth, official figures mask dreadful poverty. 
> 
> 	Formal unemployment is estimated to be 50-70%. Peasant farmers walk
> for an entire day from the countryside to sell a few dollars’ worth of
> wrinkled oranges in Port-au-Prince. The city centre is crumbling, its
> roads cratered and thick with rubbish. Survival often depends on
> remittances, said to be worth up to $1 billion in 1998, from Haitians
> abroad. 
> 
> 	Particularly alarming is the drugs boost to the economy. The army,
> which used to catch smugglers, was disbanded by Mr Aristide-though not
> disarmed, leaving the place awash with guns. The police force that
> replaced it is small-just 6,000 officers for a population of 7.5m,
> scattered over a hilly, inaccessible country-inexperienced, and made up
> mostly of polite young university graduates rather than the streetwise
> toughs needed to fight narco-traffickers. The justice system is feeble and
> overstretched: 80% of prisoners are still awaiting trial. Thanks to this,
> and with its quiet coves lying just a few hours by speedboat due north of
> the Colombian coast, Haiti is fast becoming a popular cocaine-smuggling
> route. 
> 
> 	In short, Haitians badly need a proper government. Will they get the
> chance to elect one? Organising the poll seems to be hard enough. Some 4m
> voters have to be registered. A public event in October, designed to
> educate an electorate for whom voting is still a novelty, was broken up by
> people throwing stones and bottles of urine, claiming-though the party
> denies it-to be from Mr Aristide’s party. Opinion polls are hard to come
> by, but a straw poll of 28 people in and around Port-au-Prince this week
> revealed that, while most knew there were elections due, only seven knew
> which month, and just five knew what kind they would be. 
> 
> 	To add to the logistical problems, the deadline for registering
> candidates for the 10,000-odd posts available at the municipal elections,
> now also postponed till 2000, is December 10th-and, so far, only a handful
> have signed up. Moreover, the government now says that all prospective
> contestants must first prove they have paid their taxes. 
> 
> 	All of which adds up to a growing suspicion in some quarters that Mr
> Preval may be seeking ways to keep postponing polling day, little by
> little, just long enough to ensure that the polls coincide with the
> presidential one due in December 2000. Mr Preval’s team, naturally, denies
> anything of the sort. But such a delay would give Mr Aristide’s party,
> riding on his captivating personality, a better chance of winning control
> of parliament. 
> 
> 	Perhaps the greatest test will be whether voters turn out.
> Disenchantment with politics, or at least with the democratic brand of it
> that has turned out so disastrously for Haiti over the past decade, is
> growing. Says one former Aristide supporter: “I swear, I’ll cut off my
> finger before I vote again.” 
> 
> 
> 	Laurette M. Backer
> 
*****************************************************************************
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorized. 

If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution
or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited
and may be unlawful. When addressed to our clients any opinions or advice
contained in this email are subject to the terms and conditions expressed in
the governing KPMG client engagement letter.         
*****************************************************************************