16938: Severe: Christian Science Monitor Story (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Constantin Severe <csevere@hotmail.com>


Commentary > Opinion
from the October 14, 2003 edition

The ruins of another US try at democracy: Haiti

By Nick Caistor

LONDON – The United States is committed to building democracies in
Afghan-istan and Iraq. But there is a country much closer to home that is in
desperate need of help - a country where the US and the international
community have left a job half done and have abandoned millions of innocent
citizens to poverty and despair.

That country is Haiti. Back in 1994, Bill Clinton and the Organization of
American States (OAS) called the bluff of a nasty military dictatorship
there. After a brief showdown, they succeeded in restoring to power the
elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest whose populist
Creole rhetoric captured the hearts of the poor masses. The United Nations
came in to help create an independent judiciary and a new police force, and
to lay the basis for continued democratic rule.

Ever since, Mr. Aristide - who, along the way, resigned his priesthood and
lost much of his popularity - or his associates have held power. But Haiti
is poorer than ever, and the political situation has shown little or no
improvement. During the months they were in the country, American troops
helped build a few schools and a few roads, but then pulled out, anxious not
to be seen as an occupying power.

The UN stayed much longer. Its compound at the international airport in the
Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, received plane loads of aid, as well as
small numbers of troops and larger numbers of international experts in
judicial reform, police training, and human rights. But because of
allegations that Aristide's election to his second presidency in late 2000
was rigged, the UN pulled out of Haiti completely the day before he took
office in February 2001. Secretary-General Kofi Annan criticized the
continuing instability in the country, and warned that Haiti could become an
international "pariah" if the situation continued.

And pariah it has become.

International agencies and many individual countries have refused to send
aid or enter into financial deals with the Aristide government. The
opposition is so fragmented it can only agree on the "illegality" of the
Aristide administration and complain of repeated attacks by Aristide thugs
or other government attempts to disrupt democratic rights.

Aristide - who grew to fame promoting the rights of the poor through
rabble-rousing liberation theology - has seen a dramatic erosion of his
charismatic appeal to many ordinary Haitians. They have seen him keep few of
his promises over the past decade and find themselves even poorer and more
desperate than ever. The president now rarely appears in public, staying
enclosed behind the high walls of his estate in the Port-au-Prince
neighborhood of Tabarre, earning himself the nickname "baron of Tabarre."

This summer, Aristide announced that voodoo, the animistic belief practiced
throughout rural Haiti, would be recognized as an official religion
alongside Roman Cath-olicism and Pro-testant faiths. Haitian critics of his
rule argue that this shows how desperate he has become in his efforts to
find support ahead of legislative elections, due at the end of the year or
early in 2004. These critics also recall the way the Duvalier dictatorship
coopted voodoo beliefs to fan public fears and used the tontons macoute
(gangs of thugs) to terrorize the populace. And they suggest that today's
criminal groups - the chimères - that operate at night in rural areas are
simply this government's version of the tontons macoute.

Opposition groups in Haiti are refusing to participate in the coming
elections. They claim they'll be rigged by the government, and they don't
want to give Aristide further legitimacy. The OAS is starting from scratch,
hurriedly trying to set up an electoral commission that all sides can agree
will impartially guarantee free and fair elections.

The Bush administration could and should make a vital difference. The White
House could put pressure on the Aristide regime to guarantee the rights of
the opposition parties to organize and campaign without fear. It could also
pressure the opposition to end its three-year boycott of the government and
convince them that the play of political forces can bring progress to all
Haitians.

If the US continues to look the other way, Haiti's future is grim. With no
genuine political participation, democratic practice - never truly
established since the fall of the Duvaliers 17 years ago - will wither more.
The only people who will find comfort in that are the more extreme elements
in the Aristide entourage, the drug bosses who thrive in any "failed state"
of the Caribbean and Latin America, and the boat-builders who will be
rubbing their hands, anticipating increased business from compatriots
fleeing across the sea to the US.

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