Aristide and Haiti
Editorial
Stabroek News
March 7, 2004
This time the Americans stumbled into Haiti. In an election year they clearly did not want to be there at all, bogged down as they are in Afghanistan and Iraq. But events overtook them, and they were then faced with the unpalatable prospect of either going in with all the risks attendant on that, or standing by while a country 600 miles from the coast of Florida descended into anarchy and flooded the US with refugees.
One of the questions which has been asked in this region, including by the PPP, is why the US insisted on President Aristide's departure before they would send in the marines, and why they would not support a man who was a 'democratically elected' leader. After all, they had restored him to office in 1994 following his removal in a 1991 coup d'etat, and not to bolster him now is to open themselves to accusations of coup-mongering. It is a not unreasonable question, and the first thing which has to be said is that Mr Aristide's impeccable democratic credentials did not survive his restoration to office.
During the period when the accommodating Mr Preval kept the presidential seat warm for him, the electoral council was filled with Aristide supporters, a council which subsequently organized the 2000 legislative elections. International observers deemed these elections seriously flawed, and over opposition objections presidential elections were held that same year which Mr Aristide won with more than 90% of the vote. The opposition boycotted the poll, however, which produced a turnout variously estimated at between 10 and 40 per cent.
There are still more serious charges to be laid at Mr Aristide's door. One of these is that over the period of a decade, he has made himself a millionaire, Professor Anselme Remy of Haiti's State University writing in the T&T Review of March 1 that he had joined the ranks of the very bourgeoisie which he had claimed to be fighting against. Some of the same corrupt business people, said Remy, who still controlled the country's resources, were his close associates.
The Professor went on to say that the Haitian President had used welfare funds as part of a patronage system to buy rising corrupt politicians and contenders, and had utilized taxes and money from international donors in a similar fashion. Forty per cent of the national budget was assigned to the presidency, and any "significant disbursal" of funds required Mr Aristide's personal approval. The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that for its part, the United States estimated that 70% of all foreign aid - of which it was providing the larger portion - was being pocketed by corrupt officials.
Many commentators have referred to President Aristide's control of the legislature, judiciary and the police force, but Professor Remy cites a revealing case of his appointment of a non-lawyer as DPP in the region of Artibonite. Protests and then a strike by the Bar Association failed to produce a withdrawal of the appointment.
Remy goes on to relate how he fired the Rector of the State University in July 2003 in order to get control of that institution. On this occasion, however, the man was reinstated after the students mounted a two-month protest. Even then, order did not return to campus, because the students embarked on a campaign to have President Aristide step down. The head of state sent in his thugs to the university, wrote Remy, to "attack the students," and "the Rector, who was trying to broker a peaceful solution had both knees broken by the thugs." It was after this, the article said, that "all organized sectors" in the society began to demand the President's ouster.
The international press and human rights groups over the years have given various details about Mr Aristide's armed gangs, who terrorized, beat and sometimes murdered political opponents, kidnapped wealthy citizens, and at one time or another held sway over whole wards in urban areas like Port-au-Prince through the use of violence. In other words, in the vacuum created by the non-functioning of state institutions, President Aristide fell back in the end on the time-honoured methods of his autocratic predecessors.
In company with some of the murderous rebels, senior members of Mr Aristide's government, including the judiciary and the police force, were involved in the narcotics trade. Last year, for example, the US revoked the visas of several senior officials including the Minister of the Interior on those grounds. The San Francisco Chronicle has quoted three unnamed diplomatic sources as saying that in the interview with the Haitian President prior to his departure, testimony from a Haitian drug baron sentenced to 27 years in a Miami court was used as leverage to push the head of state into resigning.
The approach of Caricom involved negotiating a compromise between Mr Aristide and the opposition, but the latter refused, insisting that the President had to step down before there could be any deal - and given his record, one should not be over-hasty in condemning them for this stance. They were also not enticed by the promise of new elections as long as Mr Aristide was still in office, because they feared with his control of the electoral council, he would be able to manipulate the poll as he had done in 2000.
Nowadays the combined opposition is more disparate than the old corrupt, coloured class which has misappropriated Haiti's wealth, and has worked behind the scenes for nearly two centuries to manipulate the politicians and preserve social inequalities - although it certainly still includes all those elements which had not been admitted to President Aristide's circle. However, there is also the black middle class, which had once been a strong supporter of the former President, as well as large numbers of the poorest Haitians, who feel betrayed by him. This is not to say that many thousands of ordinary Haitians still do not support him, but exactly how many there are on either side will probably never be known, given the situation.
The US, constrained to intervene in a country where it didn't want to be, and where there was no effective state, adopted an approach which would put its soldiers at least risk. Any solution depended on disarming not just Aristide's gangs, but also the rebel warlords, whom the Americans were hoping to coax into laying down their weapons if the head of state resigned. They feared that if he didn't go they might have to confront them, in addition to which the rebels might go into Port-au-Prince and cause a bloodbath before any foreign troops landed. Whether in actual fact the US will be able to successfully stabilize the situation will not yet be known for some time.
Mr Aristide has accused the US of "kidnapping" him; that seems unlikely, although they clearly leaned heavily on him to go. Given the circumstances, the regional criticism of American actions in this particular instance is probably unfair, although that does not mean to say that the US is above criticism in other respects. Far from it. They have behaved reprehensibly towards Haiti, including during the period when Mr Aristide was in office and their trade policies spiced with a dash of malice destroyed the country's rice industry. While there was hope in 1994 that their record might be reversed, they did not stay long enough to redeem themselves by building the institutions which could create a viable democratic state, not even providing the new police force with the kind of funding which was necessary for it to operate.
Despite its glorious revolution, in its two centuries of independence, Haiti has become a victim of its rulers, of entrenched political violence, and of the malevolence of other states - in particular France and the US. After Mr Aristide left, Colin Powell was reported as saying that Haiti has been "a sad story for almost 200 years now." He added wearily, "We'll try again this time." Well this time, if they really do succeed in establishing some sort of framework of security by disarming the various warlords, they had better hang in there long enough to get it right.