- REUTERS
A Haitian policeman and local residents team up in the volatile neighbourhood of Bel Air to track down suspected gang members who have been shooting at civilians in Port-au-Prince.
Myrtha Desulme, Contributor
A SHOWDOWN OF no mean order is brewing in Haiti, leading up to the October elections, between the haves and the have-nots, between the elite, their international backers and the populace, between those who are determined to maintain the 200-year-old status quo, and those who are prepared to go to their graves fighting to reverse it. The questions on the table are: Can Haiti have free and fair elections and, will the upcoming, much-anticipated polls be an election or a selection? The world is watching to see how Haiti conducts this ballot.
The Haitian Government and its electoral council, who have been frantically trying to ram through an October election schedule, have finally had to concede what has long been clear to most observers: That their overly ambitious election timetable will have to be moved back.
On August 9, interim Chief of Cabinet, Michel Brunache, announced that the local elections, scheduled for October 9, will have to be postponed until late December, so that the nation can better prepare for November legislative and presidential elections. The latter will be moved up from November 13 to November 6, and a run-off presidential election is scheduled for December 11.
The registration deadline, which was August 9, has had to be extended to September 15. According to the latest figures released by the electoral council, only 1.5 million out of Haiti's 4.5 million eligible voters have registered for the elections, mainly due to fear and insecurity. The authorities are hoping the extension will allow the country to reach the goal of registering at least 3.5 million voters.
The 7,600-member Brazilian-led MINUSTAH (United Nations Stabili-sation Mission) peacekeeping force has been a dismal failure. Though it costs $25 million per month, there is overwhelming evidence that the U.N. occupation is not 'stabilising' Haiti, but is, in fact, aggravating the country's crisis, by bolstering a repressive and anti-democratic regime. A report released in March 2005 by the Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights, together with the Global Justice Centre, states that MINUSTAH had "a strong mandate in three principal areas: providing a secure and stable environment, particularly through disarmament; supporting the political process and good governance in preparation for upcoming elections; and monitoring and reporting on human rights," but that it has "made little, if any, progress on any of these three fronts."
SQUASHING DISSENT
From inception, interim Prime Minister Latortue and his discredited, recently-replaced 'Justice' Minister Bernard Gousse, have directed an increasingly violent campaign aimed at squashing dissent and exorcising Aristide's Lavalas party from the Haitian political process. Hundreds of members of the Lavalas Party are languishing in jails, without access to due process. On the other hand, renegade ex-military and known death squad assassins have been freed from jail, and many have now been reintegrated into the Haitian National Police. News of police raids in the inner-city slums, supposedly to capture gang leaders, relate indiscriminate shootings, summary executions and houses being burned to the ground, all in the name of 'stabilisation'. Residents also report being unable to flee reckless shooting by the police, without running into roadblocks and checkpoints set up by U.N. forces surrounding their neighbourhoods. Human rights groups have long accused Haiti's police force of killing Aristide supporters under the pretext of restoring order, and have strongly criticised the U.N. for participating in such police action.
The inhabitants of the populist districts are accused of responsibility for all of the violence in the capital. They say that it is due to the fact that they are calling for Aristide's return. On February 28 and April 27, police fired on thousands of peaceful demonstrators in the capital, marking the anniversary of the 2004 coup, by demanding the return of the constitutional government. At least 11 unarmed demonstrators were killed in the two attacks, forcing U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to echo the demands of human rights organisations for an official investigation. According to Aristide, 10,000 have died since the February 2004 coup, which forced his departure, though official figures claim 1,500. Every man, woman and child gunned down by the police is branded a 'bandit', an 'insurgent' or a 'gangster'.
According to many sectors, in addition to Lavalas activists, who are blamed for all acts of violence in Haiti, numerous other groups are in possession of weapons. These include the former Haitian soldiers who vanished into the undergrowth along with their weapons, as well as deportees, and gangs reputed to be close to sectors of the former opposition to Aristide. The U.N. forces' original mandate of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of the former Haitian military is still pending nation-wide.
While calling for disarmament, the U.S. is secretly and illegally arming the Latortue Government. Over the last few weeks, more details have surfaced in terms of the extent of the illegal arms flow. In April, breaking its own embargo, the U.S. sold US$7 million worth of arms to Haiti, a country described in a scathing January report by the University of Miami's Centre for the Study of Human Rights as: "churning inside a hurricane of violence." Haiti has a serious problem of weapons proliferation, and an unacceptably high murder rate, for a country that is not officially at war. In a land where there is often no money to buy food and basic necessities, just who is buying all of these weapons?
The fundamental problem in Haiti today is that the chickens have come home to roost. The economic repression which the Haitian political class has maintained over the centuries has created a vast underclass, which has now become overwhelmingly powerful, due to the introduction of universal adult suffrage. It has consequently become impossible for the traditional political class to win an election through the ballot, and they refuse to be ruled by the candidate of the underclass.
Therein lies the crux of the Haitian political impasse. Today's political equation no longer allows for the ol'-time manipulations of the 'good ole days' of yore, and we all know only too well what happens, when the opposition starts to fear dying in opposition.
This does not mean that Aristide, the people's candidate, is necessarily the leader who can resolve Haiti's problems, but it does mean that he has the numbers. The 1987 constitution does not permit him to run for office a third time, but his followers want his lost time restored. That is why the symbol of the resistance is an aggressive five fingers projected into the air, to symbolise that he was elected to a five-year term. Aristide has now become more than anything else, a symbol. The point is that the candidate of the masses, whoever he turns out to be, will be anathema to the 'elite', the group of 184, the business class, the U.S., ... the powers that be, and vice versa.
FORMULA FOR DISASTER
Rushing to elections in the midst of anarchy is a formula for disaster. Bill Quigley, law professor, director of the law clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Centre at Loyola University, New Orleans, puts it very succinctly:
"When the main party of the poor people of Haiti has some of their people in prison, others under threat of death and arrest, and the elected candidates forced out of office at gunpoint, the elections will not be free and fair. The people who destroyed democracy the last time will benefit if it is denied again, as will countries like the U.S., who want the voices of the rich and powerful to be in power."
Louis Jodel Chamblain, a paramilitary leader of the armed uprising which ousted Aristide in February 2004, was recently released from the national penitentiary after a spurious trial exonerated him of egregious human rights crimes. On August 12, U.S. Ambassador James Foley, the purported executor of the February 29 coup, in his final news conference before leaving the post, cautioned Haitian politicians against the use of drug money to finance their campaigns, and declared Chamblain's release 'an outrage', contrasting it to the situation with former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, who has been jailed for more than a year without going to trial, on charges of involvement in political killings.
On October 2, 2004, in a dramatic scene, three elected Lavalas parliamentarians, were arbitrarily arrested while appearing on a radio programme debate. Unlike other Lavalas prisoners, however, they were recently released, and have attempted to register Fanmi Lavalas into the elections. Fanmi Lavalas issued a press release denouncing the three parliamentarians as pawns of the interim government, desperate to legitimise the elections with Lavalas' participation. The party confirmed Lavalas' non-participation, denying the parliamentarians' authority to bind the party.
On July 10, well-known Haitian writer-news reporter, Jacques Roche, was kidnapped. His body was found four days later, with signs of torture.
Roche's death deeply shocked all sectors of Haitian society. Shortly after this gruesome murder, even before the police and justice officials had announced any investigation to find its authors, officials declared the Lavalas sector responsible, and called for the party's disqualification from the elections. The electoral council spokesman countered, however, that: "The election is for all political parties of Haiti.''
Is there any hope for Haiti, you might ask. There are, for sure, some tough days ahead. Searching for hope, I happened upon Martin Luther King Jr.'s immortal words, pronounced during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, 40 years ago:
"I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nation, can be lifted from this dust of shame, to reign supreme among the children of men ... Right temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant! "
