<html>
<body>
<h1><b>Naje Pou
Soti</b></h1><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.haitiaction.net/News/BC/3_7_6/3_7_6.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/BC/3_7_6/3_7_6.html<br>
</a>by </font><font size=4><b>Brian Concannon Jr.<br><br>
</font><font size=3>IHDH - Haiti</b> <i>"Naje pou soti"</i>
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
Preval, famously invoked the saying towards the end of his first term in
office, which ran from 1996 to 2001. Preval 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.<br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>Parliamentary Paralysis<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>Preval'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. <br><br>
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 nineteen months Parliament refused to confirm any of
President Preval'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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>Desperate measures for desperate times<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>Mr. Preval 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, Preval 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
Preval 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. <br><br>
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 Preval 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.<br><br>
It appears that Preval 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 Preval 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. <br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>Parliamentary Paralysis II<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>Preval 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 Preval's progressive agenda. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. Fanmi Lavalas
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.<br><br>
Other parties close to Fanmi Lavalas, including Preval'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 Preval, 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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
Many areas that voted overwhelmingly for President Preval'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,
Preval will need to compromise away from the platform he was elected on.
Preval 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 Preval's candidates win that one, they will take
office with only a year left in the Presidential term.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
The fragmentation will almost certainly be compounded by yet another
political crisis following the runoff elections. The first round on
February 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.<br><br>
Many of the irregularities were rendered irrelevant in the Presidential
contest by Preval's landslide, but they will loom larger in close
legislative contests. The Electoral Council 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 members of the Electoral Council
were fired, but he returned to Haiti in early March to the same Council
(and according to an investigation, to an undamaged farm). <br><br>
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 Electoral Council indefinitely postponed the runoffs
scheduled for March 19. To effectively deal with these complaints, the
Council should organize a transparent and precise retabulation of the
results, and reconstitute results that were destroyed using the election
code's backup systems. The Council 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 Council will take a similar path with the legislative
results, planting the seeds for the next political crisis in fertile
ground. <br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>Judicial reform?<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>The judicial branch may be equally problematic.
Haiti's justice system has evolved for three centuries to serve the needs
of dictatorships. As President Preval 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. <br><br>
But this time around President Preval 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.<br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>Cobbling together a government<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>Preval'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. <br><br>
In order to cobble together enough votes for ratification, Preval 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.<br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>Controlling the police<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>Demoting democracy, selling sovereignty<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>Preval'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.<br><br>
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 February 22, a week after the announcement of Preval'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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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 Preval's personal
diary if he writes in it about the police. <br><br>
The agreement is unconstitutional and illegal, as Mr. Latortue was forced
to concede once it became public, so President Preval 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 Preval'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. Preval's
bargaining position is weak.<br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>More desperate times<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>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.<br><br>
As before, President Preval 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 Preval administration
implementing the International Community's economic policies. The U.S.
government, among others, has already declared that Preval must
compromise with his political opponents, whom 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.<br><br>
Right now President Preval does not even know when his new job starts.
Although the Constitution called for the inauguration of a new President
on February 7, and the latest electoral decree scheduled it for March 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 February 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 five percent through the Constitutional term. <br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>Elusive victories<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>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 coups d'État 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 Preval 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.<br><br>
</font><font size=4><b><i>Brian Concannon Jr.</font><font size=3> directs
the <a href="http://www.ijdh.org/">Institute for Justice & Democracy
in Haiti</a><br><br>
</i></b><a href="http://www.ijdh.org/" eudora="autourl">www.ijdh.org</a>
.<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>