The Haitian Crisis: Where I Stand
Guy S. Antoine
January 28, 2004

Having enthusiastically supported Aristide in the early 1990’s, today I do not feel any regret whatsoever for my earlier disposition. As best as I could, as a Haitian National living in the United States of America, sympathizing with the historically underprivileged class in Haiti, I lent support to a movement impregnated with revolutionary ideals, along with the overwhelming majority of working class Haitians living abroad at that time. Our support of Aristide was just the expression of a deeply rooted thirst for the advent of social justice in the face of the continued military repression that followed the departure of Jean-Claude Duvalier. At that time, Haiti's freedom seemed connected to other liberation movements in the world, such as the anti-Marcos uprising in the Philippines and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. As instrumental as Corazon Aquino and Nelson Mandela were in voicing the hopes of their peoples, they understood particularly well that they were not the end objects of such aspirations. They each served their constitutionally mandated terms and passed on the torch to others, designated by their people through the electoral process. In either case, the end object was democracy and not the cult of personality, however inspiring that personality may have been. Ask any South African black who either opposed Nelson Mandela or became disenchanted with his leadership when he assumed the presidency whether he would have preferred the continuation of apartheid in South Africa. Similarly, I cannot regret my political choices of the early 90's because they led to the end of militarization in Haiti and a system of governance of such brutality that it should never be trivialized. This does not signify however that I do not have profound differences with what has become of the leadership of the party in power in the past several years. However, beyond those differences, I feel equally committed not to see Haiti return to the same set of social and political conditions that preceded the advent of the Lavalas movement.

In my opinion, it is foolish of our compatriots to call for the departure of the current government, without having prepared a clear alternative that would propel forward the aspirations of the Haitian people. In the early 90's, the Lavalas movement appeared to offer more than a simple rejection of Duvalierism. That is the key reason why the mobilization against macoutism, militarism, and Duvalierism was so successful. Today, some of our cities are in the grips of anti-Aristidism. However, no alternative has been clearly formulated. In fact, the guiding principles of the Lavalas movement have not been openly rejected, even by those who curse the very name of "Lavalas". So, it would appear that the opposition to Aristide would gain from formulating anew the earlier guiding principles and adopting them as their very own, as opposed to their current advocacy of getting rid of Aristide, damn the political or social consequences.

Yet, I will be the first to admit that my expectations of good governance in Haiti have taken a serious beating in recent years. No doubt, the causes for the lack of significant progress on a social scale are complex, and as is unfortunately our nature, we will keep pointing the finger at each other seemingly till the end of time. Let me briefly expose however some aspects of the astonishing failures of the government in Haiti, regardless of how we all decide to play the blame game:

1) Haiti should become a STATE OF LAW. That principle should never have been compromised. Again and again, we have witnessed botched investigations... to cite only the most talked about among the many: the assassination of Jean Dominique. The grave mishandling of the Dominique case in particular brought a severe blow to our confidence in the will of the government to bring powerful criminals to justice. To compound matters, take into account the politicization of the police force, the overt intimidation of judges, and the cabinet-level appointments of individuals with questionable public records, particularly at the Ministry of Justice.

2) To whose benefit did Haitians continue to portray themselves as the "Restavek" of the financial community, particularly France and the United States? The long talked about issue of the "500 million" in loan guarantees, secured by contractual agreements, was a valid legal position. Certainly the unlawfulness and high hypocrisy of the United States Government in this matter should have been exposed and pursued vigorously by government lawyers. However, the government should have never adopted the "500 million" as its most highly vocal refrain for so long in order to explain its inability to set Haiti on the path to economic recovery. Messages of self-empowerment would have been a badly needed alternative. A genuine stance (not in rhetoric only) against hurtful globalization policies dictated by the United States government and the International Monetary Fund would have been most welcome. Taking all necessary steps to secure the full participation from the Haitian Diaspora would have been intelligent. What we saw instead was a continuation of the politics of dependency.

The most disheartening piece of this misguided economic policy was the proposed establishment of a Free Trade Zone along the borders of the Haitian and Dominican Republics, sponsored primarily by American and Dominican big business. Sa se “politik bay chat veye bč” (the politics of letting the cat guard the butter), giving historical exploiters of Haitian labor trump cards to use as they please against uprooted and disenfranchised Haitian peasants.

3) Anti-corruption, Transparency, Justice should have never been so trivialized. Why are so many government posts given to dishonest individuals or allowed to be kept by others who become famous by their thievery? What has ever happened to the FRAPH/FADH papers that we in the diaspora fought for so long to have the United States government suspend its illegal confiscation and return the thousands of pages, unadulterated, to the Haitian government so that justice be served? Why have we not been entitled to hear the least bit of information about their actual disposition? Why were not the Free Trade Zone agreements properly debated and voted upon by the elected representatives of the Haitian people? We could keep asking questions... Unfortunately, we have come to expect that they will never be answered by officials of the current government. Extremely unfortunate!

As a Haitian-American, I owe respect to the Constitution of the United States and I fervently wish that the Constitution of Haiti would be respected as well by all Haitians, pro-government and anti-government alike. In all likelihood, the Constitution needs to be amended to allow the voice of the Haitian people to be heard more clearly and much more effectively, such as referendums and processes for impeachment would allow. I believe that Haitians will continue to strive for a fully functioning participatory democracy. The criminal justice system should be made to work – finally, finally, finally. Transgressors should not be allowed to simply walk away from their crimes, by virtue of their political affiliation, or to defy their judges, or to openly intimidate them. Transparency in government should be given a chance – or why was it ever talked about in the first place? But above all, we should learn to set aside our personal ambitions and pathological thirst for power to press on fully for the needs of the Haitian people, including the millions of its poor, that are hardly represented in the current struggle for power between those who have it, those who used to have it, and those who wish they had it instead.

The prevailing sentiment in the Diaspora towards the government in Haiti is one of profound disappointment with the chaos in the country, the mismanagement of power, the high level of corruption in our public administration, and above all the lack of leadership in setting a national agenda that is truly believable. In practically all of his speeches, President Aristide has resorted to demagogic sound bites, to rally the people's support, rather than setting forth realistic goals and the steps that would be implemented for achieving them. He has reveled in promising the moon, but when the speech is done, the economic reality and social conditions continue to worsen. Because the guiding principles of the Lavalas movement have been betrayed on one hand, and because we have witnessed a spectacular rise in insecurity coupled with impunity, in the last several years, the sentiment of Haitians in the Diaspora is quickly shifting away from supporting the government. However, no political party has of yet capitalized on this disenchantment to offer a coherent alternative to the current administration, with the sort of leadership that would appear to be something other than narcissistic opportunism.

The political situation in Haiti is getting progressively worse. As a Haitian-American, I feel committed not to Jean-Bertrand Aristide's personality, but to the idea of his finishing the term for which he was popularly elected, and a concomitant constitutional transfer of power through internationally monitored elections. I have heard all about the argument that honest elections cannot take place under such a corrupt administration, but frankly, I believe that this is a smokescreen. The opposition parties know well that they would lose in general elections, for not having done their homework consisting of earning the trust of the majority class in Haiti. That is the real reason for their rejecting all calls for elections, legislative or otherwise. The math is simple, as they are easily outnumbered. Regardless of this government's virtues or lack of same, it is a fact that the various elites of Haiti have NEVER made a convincing case of their interest in the social and economic advancement of the Haitian people. Their only chant is "Aristide must go!"

How can one expect our severely disenfranchised masses to trust the group of intellectuals and industrialists who are leading the opposition to Aristide today? Just what will happen if they succeed in toppling the government? Will the interest of Haitian peasants now emerge, front and center? As a student of past and recent Haitian History, I am convinced that the opposition leaders are up to no one’s good but their own. They want to create a better set of economic conditions for their narrow class interests. Fair enough. However, there is not a snowball's chance in hell that the path to which they are presently committed will lead to the betterment of Haitian society. They are guiding the country to a state of greater social upheaval than it has known in a long time. What we presently consider as the intolerable living conditions in Haiti may come to be remembered as the good old times.

Consider that the presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide has faced a steady and total obstructionist line from well before February 7, 2001. Some have traced it to the installation of a parallel government by the opposition on that very day. Well, that parallel government turned out to be a big joke anyway, an embarrassment for those who conceived of it. Others have traced it to the irregularities of the May 21, 2000 elections, which would somehow have justified the campaign of terror in Port-au-Prince that preceded the November elections, a few months later. It is still possible to trace the origins of such intransigence as far back as the colonization of Saint-Domingue. Those views certainly have their merits. More pertinent however, in my opinion, was the resignation of Prime Minister Rosny Smarth during the presidency of René Préval and the stubborn refusal of the Legislature to approve any and all nominations for a new Prime Minister. That was the death of compromise for the young Haitian Democracy. Since that time, the opposition to Lavalas does not appear to have budged one inch. In its various formulations, it has embodied the so-called "option zero" approach, which is "the only solution we are interested in is your getting out of the way!"

In the United States, by contrast, American citizens know that it is far better for them to live with the temporary hijacking of their electoral process than to plunge their country into anarchy. In Haiti, we have openly flirted with anarchy, and everyone will pay the price. What will follow the breakdown of government? Will it be: a) the return of a brutalizing army to bring the “chimeres” in check; b) a protracted civil war; c) a return to a Duvalierist style dictatorship; d) the blossoming of true democracy? Darker days lie ahead. The path chosen by this odd and conveniently assembled set of characters we call Opposition, to replace the Government of Haiti is an unwise one. The Haitian people know that their government is not working as intended, they absolutely know it. But they also know that this proposed replacement crew does not truly give a whit about their future, either.

Haiti’s citizens should learn the virtues of patience and compromise for the country to become a STATE OF LAW, where the Constitution is respected, where Justice is meted out in the courts of Law and not in the streets, where the economy trickles up, down, and sideways. There are various people in the Diaspora meeting in community groups to foster such point of view. I do not see the emergence of a Messiah on the horizon and that's probably a good thing. We have to commit to push for those changes together and to place our collective faith, not in an individual but in a detailed program of national recovery, whose implementation should be made accountable every step of the way.


Guy S. Antoine
Windows on Haiti
Social Commentary