Haiti’s Annus Horribilis
By Andrew Thomson for ISN
Haiti watchers were hoping last week’s Senate run-off election might reduce tension in the impoverished Caribbean nation. But violence during the polling may have dampened those hopes as the country tries to avoid crossing the breaking point.
The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) claimed the vote was peaceful across the country’s nine departments. But a leader of the opposition Fusion of Haitian Democrats party was killed in the southwestern province of Grand Anse during a violent clash two weeks ago, and taxi driver was shot and killed during a separate battle in Jacmel between President Rene Preval’s Lespwa coalition and the Struggling People’s Organization (OPL).
Reports of violence had already increased in the weeks leading up to the vote, including the student-led burning of a UN police vehicle in Port-au-Prince.
It is the latest security dilemma for Haiti, which has faced the unenviable combination of hunger, natural disasters and hesitant foreign donors over the past year. And while the country has potential foreign donors, international drug traffickers have also cast an approving eye.
“The last thing you wanted to see was Haiti fall back into a humanitarian crisis,” Robert Maguire, a Haiti expert and senior fellow with the United States Institute of Peace, told ISN Security Watch. “But [the country] hasn’t been abandoned.”
A long, hard year
Haiti has long been considered the Western Hemisphere`s premier basket case. Yet there was a hint of progress in recent years. Gang violence was receding along with kidnappings and robberies. A poverty reduction strategy to fight abysmal living conditions had earned the approval of IMF and World Bank decision-makers.
Then 2008 brought one disaster after another.
A worldwide spike in rice and corn prices led many import-dependent Haitians to riot, forcing the sacking of then-Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis in April that year and leading the government to virtually shut down for several months.
A foreign donors meeting was cancelled and four consecutive hurricanes in August and September killed 800 people, left $1 billion in damages and further paralyzed the economy.
The global economic slowdown curbed the flow of remittance money from abroad – a crucial income source for many of Haiti’s nine million residents. In sum, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Haiti had reached a tipping point.
Elections and unrest
Haiti’s latest imbroglio concerns a legislative plan to raise the daily minimum wage from US $1.70 to $4.90. Business owners balked, leading Preval to seek a compromise.
Hundreds of students, already angered by cuts to medical school classes, have protested in response amidst gunfire and tear gas. Many also want an immediate end to the 9,000-strong MINUSTAH mission.
Also contentious was June’s second round of voting to fill 11 vacancies in the 30-seat Senate following April’s initial election – itself delayed by 18 months. Lespwa won five of the seats, meaning Preval now has further support for his economic plans and planned reforms to Haiti’s constitution that would strengthen presidential powers and streamline the election process in the name of better governance.
Indeed, parliamentary infighting is common – unsurprising for a country with little progress toward effective institution building, according to Daniel Erikson of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, who spoke with ISN Security Watch.
Some critics wanted this latest vote delayed, citing reports of irregularities and fraud in April. Fanmi Lavalas, the popular party tied to former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was disqualified from the April election, leading to a widespread boycott. Many votes were also thrown out after reports of ballot stuffing, to the dismay of other opposition parties. The Haiti Democracy Project appealed to Preval, Haiti’s parliament, the UN and election authorities demanding greater scrutiny.
Media reports from the second round highlighted empty voting centers in Port-au-Prince and across the country, and one example of an overzealous partisan attempting to stuff a ballot box. Turnout was said to mirror April’s mere 11 percent, despite radio pleas by the Provisional Electoral Council to attract voters.
With continuing food shortages and poor living conditions, including 200,000 at risk of famine, apathy isn’t surprising.
“There is disenchantment because [voters] have repeatedly chosen leaders but have not seen tangible improvements to their lives,” Maguire told ISN Security Watch. “The average Haitian person has bigger things to deal with right now.”
International community on the carpet
Former US president Bill Clinton, now UN special envoy to Haiti, has called on international donors to ante up in the wake of several severe storms since last year. He also expressed a desire to promote private investment and green energy projects throughout the country. A January report by Paul Collier, the noted Oxford economist and anti-poverty expert, said external pagethe country was not doomed to enter failed state status.
“Haiti has a lot of influential and well-positioned friends in the international community,” Erikson told ISN Security Watch. “It’s a positive political climate, but a negative economic climate.”
The Haitian government continues to wait for $353 million in foreign aid promised at an April donors’ conference in Washington. Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis spoke of “frustration” during a late-June interview with the Miami Herald, despite attention from the Obama administration and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Haiti has looked instead to Venezuela and Cuba for financial and technical assistance to build three new power plants, craft a new hurricane evacuation plan, renovate the airport at Cap-Haitien, and buy machinery to rebuild infrastructure.
The power of drugs
Another form of regional economic cooperation continues to thrive on the western end of Hispaniola, though. Drug-trafficking has intensified in recent months, with Colombian cocaine and Caribbean marijuana a lucrative commodity flown in and out of Haiti toward US and European markets.
Smuggling flights and boat runs are on the rise, according to the US State Department, which points to 29 unpatrolled airstrips and 1,800 kilometers of porous coastline and ports. And at least two senators have alleged ties to traffickers, but their positions offer criminal immunity, Maguire told ISN Security Watch.
Last year, police and the UN seized 27 drug dealer properties worth $21 million. But the Haitian National Police remains a work in progress. external pageMore officers are on patrol but crime remains steady, the International Crisis Group concluded recently. Corruption, weak national institutions, and a chaotic justice system continue to pose problems.
“Until the state is able to become a more positive presence in the lives of people, there will be a tendency towards violence,” said Maguire.
But for now, Haiti must prepare for hurricane season, which left one million homeless last year and dwarfed these man-made storms by comparison.