----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Mensah" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, March 01, 2004 9:09 PM
Subject: [unioNews] After Aristide, what?


Monday, Mar 1st 2004
<H3>After Aristide, what?</H3>
From The Economist Global Agenda


<B><i>An international peacekeeping force has begun arriving in Haiti
after the overthrow of its president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Can the
impoverished country now overcome two centuries of post-colonial
misery?</i></B>

UNTIL the last moment, Haiti's embattled president insisted he would
stay in office until the end of his mandate in 2006, despite an armed
uprising by rebels determined to overthrow him. But, having lost the
support of America-once his protector-Jean-Bertrand Aristide was
bundled on to a plane by American guards on Sunday February 29th,
leaving behind a letter saying he had resigned to prevent a
bloodbath. Within hours, the United Nations Security Council had
authorised a peacekeeping force for the impoverished Caribbean
country. And on Monday, several hundred American and French troops
landed in Haiti, as the vanguard of the UN force. After crossing the
Atlantic, Mr Aristide's plane arrived in the Central African
Republic, from where he was expected to seek asylum in South Africa.

Ten years ago, the Clinton administration sent 20,000 American troops
to restore Mr Aristide to power after he had been ejected in a
military coup. George Bush's administration was not as keen as its
predecessor on the Haitian leader, a left-leaning former priest.
Nevertheless, until last week, Mr Bush's officials had insisted that,
as Haiti's elected leader, Mr Aristide should be allowed to serve out
his term of office. America backed a proposal by Haiti's neighbours
in the Caribbean Community (Caricom) in which Mr Aristide would share
power with his political opponents. But the opposition parties
rejected this, demanding his resignation. And the rebels continued
advancing towards the capital, Port-au-Prince.

With no army (it had been disbanded after the last coup) and only
5,000 police, Mr Aristide's chances of surviving the rebellion looked
ever more slender. Last Wednesday, Haiti's former colonial ruler,
France, called on him to resign. The next day, his fate seemed to be
sealed when America's secretary of state, Colin Powell, made it clear
that he had come round to France's point of view.

While Mr Aristide clung to power, Haiti's opposition parties
distanced themselves from the armed rebels but shared with them the
objective of forcing him out. Now that he has fled, the country's
chief justice, Boniface Alexandre, has been named as president, in
line with Haiti's constitution. However, this needs the approval of
parliament-and at the moment Haiti does not have one: a continuing
row over the parliamentary elections in 2000 has prevented the
holding of fresh elections, and the parliament was dissolved after
most of its members' mandates ran out earlier this year.

As Haiti has descended into a chaos of looting, factional fighting
and prison breakouts, it has threatened a repeat of the refugee
crisis of the mid-1990s, when tens of thousands of Haitians fleeing
violence washed up on the shores of America and other Caribbean
islands. Last Thursday, America's coastguards said they were holding
around 500 Florida-bound Haitians on ships at sea. Refugees also
started arriving in Jamaica and Cuba. Mr Bush's apparent change of
mind in favour of pressing Mr Aristide to quit may have been
influenced by fears of a refugee crisis in the middle of his campaign
for re-election. His Democratic would-be challengers have seized on
the issue, accusing Mr Bush of neglecting Haiti's plight.

It is a desperate plight. As a French colony, Haiti enjoyed fabulous
riches from its sugar-cane crop. But now, after two centuries of
factional infighting, misgovernment and corruption, not to mention 32
coups (33 if you include Mr Aristide's ousting), Haiti is the poorest
country in the Americas. The average income of its 7.5m people is
just over a dollar a day, and perhaps a third of them are chronically
malnourished. Since the uprising began in early February, the UN has
been unable to distribute rations to the more than a quarter of a
million people that it feeds in the north of the country. One of the
main rebel leaders, Guy Philippe, has promised to co-operate with the
UN peacekeepers. But since there seems no credible alternative to Mr
Aristide as Haitian leader, it is hard to imagine the country's
troubles ending soon.

<B>Blaming Bush</B>

Is Mr Bush guilty of neglecting Haiti? He might argue that his
critics are having it both ways: having lambasted him for taking pre-
emptive action in Iraq and elsewhere, they are now complaining that
he should have pre-empted Mr Aristide's downfall by sending troops
sooner. Having now taken action by pressing Mr Aristide to quit and
helping him flee, America has come under attack from Haiti's
neighbours: Caricom's chairman, the Jamaican prime minister, P.J.
Patterson, deplored what he called Mr Aristide's "removal" and the
failure of the "international community" to prevent this. He also
questioned the legality of the American-backed move to instal Mr
Alexandre as president.

Mr Patterson said that Mr Aristide's downfall "sets a dangerous
precedent for democratically elected governments anywhere and
everywhere, as it promotes the removal of duly elected persons from
office by the power of rebel forces." Indeed, in Venezuela,
opposition groups seeking the resignation of President Hugo Chávez
took heart from events across the Caribbean. In another day of
violent clashes in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, on Sunday, a
banner reading "Bye bye Aristide, Chávez you're next" was carried
through the streets.

Mr Aristide's forced exit also comes less than five months after
violent protests forced the resignation of Bolivia's elected
president, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. Though most of Latin America
and the Caribbean is no longer under the heel of dictators, as much
of the region was until the 1980s, democracy is still fragile in many
parts-and it seems unlikely that it will be strengthened by Mr
Aristide's defeat at the hands of a rag-tag army of gunmen.


Copyright © 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group.








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