Low-intensity democracy and political crisis in Haiti: the North American contribution

Abstract

Abstract This article makes the case that Canada and the United States have contributed to blocking Haiti's path towards democratic development over the last decade by perpetuating neoliberal economic policies and promoting a form of low-intensity democracy based on the political leadership of elite sectors. This approach has placed North American actors at loggerheads with popular civil society in Haiti, contributed to Haiti's permanent crisis, and exacerbated both the country's status as a “failed state” and the necessity of ongoing international stabilisation efforts. If Haiti is to escape its permanent political crisis, a paradigm shift is required in the thinking of foreign policymakers.

Résumé Cet article soutient que le Canada et les États-Unis ont contribué à entraver du développement démocratique d'Haïti durant la dernière décennie en perpétuant des politiques économiques néolibérales qui ont un faible niveau d'appui et en promouvant une forme de démocratie très limitée fondée sur le leadership politique d'une élite. Cette approche oppose les acteurs nord-américains à la société civile haïtienne, contribue à l’état de crise permanente qui prévaut dans le pays et exacerbe son statut d’état en déliquescence et le besoin continu d'interventions internationales de stabilisation. Pour qu'Haïti échappe à cet état de crise politique permanente, il est nécessaire que s'accomplisse un changement de paradigme chez les décideurs responsables de la politique étrangère.

Keywords:

• Haiti
• low-intensity democracy
• failed state
• Canadian aid
• US aid

Biographical notes

Ray Silvius is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Winnipeg, where he researches and teaches Global Political Economy and International Relations.

Neil Burron is a political scientist living in the Ottawa region. His recently published book, The New Democracy Wars (Ashgate Publishing, 2012), provides a critical analysis of US and Canadian democracy promotion efforts in the Americas.

Notes

1. For the classic critique of how the United States supports polyarchy, a form of democracy largely limited to liberal democratic institutions and elections in the Third World, see Robinson (1996).

2. Haiti's “failed state” status is often attributed to internal factors. See, for example, the Fund for Peace's (2011) failed state index, which ranks Haiti number five in the world according to 12 key indicators, while not considering whether any of such factors have been exacerbated by external actors.

3. Then Canadian Minister of International Cooperation, Bev Oda, announced a CAD220 million Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund, which included – confusedly – parts of the CAD150.15 million and CAD400 million commitments (CIDA 2010a, 2010b, 2011). The Relief Fund was intended to match the CAD220 million committed by Canadians for Haiti relief efforts. The US government committed USD1.1 billion in humanitarian relief assistance and USD406 million in recovery assistance to Haiti following the earthquake. This was accompanied by an additional USD1.15 billion for reconstruction efforts (USAID 2011).

4. The senatorial elections were called into question when the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) applied a vote-apportioning methodology to grant first-round victories to eight senatorial seats won by FL candidates who had won considerable majorities but had not obtained 50 per cent of the vote. See Dupuy (2007) for a critique of the CEP and its control at the time by Lavalas.

5. Peter Hallward (2007) has refuted these claims, demonstrating how much of the violence that occurred was attributable to the Police Nationale d'Haiti (PNH), whose political affiliation was often antigovernment, or to pro-FL groups rather than the government itself. This position is contested by Deibert (2005), who documents the link between the Lavalas government and armed gangs. Although Hallward (2008) convincingly refutes Deibert's main criticisms, he ignores Aristide's reliance upon armed gangs to break up opposition rallies. Dupuy (2005) considers the role of the dominant class and international forces in undermining democracy in Haiti while criticising Aristide's acceptance of structural adjustment and his failure to mobilise popular forces behind a progressive alternative. The recourse to the gangs, in effect, symbolised the inability of the government to arouse the people to its defence. While we do not dispute Dupuy's interpretation, the limitations of Lavalas did not justify the international onslaught against it (nor does Dupuy suggest as much).

6. The Aristide government continued to pay arrears on its debt to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) (most of it odious), despite the fact that the IDB caved to pressure from Washington and froze four loans approved in 2000. In July 2003, Haiti sent more than 90 per cent of its foreign reserves to the IDB to pay off these arrears (Farmer 2004).

7. Interview, Montreal, 25 June 2008.

8. In the months prior to Aristide's forced departure, many Québécois NGOs created an informal network to coordinate their actions, the Concertation pour Haiti, which brought together a dozen or so labour organisations and NGOs. The position of Canadian NGOs likely reflected a general alignment with the unofficial policy of the Canadian government – their primary funder – and the seemingly progressive base of elements of the opposition (see Burron 2012).

9. Interview, Port-au-Prince, 16 March 2009.

10. See Hallward (2007), which summarises the human rights reports.

11. The Deputy Field Commander from September 2005 to September 2006, Eduardo Aldunate (2010), exposes MINUSTAH's post-coup repressive role in his apologia, Backpacks Full of Hope.

12. CIDA also developed An Internal Guide for Effective Development Cooperation in Fragile States in 2008 and declared Haiti the only fragile state in the Americas.

13. The former implemented a project with the ultra-conservative Centre pour la Libre Entreprise et la Démocratie (CLED) to develop a National Business Agenda, while the latter provided a USD100,000 grant to the marginal labour organisation, Batay Ouvriye, which had been alienated from the larger pro-Lavalas labour movement (NED 2005).

14. For example, allegations that Aristide's PM, Yvon Neptune, had orchestrated genocide when supporters of the G-184 clashed with the pro-Lavalas group, Balé Wouzé, in the town of St. Marc in February 2004 were subsequently disproven. In its ruling on Neptune v. the State of Haiti, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights criticised the former and current government's violations of Neptune's basic human rights, exonerating him of all charges and ordering the government to pay him USD95,000 in damages and costs.

15. Rights and Democracy was shut down by the Conservative government in the summer of 2012 as part of its ongoing efforts to reorganise Canada's democracy assistance community of practice. See Burron (2012).

16. Although Préval was prepared to align his administration closely with Washington, the impoverished country's efforts to acquire oil at discount prices through Venezuela's Caribbean oil alliance, PetroCaribe, were sabotaged by the US Embassy under Ambassador Janet Sanderson (see “WikiLeaks Haiti: the PetroCaribe Files”, The Nation, June 1, 2011).

17. The CEP has been criticised for being politically aligned with Préval (see IJDH 2010).

18. The decisions by international actors following the earthquake promoted mixed reactions. The decision by IFIs to cancel Haiti's (mostly odious) debt represented progress, though postquake IMF loans could lead to a new debt cycle (Jubilee USA Network 2010).

19. See also Vorbe (2010).

20. By September 2010, less than 15 per cent of all reconstruction pledges from the international community had arrived (USD1.8 billion), of which only 0.3 per cent went to the public sector (Farmer 2011, 182). The USD1.15 billion pledged by the United States also stalled because of Congressional partisan politics.

21. See The Associated Press, March 30, 2011. Aristide did in fact return in March 2011, but has since remained politically inactive.

22. This included a presidential election and elections for all 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 10 of 30 seats in the Senate.

23. Among other things, the OAS sample did not take into account the results for tally sheets for some 1,326 voting booths that were either never received by the CEP or were quarantined for irregularities. This corresponded to about 12.7 per cent of the vote. The sample also controlled for irregular tally sheets by excluding them rather than using statistical techniques to estimate voting patterns based on the large amount of electoral data available (see Johnston and Weisbrot 2011).

24. Including his campaign manager, Damian Merlo, whose previous experience included working for George W. Bush's Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Otto Reich, who led the effort to destabilise Aristide's government in the early 2000s. Merlo also worked with the IRI program in Brazil before joining John McCain's failed 2008 presidential bid (Grandin 2011).

25. In late 2011, the Martelly government launched a plan to rehabilitate 16 earthquake-affected neighborhoods and close six camps in 100 days, targeting 30,000 of the 500,000 people then living in camps. Yet, a household survey found that 40 per cent of families who left the camps under the plan reported living in worse conditions than before the earthquake and the number of rehabilitated houses, new housing construction, and dispersed rental vouchers issued by the Martelly administration could not possibly accommodate the nearly 1.1 million people who have vanished from camps throughout the country (Remy 2012).

26. Although Lavalas has been repeatedly barred from electoral participation, many of the political parties that are represented in Parliament are left-of-centre. Lavalas also still holds a small number of seats in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.

27. The president has used figures of speech such as taisez-vous (shut up!) to stifle critical questions (Valdés 2011).

28. Martelly has called for the creation of a 3,500-member army to be built over three and a half years, at a cost of approximately USD95 million, including USD15 million to compensate former soldiers who were discharged. It is unclear whether the plan will come to fruition, since it would require the approval of Parliament and the majority INITÉ coalition has opposed it (Taft-Morales 2012).

29. Two organisations that have adopted this approach include the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and Partners in Health (PIH), which have collaborated with the OPs from an approach that emphasises solidarity and accompaniment.