Rising tension PRESIDENT JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE from the promises he made to them RETURNED FROM EXILE on 15 October before his return to Haiti. In either case, 1994, on a US Air Force plane. The this would mean admitting the atmosphere in the capital city, Port-au- disappointing results of Haiti policy, and Prince, was one of joy. The same could giving the Republican Party a stick to beat not be said for the anniversary of this Clinton with. The Republicans have in event. Prime Minister Smarck Michel effect chosen Haiti as a field for conflict had just resigned, complaining that his with the White House, and are currently proposals for the introduction of a threatening to block aid to the country. structural adjustment plan "lacked the necessary support" of Aristide and his A Haitian Senate Commission has asked government. US Vice President Al Gore the US to return the top secret archive of the paramilitary FRAPH croanisation was promptly dispatched to the island, where he gave Aristide a serious lecture
(an "intense one-to-one meeting").
On 9 October Prime Minister Michel had presented the government with the draft version of a letter of intention which he proposed to sign with the
World Bank. A number of ministers were sceptic, even opposed. President
Aristide apparently asked Michel to postpone his visit, in order to allow more time for a public debate on the privatisation programme. A few hours later, the Prime Minister resigned.
Al Gore used his visit to repeat to
Haitian journalists what Michel has been saying for weeks: without privatisation, without a structural adjustment plan, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank
(WB) would not de-freeze the promised loans. Loans equivalent to 40% of the 1995-6 state budget.
MICHEL'S RESIGNATION IS A BLOW TO CLINTON's HAITI POLICY.
It follows a double defeat during the UN and US-sponsored elections: not only was the abstention rate high, but not enough of those elected are to Washington's liking. The singer Manno Charlemagne, whose anti-imperialist stance is well-known, beat the US embassy-supported incumbent,
Evans Paul, to become mayor of Port-au-Prince.
Al Gore had a number of preoccupations during his visit.
The new parliament is dominated by the Lavalas coalition.
Its ratification of the government's economic plan cannot be taken for granted. And preparations for the presidential election, which must be held by the end of this year, are blocked 1
The Clinton administration cannot be seen to put too much pressure on Aristide. But nor can they let him move away the paramilitary FRAPH organisation.
This request came several weeks after a man linked to US secret services, and accused of several political crimes, was freed from prison and allowed to leave the country. The Haitian Minister of
Justice reproached the USA for their role in this affair.
AN INTERNAL MEMO OF UNMIH (United
Nations Mission in Haiti) reports that:
"the economy has not improved sutticiently to assure a desperate population... This population, which had shown itself willing to wait for the situation to improve once President
Aristide returned, now increasingly protests about its state. UNMIH statistics indicate that there has been a steady increase in demonstrations with economic themes over the last six months," said the memo. "While they have been relatively memo.
small in scope, and generally peaceful in nature, the trend is negative." Mounting street protests, coupled with the landslide victory of President Aristide's Lavalas Platform in recent local and parliamentary elections, will lead to increasing pressure to block privatisation, increase wages, and retain price controls, the memo
UNMIH is exaggerating a little when it talks of "incessant"
street demonstrations. But the sharpening social contradictions have led to a series of mobilisations across the country over the last few weeks. Protest has ranged from the absence of justice and corruption of the state administration to the difficulties of everyday life (rent, food prices).
According to the UNMIH document, Aristide is "the only politician with a large, nation-wide base of support". Once he goes, "the population is frightened about being betrayed, in the interests of the elite. The authors in any case recommend precisely such a treason: drawing the curtain on the crimes of the dictatorship, so as not to frighten the business milieu.
International Viewpoint n° 271 - November 1995 17
* Haiti The population is starting to have doubts about Aristide. True, his return meant an end to repression. And he deserves praise for having virtually abolished the army. But how come almost nothing else has changed over the last twelve months? These doubts contributed to the high rate of abstention in the elections. One of the highest abstention rates was registered in the central plateau, scene of Aristide's last pre-election series of meetings. Aristide is trying to preserve his popularity, by manipulating and controlling the mass movement. During his tours of the Provinces, he announces the creation of presidential projects". These weigh down the public treasury, and short-circuit government policies. The President has also been careful, these last few months, to distinguish himself from his ministers. As complaints of the absence of justice rise, he has called on the people to submit to him personally the names of persons who could replace the current Minister of Justice. Privatisation makes Aristide particularly uncomfortable. Sometimes he strongly supports the privatisation programme, which he presents as another form of "democratisation". . More recently, he has promised to imprison those who dare sell off state property. His hesitation is not ideological, but tactical. For Aristide, this summer's events in Costa Rica demonstrate the risk that a clumsy privatisation programme could spark public unrest. Economic "democratisation" through privatisation means transferring public enterprises to the existing economic oligarchy, with circles close to the political elite sharing in the benefits of the transition. Aristide is now protesting that "political stability is a key element for rejuvenating the economy". But ex-Prime Minister Smarck Michel and Finance Minister Marie Michele Rey protest that they have been attacked for applying plans which were first presented to overseas bankers in August 1994 by Leslie Delatour, a member of the Presidential Cabinet. The events of the coming months are difficult to predict. Will the presidential election really take place? Aristide seems to have abandoned the idea of proposing a constitutional amendment allowing him to stay in office. But these last few weeks have seen a number of leaflets and graffiti demanding that his mandate be extended to compensate for the three years he passed in exile.
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The new parliament is an unknown element. It took up office at the beginning of October, after an interminable electoral procedure. The first round of elections was held on 25 June. But new voting took place on 13 August in one in four of the electoral districts, as a result of widespread irregularities in the initial vote. The UN and the USA bear a large part of the responsibility. Most of the opposition groups, who had given their support to the military dictatorship, realised that they would be marginalised when the vote took place. So they preferred to call for a boycott, and spend the summer organising a spoiler campaign against Lavalas, which they accused of all imaginable evils. These opposition grouplets had the support of the US Republicans, and some Democratic Party figures. The intense boycott campaign did not, of course, prevent those opposition figures who were elected to take up their seats. Finally, the second round of voting on 17 September confirmed the dominant position of Lavalas, which took three quarters of seats in the chamber of deputies, and almost all of those senate seats which were up for re-election this year. Lavalas candidates organised real campaigns in many districts, concentrating on the abolition of the army and a refusal of the privatisation programme. Many representatives talked of the danger privatisation represents for national sovereignty. But overall, this was sadly not the case. The Lavalas coalition is extremely uneven, and lacks a real programme. Many of the candidates on the Lavalas list are not members of any party. And the new batch of Lavalas deputies and senators include a good number of local big-wigs, and simple arrivistes, just waiting to be corrupted. Having said this, there is one difference between the old legislature and this one. A significant number of the new deputies and senators see themselves as spokespersons for popular interests. They will not easily bow down before one or other of the Foreign Embassies, an emissary from the Presidential Palace, or a lackey of the business oligarchy. And that is a big thing for Haiti! Notes 1. Under the constitution, president Aristide may not stand for re-election, and must leave the Palais national (Presidential Palace) by 7 February 1996
Beijing 1995
The fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing from September 4-15 adopted a "satisfactory" action programme. It does not reverse past gains, as it seemed for a while. It consolidates the results of previous United Nations conferences. But the holy alliance of fundamentalists of all faiths is still with us...
THE UN's
BIGGEST conference ever confirmed the Vienna (1993) declaration that "the rights of women and girls are an inalienable, integral and inseparable part of the universal rights of each human being". It also reconfirmed the advances made concerning reproductive rights at the Cairo (1994)
conference on population:
"these rights are based on the recognition of the fundamental right of all couples and individuals to decide freely... the number of children and the space between their birth, and to dispose of the necessary information to exercise this right, as well as the right to the best state of health in matters of sexuality and reproduction... without becoming victims of discrimination, coercion or violence...
As we would have expected, the most difficult sections of the declaration to negotiate were those concerning reproductive rights, human rights and the rights of girls.
The struggle around women's free choice in matters of procreation, the most sensitive point, centred on paragraph 97 of the section on health.
The Vatican was faced by a number of state delegations which were determined not to revise advances in women's rights made in previous conference declarations.
Mgr Peter Elliot tried to present the
Catholic church's position as equidistant between the Islamic delegations of Iran and Sudan, and the European Union. "We don't suggest going back on the previous texts of the United Nations, nor on the by Sophie Massouri commitments made in Cairo. But we don't want to go any further either."
The final version of paragraph 97 affirms "the human rights of women include their right to control and decide, in freedom and responsibility, in the domain of their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of all coercion, discrimination and violence"
Women's rights in matters of sexuality beyond procreation itself are recognised for the first time. However, the Iranian delegate who affirmed that this paragraph be understood as applicable only within legal marriage, and for questions of sexuality linked to health, was supported by Japan, Jordan, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, Argentina and the Vatican.
Once paragraph 97 was approved, opponents tried to minimise its importance by adding references to the sovereignty of each state, and respect for
"religious beliefs, moral values and traditions" to paragraph 9, in the first part of the text, which deals with the general question of equality between men and women.
While the final wording recognises state sovereignt?
in the sovereiontv in the interpretation of the declaration, it states nevertheless that policies, even in the name of religion, should not be in contradiction with universal human rights, as defined by the Universal
Declaration of Human
Rights of 1945 and the UN
Conference on Human
Rights in Vienna in 1993.
Paragraph 107 (k)
advises countries to revise penalties for women who have illegal abortion, while stressing that "abortion should in no case be propagated as a
. "5 method of family planning.'
Opposition to these two paragraphs did not just come from countries with religious regimes. Rights over sexuality are at the heart of the debate on women's emancipation. They are questions of state control, and male control, over women's bodies. Both the paragraphs in question also condemn forced sterilisation and controls on maximum family size, as practised in China itself.
WHAT MADE THESE ADVANCES POSSIBLE?