Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

CARIBBEAN: Region Awaits Verdict in Haitian Polls

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Feb 13 2006 (IPS) - Caribbean leaders have signaled their willingness to readmit Haiti into the fold following elections last week, but some have also called for a formal mechanism to expel members who fail to embrace electoral democracy.

Haiti’s return to the 15-member Caribbean Community (Caricom) grouping is dependent on the outcome of the Feb. 7 presidential and legislative elections, with regional leaders insisting that Port-au-Prince would only be accepted once international observers, including the Caricom team, agreed that the polls were free and fair.

Unofficial results place René Preval, a one-time close associate of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as the clear frontrunner, although it remains uncertain if he will garner the majority of votes needed to avoid a run-off in March.

Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, the region’s elder statesman, who has announced that he will quit active politics by April this year, said history would judge whether the stance adopted by Caricom in rejecting the U.S.-imposed interim administration in Port-au-Prince was the correct policy.

“We must always operate under foreign policies that are governed by principle and not by expediency,” he said at the close of a two-day Caricom summit last week.

“History will judge us for the integrity of the policies we pursued and I applaud the determination of the people of Haiti to have a government chosen by them which reflects the democratic will of the people.”

Caricom suspended Haiti from its activities following the controversial departure of Aristide two years ago. The regional grouping had initially sought to have the matter investigated within the United Nations system, only to be thwarted by the United States and France, the two countries Aristide blamed for engineering his removal.

In the end, Caricom had no choice but to agree to an Organisation of American States-backed inquiry, which still has not gotten off the ground.

Regional leaders have since been divided on whether or not there should be “constructive engagement” with the administration of Haiti’s interim prime minister, Gerard Latortue. St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Guyana have stuck to their original positions of having nothing to do with what St. Vincent’s Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves described as “a selected administration”.

Latortue himself has sought to defuse tensions, recently paying an official visit to Port of Spain at the invitation of Caricom chairman and host Prime Minister Patrick Manning. Before he left, Latortue urged the regional leaders to send a fact-finding mission to Port-au-Prince to observe firsthand the changes that had occurred since Aristide’s departure in February 2004.

That invitation remains on the table. But when he addressed the summit, St. Lucia’s Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony applauded Haitian voters for their “typical bravery and courage” in exercising the right to elect a president of their choice “in the face of untold odds”.

“I speak for the government of St. Lucia when I say I am very happy that Haiti has once again embraced electoral democracy. From all indications, the people of Haiti have shown incredible enthusiasm for the electoral process,” he said.

“This time, the voice of the people of Haiti must be allowed to prevail. Never again should the Haitian people made to suffer the dishonour and indignity of having a government imposed upon them,” said Anthony, who holds the portfolio for Justice and Governance in Caricom’s quasi-cabinet.

Anthony said there were lessons to be learnt from the Haitian experience, and “a clear and unambiguous message must issue from this community that it will not tolerate or accept the unlawful and unconstitutional interruption of the democratic process”.

“St. Lucia urges immediate amendment to the Charter of Civil Society and other appropriate instruments to authorise the expulsion of a member state which repudiates the democratic process by violence and intimidation,” he added.

Caribbean leaders adopted the Charter of Civil Society in 1992, after it was recommended by the West Indian Commission as a way of deepening the regional integration process.

It has 11 major points, including the need “to uphold the right of people to make political choices” as well as “to create a truly participatory political environment within the Caribbean Community which will be propitious to genuine consultation in the process of governance”.

It also ensures the “continuing respect for internationally recognised civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights”.

St. Vincent’s Gonsalves has been even more cautious in his approach to readmitting Haiti, telling reporters that it appears from media reports that there was an overwhelming enthusiasm among Haitians to go to the polls. But he hinted he was not sure “whether those reports are selective”.

“I know that some officials have been falling over themselves early to proclaim everything fine and dandy. I am not going there yet until I see the official report from our own people,” he said.

“But broadly speaking I share Dr. Anthony’s optimism. I am hoping that everything is acknowledged as being in order and we would welcome back Haiti. Clearly it is not the end of the matter. Democracy is an ongoing project. It is a living work in progress.”

“In all the countries of Caricom, Haiti has the weakest political and democratic institutions and once they are back in the fold we would be able to assist them, as we assist one another,” he said.

Patterson said that the regional leaders had told Manning to issue an invitation to the new government in Port-au-Prince to attend the next summit in St. Kitts in July, but only after the elections have been declared free and fair.

“And so as soon as the necessary certification has been forthcoming, I certainly would be greatly pleased at the decision of the community which will allow Haiti to return to the Caricom family by the time the conference meets in St. Kitts-Nevis in July,” he added.

Ironically, if Haiti is readmitted to the Caricom fold, it would most likely be doing so under the same president – René Preval – who brought it into the regional grouping in the first place nine years ago.