On April 1, the Haitian House of Deputies voted unanimously
for the Electoral Law paving the path to organize Legislative and Municipal
elections. All that remains is the Senate vote. Yet, 255 days and counting, and
there has been no vote. A group of six radical senators have refused to sit for
quorum. They know what everyone else knows: the majority of the senators will
vote in favor of the law. These six senators are undermining Haiti’s very hard
fought democratic gains over the past few decades. But their intentions run
much deeper than that. Their stated goal is to return the country to an
environment of violence, chaos and instability in order to organize a coup
d’état against the Martelly Administration. Five of the six senators are from
Aristide’s party Fanmi Lavalas. And even more concerning are reports that Aristide
and the six senators are reaching out to Russian President Valdimir Putin to
help them with the autogolpe (coup d’etat).
The Martelly Administration has received an unprecedented
level of support and validation for their efforts to organize the
elections. On August 27, the Permanent
Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) declared that “the Executive Branch and the House of
deputies have fulfilled the commitments made in the El Rancho Agreement to
facilitate the organization of the elections but noted to date that the Senate
has not done anything”. This resolution came
after President Martelly invited 50 political parties and duly mandated
representatives of both houses of parliament into a long political dialogue
resulting in a series of political concessions known as the El Rancho Accord. The
far-reaching concessions included opening the government to the opposition
despite the fact that they do not have a majority in either chamber of
parliament. Specifically, President Martelly gave the opposition full control
of Haiti’s High Administrative Court and control of the electoral body, known
as the CEP. While the six senators claim that they have no representation in
the CEP, the current President is the Senate representative.
At the UN, on September 11, US Ambassador and President of
the Security Council Samantha Powers strongly condemned the
actions of the six senators: “Many of
Haiti’s elected leaders have worked tirelessly to seek a political compromise
and have offered meaningful concessions toward that end, including with regard
to the composition of the electoral council and the cabinet. But a group of six
senators seems intent on holding elections hostage to partisan concerns, even
going so far as to prevent a debate on the Electoral Law. Legislators in a
democracy have a responsibility to defend their constituents’ rights. But when
elected officials take advantage of democracy’s checks and balances to
cynically block debate and elections altogether, they stand in the way of
addressing citizens’ real needs.”
Unfortunately, the UN mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, appears to
be ambiguous in their position if not actually encouraging protests due to some
personal political allegiances. This is remarkable in that MINUSTAH has previous
focused squarely on
supporting a secure environment and facilitating the electoral process.
In the US, on September 16, a bi-partisan group of
Democratic and Republican Representatives and Senators wrote a letter
to the President of the Haitian Senate urging a vote: “As elected representatives of the Haitian people, we are sure you and
your colleagues share the conviction that free, fair, and credible elections
are an indispensable tenet of any democracy. Haitians, like all citizens in a
democracy, have a right to express their will through regular and timely
elections for their government representatives. That is why we are deeply
concerned that the Haitian Senate has been unable to pass the requisite
legislation to authorize elections this year. We believe that Haitians deserve
better than to have this fundamental democratic right continually delayed. We
are deeply concerned that should the protracted political impasse continue,
Haiti’s standing as a stable democracy could be at risk. This could have grave
consequences, potentially reversing progress made in recent years and impeding
the kind of development Haiti needs so badly. We respectfully are writing to
you, because we believe you can help end the impasse in the Senate by
supporting the formation of a quorum to move the stalled elections legislation
forward. It is in this spirit that we urge you to take a leadership role in
passing the stalled elections legislation.”
Yet international pressure is having no impact on the six
radical senators. They have an agenda and no amount of political concessions or
international pressure is going to make any difference. Their playbook is well known
by Haitian analysts; it has not changed over the past twenty years. First, they
organize protests and have some of their henchmen fire into the crowds to hurt
and killed protestors and then quickly take to the popular radio stations with
unsubstantiated claims that the government is behind these violent and
undemocratic acts. This has already happened. Second, they raid morgues, steal cadavers
riddle them with bullets, and dump them onto the streets again blaming the
government for violating human rights. This has already happened. Third, they
burn the public markets. This has already been done. Fourth, they lobby the
State Department and use their ideological allies in the international networks
to advance their cause. And
finally, they invent political prisoners.
This time around, however, information technology is getting
on their way. During the last two protests, the opposition henchmen have been
identified shooting at the opposition protest. Pictures of Deputy Arnel
Belizaire, a member of the opposition, have emerged on Facebook and Twitter
firing a heavy automatic weapon into the crowds. Radical Senator John Joel
Joseph from Fanmi Lavalas, a member of the 2004 Operation Baghdad campaign of
terror that resulted in the death of more than 2,000 Haitians, had his security
fire into the crowds as well.
There is an equally extensive playbook and track record of the
current opposition – led by INITE and Lavalas, undermining elections. Haiti has
organized 11 elections since 1990. Leveraging control of the CEP, Lavalas
rigged seven of them and INITE two. So there were two acceptable elections, and
they were organized by the provisional governments of Trouillot in 1990 and
Boniface Alexandre in 2006. In November 2010, Martelly would never have been
able to take his democratically won seat as President if the voters did not
take the street to defend their vote.
Unless Lavalas and INITE control the government and the CEP,
they will not participate in any election and will not accept the rule they themselves
set when they amended the constitution. They will instead escalate the
violence. So Haiti now faces three options: First, the opposition decides to
put the interest of Haiti first and sit for quorum allowing the vote for the Electoral
Law. In this scenario, elections can take place in the first quarter of 2015.
Second, like President Preval in 1999, President Martelly can rule by decree at
the expiry of the parliamentary term on January 12, 2015. Martelly could issue
an electoral decree for the elections to take place in the first quarter of
2015. The State Department’s Haiti Deputy Director, Joel Danies, indicated that
the 1999 jurisprudence scenario is the most likely, listen. Third, and
most concerning is the opposition succeeds in organizing a coup d’etat, and
Haiti plunges back into instability. At this time, it is impossible to predict
what will happen. But the vast majority of Haitians – at home and abroad –
sincerely hope the six senators will allow democracy to prevail and put their
country first.
