HAITI: Clinton Revives Modest Optimism for Island's Economy

• Analysis by Garry Pierre-Pierre* (new york)
• Tuesday, November 10, 2009
• Inter Press Service

The lofty nicknames reflect Haitians' belief that they have at last found a figure whose international prominence will open a new window of opportunity for this deeply troubled Caribbean nation of roughly nine million people, where the vast majority eke out a living on less than a dollar a day.

The former president brings star power and loads of contacts in the U.S. administration, along with multilateral donors and investors. But can he fix what really ails the hemisphere's poorest country - its ineffectual, feckless government?

On Oct. 30, in a disturbing reprise of past events, the Senate unceremoniously dismissed the prime minister, Michèle Pierre-Louis, claiming that in a year in office she had done too little to solve Haiti's miseries.

Pierre-Louis, who formerly ran a non-governmental organisation promoting education, was widely seen as honest and capable but lacked her own political base, and faced constant sniping in Congress.

While popular support for President Rene Préval's Lespwa (Hope) party may be slipping, Bill Clinton as U.N. special envoy has been warmly embraced by Washington DC, in Port-au-Prince and among Haitians living overseas - the key stakeholders in Haiti's future well-being.

But that Clinton was brought to the scene at all was a tacit admission that the U.N., which has had a force of 7,000 soldiers and more than 1,000 police personnel in Haiti since 2004, lacked the power to turn things around by itself.

The force, known by its French acronym, MINUSTAH, has withstood criticism from almost every quarter in Haiti for failing to curb violence and, in some instances, for abusing Haitians. Still, MINUSTAH's work has been a catalyst for renewed optimism in Haiti and abroad.

It has, for instance, helped to transform the Haitian National Police into an institution that has won respect from the population at large. Around the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, police are ubiquitous, and there is a feeling that people are safer than they have been in a long time.

People stay out later, and a semblance of nightlife is returning to the bars and restaurants of Petion Ville - the middle class suburb perched on the hilltops overlooking Port-au-Prince. Kidnappings and other forms of violent crime are down throughout the country. Still, a recent U.N. report judged that the improvement is 'extremely fragile'.

For his part, Clinton has narrowed his mission to a few basic but deeply important elements: disaster mitigation and prevention; ensuring that donors disburse pledges; supporting recovery programmes; and getting more private international investors to Haiti. All of these signal a plan to shake loose more money from donors and investors to shore up Haiti's crippled economy and devastated infrastructure.

In effect, he'll be spending more time outside Haiti than inside, where Haiti's dysfunctional political system has been as much, if not more, a cause of the country's economic woes than donor or investor recalcitrance.

Bad Government

Haiti's problems - runaway population growth, acute shortages of food and basic necessities, environmental degradation - seem insurmountable when coupled with a weak and dysfunctional government.

Despite these problems, there is an air of optimism across this tiny nation - with good reason. Haiti has had its debt of roughly 1.2 billion dollars wiped out from the international lenders, thus saving the impoverished country about 50 million dollars in annual payments.

The U.S. and Canada have modified their earlier travel warnings, which kept many would-be tourists away. A slew of aid programmes, including road and market construction projects, are visible signs that Haiti is moving forward.

U.S. trade legislation, passed last year, HOPE II, throws open a huge window of opportunity. HOPE II offers Haiti duty-free, quota-free access to U.S. markets for the next nine years. No other nation enjoys a similar advantage.

At a recent buyers' forum in Port-au-Prince, forum participants expressed 'support and optimism that the 'Hope II' and Better Work Haiti - a unique partnership programme of the International Labour Organisation and the International Finance Corporation - could bring sustainable economic benefits to Haiti.'

Representatives from George Soros' Open Society Institute told The Associated Press about a planned 50-million-dollar partnership with Haitian shipper Gregory Mevs to build a free-trade zone of clothing factories.

In his address to the forum participants, Clinton estimated that up to 100,000 garment industry jobs could be generated, although many are low-paid at two dollars a day.

Can Clinton fulfill the hopes that the stakeholders, as well as Haitians themselves, have for him? According to Robert Maguire, a political science professor at Trinity College in Washington and a leading expert on Haiti, the ex-president is well-equipped for the task.

'I think Clinton will draw tremendously on his approach to his work in Haiti from his two-year experience as Special U.N. Envoy to post-tsunami recovery [in Asia],' Maguire said.

Clinton also has a private agenda - namely, redressing a key foreign policy failure of his presidency. As a first-term president in 1994, Clinton put the White House behind an effort to return to power President Jean Bertrand Aristide, who had been forced into exile in 1991 following a bloody coup d'etat led by Army General Raoul Cédras.

Some 20,000 soldiers and police - most of them from the U.S. - were sent to Haiti, in what amounted to Clinton's first foreign policy challenge.

Clinton took these steps despite deep reservations from the Haitian ruling classes, forever suspicious of Aristide's motives. But under fierce attack from right-wingers in Congress for committing U.S. troops and resources to what they considered a perpetual failed state, Clinton pulled the soldiers out of Haiti and aborted the nation-building steps that were necessary for democracy and economic development to flourish in the hemisphere's poorest country.

At the same time, the failure to effectively pressure President Aristide and his successors to pursue reforms and respect democratic institutions further polarised and paralysed the country.

A decade later, Haiti found itself plunged into political disarray once again. In 2004, the U.S., France and Canada sent troops to escort Aristide out of the country after the president faced an armed rebellion that was a whisker away from the gates of the National Palace.

Many Haitians and liberals in the U.S. believed that Clinton's subsequent abandonment of Aristide left the Haitian leader with no real allies - and ended up reversing the gains achieved by pushing the army regime from power.

A Republic of NGOs

Haiti has come to resemble a 'Republic of NGOs,' with some 3,000 organisations - large and small - undertaking what World Bank President Robert Zoellick called 'flag-draped, feel-good projects'.

For many in Haiti, particularly the desperately poor, the most significant measure of success for Clinton's mission will be the restoration of Aristide to power a second time.

Haiti's poverty-stricken majority continue to have a visceral connection with the soft-spoken former priest, whose charisma still looms large even though he has been away for five years. Yet Aristide's popularity continues to puzzle outsiders. By most measures, his presidency was a failure.

At Aristide's former home in Tabarre, a banner celebrating the former president's birthday hangs over the black gate. Graffiti scrawled on the fading walls of the building proclaim, 'Aristide has to return soon.'

For the moment at least, Bill Clinton, who is no stranger to the art of charismatic leadership, will have to do.

*Special to IPS from The Haitian Times.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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