What is at risk in Haiti
Power Shift In Haiti Puts Rights at Risk
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 7, 2004; Page A01
…By many measures, Aristide failed to fulfill the democratic promise of his 1990 election, which ended nearly two centuries of military-backed government in Haiti. The former Roman Catholic priest, who helped topple the Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986, practiced a winner-take-all politics by packing all levels of government with his partisans and employing armed gangs to intimidate political opponents.
Within his imperfect democracy, however, sprouted the beginnings of a government that was more responsive to Haiti's poor and willing for the first time to take on difficult human rights prosecutions -- at least against its enemies. Now those tentative openings may disappear as the political power shifts back from Aristide's mostly poor followers to a group of former military officers, traditionally the enforcement arm of Haiti's economic elite, who have reentered politics at the head of a rebel army.
Literacy programs, laws to raise living standards for the vast majority of Haitians who live in poverty, and judicial reforms that brought seminal prosecutions of military and paramilitary figures for past crimes are suddenly at risk. So, too, is Haiti's weak democracy as an appointed government struggles to guide the country until its next elections.
