Haiti is a long way from the Middle East but very close to the United States. It might be thought therefore that Washington, in its role as world cop, would be closely involved in trying to sort out the growing divisions in this Caribbean state. However, in public the most the Americans will say is that they are “disappointed” in the performance of the man they sponsored as president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Formerly a charismatic slum priest, Aristide enjoyed widespread support when he became president. The majority of the population believed that Aristide at last represented real change. The new president was doomed to disappoint many. This is the inevitable first failure of any new leader brought in with a reform mandate after years of political darkness. It might have been thought, however, that Aristide, backed by US cash, could have made some early gains — such as repairing and rebuilding hospitals and schools, raising the salaries of nurses, doctors, teachers and policemen and starting job-creation schemes to improve dilapidated towns and cities.
Sadly, virtually none of this happened. Aristide proved long on stirring rhetoric but short on the power to push through change. For this, the Americans are now blaming him but they are in fact not being entirely fair. Haiti has no effective civil service and no infrastructure which could implement reform. Power in the island has always been implemented by the messenger with the presidential order who simply demanded that this or that be done or supplied. Though they installed Aristide and for a while opened their money chests, the Americans never helped provide the new president with the tools he needed to make real reforms. If they imagined that their nominee had sufficient organizational ability to undertake the task himself, they were woefully wrong. It is hard not to feel sorry for the now beleaguered Haitian president as his supporters and opponents square up for what could very easily become serious civil conflict. If only Washington had expanded its support to include the creation and reform of the island’s threadbare institutions and infrastructure, Aristide and the hopes for change would not have failed so miserably. It will be much harder next time to convince Haitians that a real reformer has arrived.
Though it will disappoint his core supporters, Aristide should probably quit if he can be sure that his departure will stop, rather than advance, the chance of civil war. But then what next? There is going to be no enduring change in Haiti without solid and substantial backing from Washington. Haiti is not an oil-producing state but its wretched poverty, so close to the US, ought to produce in its neighbor, great quantities of shame which would lead to positive action.
