Haiti: The dissipation of trust

Nonetheless, we had hoped that Caribbean Community governments would have been able to fashion an agreement which would have allowed for a fuller engagement of Haiti by the community, for the benefit of the Haitian people, without the need for the region having to abandon fundamental principles.
These principles were enunciated clearly by Jamaica in March after the coup that ousted Jean Bertrand-Aristide.

Prime Minister Patterson warned that if democratic institutions are up-ended and armed gangs allowed to over-run constitutional arrangements in Haiti, then no leader or government is safe from such extra-constitutional actions. Indeed, fundamental principles of democracy and constitutional rule ought not to be diminished on the basis of personality or who might have aided the efforts to undermine them.

Jamaica, and others, however, sought to reconcile the maintenance of these principles, the objective political situation in Haiti, the pragmatic issue of power relations in this hemisphere and to find constructive ways to help the Haitian people.
Unfortunately for Caricom, and particularly that group of leaders who were inclined to an early normalisation of relations with Haiti, the interim government of Gerard Latortue either does not care or is incapable of understanding such nuanced political and diplomatic issues.

Mr Latortue's administration can hardly have said to have done enough to build confidence among members and supporters of Mr Aristide's Lavalas party, who continue to be the victims of violence and intimidation from anti-Aristide elements.
There is also genuine concern that Mr Latortue's government is not moving fast enough to put in the arrangements to create the environment in which there can eventually be free and fair elections and a return to constitutional and democratic government.

If anyone had faith that Mr Latortue would move to build this confidence, it would have been severely eroded by this week's acquittal of murder of the former death squad leader Joel Chamblain and a co-defendant, Jackson Joanis.
Chamblain was the former army member who helped lead the rebel army that overthrew Mr Aristide in February. They were declared heroes by Mr Latortue.

In his earlier incarnation in the early 1990s, Mr Chamblain was leader of an organisation called FRAPH that was accused or murdering 3,000 Haitians during the period leading to the first overthrow of Mr Aristide.
In the aftermath of Mr Aristide's second overthrow, Mr Chamblain, Haiti's newly-declared hero, cynically announced that he was giving himself up to answer a murder charge. After a secretive trial, he was freed.

Mr Latortue himself could hardly believe that this was a process of justice and honestly argue that his was a way to build trust that Haiti is on its way to a real democracy.
If Mr Latortue doesn't believe it, who will? Therein lies the dilemma for Caricom and others in this hemisphere.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/editorial/html/20040818t220000-0500_64790_obs_the_dissipation_of_trust.asp