Whose rights? What sort of democracy?
These are the questions that must be asked of “Rights & Democracy,” a Montreal-based political group which is funded almost entirely by the Canadian government.
What does it mean to call for a government of national reconciliation? From the point of view of Haiti’s poor majority, it effectively means abandoning democracy. It means maintaining the power of a tiny economic elite to block any reforms that weaken elite control over the hemisphere’s poorest country. It means supporting a process whereby Haiti’s poor majority is told to relinquish political power to an elite incapable of winning via the ballot box. It means never confronting the “real problem” of Haiti, which is precisely the power of its tiny elite. It is the political equivalent of flipping a coin and saying: “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
Statements by Rights & Democracy have followed a pattern that belies the organization’s professions of support for either human rights or democracy. A couple of days before Aristide took office in 2001 after winning an election with over 90% of the vote (it was boycotted by parties of the elite, but a poll by the U.S. State Department confirmed Aristide’s overwhelming popularity), Rights & Democracy stated: “Mr. Aristide's election came amidst widespread doubts about his own and the [first] Préval government's commitment to democracy.”
Yet when the Canadian-backed, unelected, interim government of Gérard Latortue took power after a coup in March 2004, Rights & Democracy made no such statement. Nor has the group criticized the unconstitutional interim government’s terrible human rights record. Yet in an April 2002 press release, Rights & Democracy claimed: “the elected officials of the Lavalas Family [Aristide’s party] and representatives of ‘popular organizations’ close to that party are often implicated in the most flagrant violation of Haitian laws.”
