Haiti
Lavalas: A Fork in the Road
The Lavalas movement, which made possible the downfall of the Duvalier dictatorship, has divided its paths. The Lavalas Family (FL), headed by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the Lavalas Political Organization have manifested the differences in the policies, proposals and leadership. The die is cast, and Haiti can be playing its future in this bet.
Gérard Pierre-Charles
In today's Haiti, political decisions have more influence than ever before on the continuity of the democratic process, the consolidation of institutions and the improvement of the population's living conditions. That, in turn, gives great weight to the issues of organization, leadership, program and priorities that come up in the Haitian transition process, so rich in content.
Lavalas Was Born Of StruggleDuring one whole stage of this transition, the essential set of problems revolved around struggling against Duvalier totalitarianism and its military-Macoutist derivatives. During that struggle, the movement's spontaneous expressions to recover our historic rights began to acquire organization at the local, sectoral, union or peasant levels, until finally turning into a potent movement for change and democracy.
In 1990, the political-electoral expression of that social movement, under the messianic leadership of Jean Bertrand Aristide, a priest of the "small church," took the name Lavalas. Following Haiti's first free elections, the new Aristide government intuitively and anarchically tried to address some of the demands of this movement during the seven months it remained in office.
The coup of September 30, 1991, the three years of military government that followed and the patriotic resistance that it triggered strengthened grassroots unity around the goal of returning to democracy. That led the way to a stage of restructuring the democratic and grassroots movement.
The Stage of InstitutionalizationThe institutionalization process began with the municipal, legislative and presidential elections of 1995. Aristide had already returned and his leadership and populist governmental experience had already begun to unfold (October 1995-February 1996).
With the formation of the parliament and the installation of the municipal governments, the movement began to affirm its moves toward structure under the name Lavalas Political Organization. With the majority in the parliament, this structure began to project itself as a democratic and grassroots party, determined to promote the institutionalization and modernization of the political and social system.
The new President, René Préval, was the ideological and political standard bearer of Aristide's work, and he took on the mission of guaranteeing the continuity of Lavalas power. But at the same time he had to officially distance himself from certain practices and declarations so as to facilitate his acceptance by certain sectors of the opposition. He also had to assume critical positions with respect to his predecessor to make negotiations with the international financial agencies easier.
Divergences at a Crucial MomentPresident Préval yielded to the democratic and constitutional norms consecrated by an autonomous parliament, respecting its conditions for choosing a Prime Minister to head the government. The post went to Rosny Smarth of Lavalas, who undertook a policy of equilibrium, putting together a government encompassing all the tendencies of Lavalas to implement the reforms that circumstances required.
The Prime Minister's tasks and his collaboration with the President became more difficult by the day, given a dichotomy of political options. Beyond the speeches and slogans about unity, their concepts of power and administration diverged greatly with respect to questions about control of the government apparatus, modernization of political practices and programmatic options. The latter were inspired by differing preferences for pragmatic measures and improvised ones for populist consumption.
This divergence around options was particularly significant at a moment in which the contradictions of globalization and neoliberalism were demanding important decisions on the economic plane. Modernizing the state, inspired by the need to reform archaic institutions worn threadbare by corruption, implied personnel cuts and changes in the management of state enterprises, all in the framework of a public policy financed by international institutions.
Furthermore, decisions were imposed concerning social services—the promotion of education, health and forms of income redistribution—to satisfy the needs of the poorest segments of the population, particularly those most vulnerable to increased costs of living and to unemployment. As could be expected, the economic reforms and modernization, indispensable to guaranteeing international development aid, elicited skepticism from the population, and cost Lavalas some of the political revenue it had accumulated. In such conditions, the building of democracy itself faced tough options. The choice was between routine, blind subordination and demagogy or the valiant search for a development style in accord with the needs of our society.
Populism or DemocracyThe dichotomy in the Lavalas movement in its current phase, in which the truths have become visible, expresses a whole set of differences in political conceptions, principles of public organization and administration, and attitudes toward the people. This dichotomy is definitively related to the very foundations of institutionality, democracy and effective change.
The contradictions within Lavalas became perfectly visible to the nation as a whole and to Haiti's friends abroad during the April 1997 elections of a third of the Senate and territorial Assembly delegates. The acts of violence and fraud that laced the vote count and the fact that three of the nine senatorial candidates for the Aristide sector were former military officers showed that two different options were struggling to control the movement's leadership and future orientation.
These differences are the fruit of the recent process Haiti has been going through. As often happens in the history of societies, the need to strengthen state authority is felt more strongly at the end of a long transition marked by turbulence and the questioning of an entire political or social system.
The key question, then, is this: On what basis should it be strengthened: that of legitimacy and legality or that of authoritarian power? Faced with this choice and the decisions it implies, an historic fork appeared in the Lavalas movement's road. This bifurcation is now at the forefront of Haiti's political stage.
Aristide's ProjectOne of the tendencies, already underway, corresponds to a project with an authoritarian character, whose signs became evident in April's anti-democratic operation, which availed itself of the electoral fraud. It is a project based on Aristide's leadership and built upon the visible derivations of his governmental experience and his already announced intention to return to power in the year 2001. It is also a project with a conservative character, which would use elements of traditional power including suspect former military officers and paramilitary apparatuses.
Aristide's project would also use powerful financial means that would come from control of the state, and for its consolidation would use ideological and propagandistic manipulations of a populist and nationalist stripe.
Under cover of pragmatism, this project wants to flout the rule of law to build a system of power that would guarantee the best conditions for reproducing the privileges of its charismatic chief, the most retrograde oligarchy and a restricted circle of opportunists.
The Popular ProjectThe other tendency is designing a democratic and popular project of a new sort. It is being put forward as an alternative to carry out the necessary transformation of society and construct a political system in accord with democratic principles.
This project is trying to break with the traditional practices of power and with the oligarchy, and to base its action on the conscious participation of the citizenry, invited to contribute to the work of building a nation in the framework of a social pact. It is a project conceived and set in motion by a political formation with a pluralist and modern vocation, based on a program that aims to be the basis of a development adapted to both the requirements of globalization and the building of an autonomous national space in tune with the country's economic, cultural and social realities.
Dangerous CrossroadsAt this crossroads, if neither of the two projects growing out of the historic 1986 movement succeeds in imposing itself through its capacity to convince people, and to organize and guarantee its own administration; and if these two currents do not then manage to negotiate a serious political agreement that allows the rectification of the most negative tendencies that are emerging, we could end up witnessing the dramatic crumbling of the Lavalas movement. It should be recalled that this same movement created the basis for an unprecedented unity of the Haitian people in 1990, instilling in it the dream of "gambling on something," and outlining a utopia to build.
This failure could endanger the entire popular and democratic movement and the governability of the system. It could also open the way to efforts to restore the most retrograde forces of the past, which would compromise even the future life of this nation, whose sovereignty is already so scourged, and the capacity to guarantee its population any well-being. It would be the failure of the Haitian people's historic project.
Only with DemocracyDemocracy is the political context for the refounding of Haiti as a nation. In its goal of being as participatory as possible, with neither exclusivity nor exclusion, Haitian democracy is attempting to involve the majority of Haitians in the work of economic, social and human progress, which should make a genuine nation of our country. Democracy guarantees the strengthening of the institutions, the success of any sustainable development program that would assure continuous and integrating progress and the promotion of the diverse socioeconomic sectors that are the basis of our community and our country.
Only democracy can create conditions in which the public sector can fully develop. And in terms of infrastructure administration and promotion, modernization of this sector guarantees basic services to the population. Democracy also creates the conditions for development of the private sector, whose initiatives at the level of production and commercial transactions should help lay the groundwork for a national economy of services and exports. And finally only democracy creates conditions so that the sectors of popular, peasant, informal and communal economy can develop. They are called upon to achieve a dynamism that develops their capacity to contribute to national production and food security, in the framework of decentralization and with a systematic policy of credit and technical assistance.
Democracy Will Be DevelopmentThe socioeconomic framework thus becomes a challenge and a condition of first magnitude for the construction of democracy. Promoting sustainable development in equality constitutes an imperative to the guarantee of public safety and social peace.
Development is a difficult objective, since it requires capital, education levels, production capacities and a growing articulation with the world market. And to put this whole development structure together, the stimulating and regulating action of the state is indispensible, both on the administrative level and in confronting the problems for which the market has no answers in such a poverty-stricken country as Haiti.
The strategy we need implies fertile linkages and a complex interrelation among the state, the grassroots economy and the national and international private sector. We need a strategy that can provide those sectors with optimal conditions for their reproduction and their integration into an expanding economy. We need a strategy that can guarantee essential social services to the population that will allow it to emerge from its marginality and join the market.
This framework would guarantee the basis for balanced development: national integration, social justice and the appropriate insertion of our country into the international context in these years; years in which the celebration of the bicentennial of our national independence is being prepared.
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