By Kristen Shane, Embassy News, September 17, 2014
If Haiti doesn’t soon hold long-delayed elections, its elected president could rule by decree, a situation the Canadian government says is “of great concern.”
Canada hasn’t gone as far as to publicly threaten withdrawing its aid if Haiti doesn’t hold elections soon, but it “continues to strongly call on Haitian political authorities to make sure they manage ongoing political and institutional issues in a way that does not impede development efforts,” according to a Sept. 11 email from Alex Asselin, a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.
This is the same line the department used last August in a press release after International Development Minister Christian Paradis visited Haiti in his first international trip since being appointed the minister in charge of foreign aid.
“The continued delays in the senate, local and municipal elections, which, under the Haitian constitution, should have taken place in 2011, are of great concern to Canada,” Mr. Asselin continued. “We urge all political stakeholders to increase their efforts so that credible, fair and inclusive elections can take place in 2014, in order to ensure the continuity of Parliament (the Senate) after January 2015.”
Canada’s cajoling echoes the same kind of language used by the United Nations secretary general and the United States permanent representative to the UN.
Mr. Paradis announced in June that Haiti would remain on the Canadian government’s aid priority-country list, even as the government continued to review its long-term engagement with the Caribbean state. That review, announced almost two years ago, was still ongoing as of Sept. 11.
Vote put off
The Haitian government was hoping to hold elections for two-thirds of the Senate, the entire lower chamber of deputies, municipal administrations and local councils by Oct. 26. But in August, the country’s electoral council scrapped that timeline because a necessary electoral law was being held up in the Senate.
For months, the Haitian executive and opposition politicians, including six in the Senate, have accused each other of blocking the elections. The senators refuse to help pass changes to the electoral law because they say the process the president has set up is unfair. President Michel Martelly argues that he has agreed to many concessions.
Aid donors like Canada and the US, multilateral groups working in Haiti like the Organization of American States and the UN and Haitians themselves have urged politicians to come to a compromise to hold elections this year. The terms of 10 senators are due to expire in January, which would leave the Senate unable to make quorum.
Sandra Honoré, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special representative to Haiti, told the UN Security Council on Sept. 11 that “given the need for logistic preparations, the window for holding the elections before the end of the year is now rapidly closing,” according to a Miami Herald report.
Without elections by early 2015, the elected president could rule by decree according to the country’s constitution, Haitian Ambassador Frantz Liautaud acknowledged in a Sept. 9 interview.
Mr. Liautaud said he hoped that the politicians involved would come to an understanding soon in order to hold elections in the first couple months of 2015.
“The president has already given a lot of concessions. He wants elections. It's the few extremists in the Senate that are blocking things. Serious parties want them. It is very important to have them,” said the ambassador.
While Haiti has advanced over the past few years in areas like public health, the economy and security, “if [the elections] don’t happen in early 2015, the atmosphere for the presidential elections at the end of [that] year could get poisoned,” said Stephen Baranyi, a University of Ottawa associate professor who studies Canadian aid and justice reforms in Haiti.
It would be nice if Canada or anybody else on the outside could fix it, but the history of external intervention in the Caribbean country has not been good, he said. Countries like Canada have been trying to keep a fine balance between keeping the pressure on Haitian authorities to hold elections while also giving space to politicians to air out concerns about the conditions for free and fair elections, he said.
Haiti is one of Canada’s largest aid programs, giving the Great White North some sway over its southern counterpart. The Haitian diaspora is also strong in Quebec, and especially in Montreal, giving Haiti political importance in Canada.
During a meeting with Haitian diaspora members in Montreal in August, Mr. Paradis announced $8.7 million toward technical and material support to organize elections and local electoral observation in Haiti, as part of a $19.5 million package committed in 2009.
“I...don’t think the international community...have much of an option except to continue to use a finely calibrated sticks and carrots approach,” said Mr. Baranyi.
At least one observer has suggested that donor countries could suspend aid if the elections don't happen and the president rules by decree.
“That would not be very democratic and donors will argue that their funds cannot flow to Haiti if that situation occurs,” wrote Mark Schneider, a senior vice president with the International Crisis Group who studies Haiti, in a July op-ed for the Huffington Post.
US legislators in April threatened to hold up $300 million in aid if they didn’t get guarantees Haitian authorities were working to hold free and fair elections. US Secretary of State John Kerry in May assured Congress that they were.
While Canada insists that “holding elections in 2014 is a necessary step towards advancing and reinforcing democratic stability in Haiti,” one longtime observer of Haiti-Canada relations, who asked not to be named in order to be frank, suggested that Canada wouldn’t cut aid to Haiti because the political risks are too high.
Plus, the observer said, it would only penalize the poor, not the political elites who are throwing the brakes on democracy.
Aid freeze?
While pushing for elections, Canada announced in January 2013 that it was reviewing its long-term engagement with Haiti.
At the time, the then-international co-operation minister, Julian Fantino, was quoted saying that Canada had frozen aid to Haiti, an admission that took Haitians by surprise and prompted criticism from Canadian aid partners.
The government quickly toned down the talk of a freeze, but announced the review and Mr. Fantino noted in a statement what he called slow progress of development in Haiti and a need for the Haitian government to provide greater leadership, accountability and transparency “so that they can take a greater role in the development of their country.”
Mr. Liautaud said he’s felt continuity in Canadian aid projects, “even though it will be probably clearer for everybody that we know that this follows a specific policy,” he said.
Mr. Baranyi pointed to an online list of Canadian aid projects in Haiti that includes more than $60 million in projects started in 2013 and 2014. Besides the electoral support, Mr. Paradis announced in August $1.75 million in humanitarian aid to be funnelled through Oxfam-Québec.
“[O]ngoing development projects continue, and Canada remains prepared to offer support in response to humanitarian needs,” noted Mr. Asselin, the DFATD spokesperson.
The whole-of-government review continues, he said.
Nevertheless, Canada reconfirmed Haiti as an aid focus country in June. It’s one of 25 countries to which Canada funnels 90 per cent of its bilateral aid. The review, said Mr. Asselin, aims to “maximize the impact and sustainability of our future development efforts” and “will define in more detail” the focus-country decision.
He wouldn’t speak directly as to why the review has taken close to two years or whether its conclusion is tied to Haitian elections.
Mr. Baranyi said that that cabinet-level review has converged with other program reviews. That and the Haitian domestic political dysfunction are combining to cause delays, he suggested.
But, he said, that doesn’t mean the process is stalled. He said he understood from his conversations with folks in government that the cabinet review and a separate evaluation by bureaucrats of the former Canadian International Development Agency’s country program for Haiti, are moving along.
The Globe and Mail, based on government documents from fall 2012, reported last year that the government had planned to lower Canadian annual aid to Haiti to about $90 million per year, after highs reached in the years following a 2010 earthquake.
Mutual accountability deal
Besides the elections, Canada had been pushing Haiti to sign a mutual accountability framework, but appears to have put that effort on ice for now.
The Canadian government wants to sign such documents with all its aid focus countries, it announced in June. It inked its first with Senegal last November.
The deal would “be a cornerstone of our engagement with Haiti,” said Mr. Asselin.
“These frameworks establish mutual expectations; stress the importance of Canadian principles and values; establish greater transparency and predictability in how investments are spent; and set clear targets for the results Canada and its partners want to achieve.”
The Senegalese document, for instance, sets out an amount that Canada will look to fund Senegal over five years, and the conditions under which that funding will flow.
Mr. Paradis said in a May interview that “we need a mutual accountability framework” with Haiti and that “it’s a work in progress.”
Mr. Asselin said in his email this month that “A Mutual Accountability framework will be negotiated upon completion of Canada’s review.”
Speaking in terms of the elections and the accountability document, Mr. Paradis said in May, “if we want to go government to government, or more than this, we need to clarify all of these aspects. And they clearly get that.”
Canada doesn’t currently give any funding to the Haitian government, Mr. Asselin confirmed. Instead, it works with non-governmental organizations, private sector firms and multilateral groups.
The Haitian ambassador said less than one per cent of aid to his country goes through Haitian government channels.
“So if we are very much concerned about accountability, we have to address the people who actually are managing your funds,” said Mr. Liautaud. “Somewhere 98, 99 per cent is being handled by somebody else. And I don’t hear anybody being concerned by getting the accountability for it.”
Mr. Baranyi said Canada does demand accountability from the groups that put to use Canadian money in Haiti. But he agreed with Mr. Liautaud’s point that it’s hard to talk about accountability for results when Canada funnels so little aid through the Haitian government.
He said the Senegalese deal looks solid, and if the starting point for negotiations with Haiti is similar, that could be positive for both sides. But, he said, he’d like to see more transparency about negotiations.
Mr. Liautaud said Canada and Haiti appear to agree that the point of aid is to create sustainable development so it’s no longer needed and a country can stand on its own two feet.
“It’s just how to implement it. Where there is a will, there is a way.”