Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-15-Speech-4-135"
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"en.20040115.8.4-135"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we now come to yet another extraordinarily sad topic for debate. Haiti was once seen as a glimmer of hope for slaves taken from Africa to America, who were able to join together in establishing a free republic there.
Today, 200 years after Haiti achieved independence, we cannot but note that it is poor, broken-down and wracked by violence as never before, and those who have seen the place first-hand can only sink into pessimism.
I have met the present President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, on two occasions. The first was a number of years ago, when he was still regarded as the shining light of potential democratisation in Haiti. Those who had turned out in large numbers to elect him by a large majority had believed that, having been freed from the dictatorship of Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier, they would now be able to have a new life in a bright future. This, unfortunately, turned out to be a great mistake, and he too was driven out of office. During his exile, we covertly smuggled him into the ACP-EU Joint Assembly in Santo Domingo, for we too believed that Haiti could have a good future under Aristide.
My second meeting with him was after the ACP-EU Joint Assembly in Nassau, when I had the honour of leading a delegation that the Committee on Development and Cooperation sent to Haiti. It was apparent from this encounter that we are dealing with a man who no longer has any idea where he is coming from, but that is not, in my view, the worst of it. We are dealing with someone whose views are akin to fascism – there is no other way of putting it – and who treats all democratic institutions with utter contempt. So it is that Haiti has, for the past three days, again been without a parliament, as the term of office for the deputies expired on 12 January and there is no prospect of new elections. There are, admittedly, still a handful of senators in the second chamber, but that does not legitimise anything. What we are seeing here is a failure to hold elections, the falsification of ballots, the intimidation of the electorate, of whom – as was apparent the last time – only some 5% turn out to vote, most preferring to stay at home where they feel safer. Such is day-to-day political life in Haiti.
It is not always possible to separate political and criminal forces. Death squads dispose of those opposition elements who incur the regime’s displeasure, and journalists who try to maintain something like standards of independent reporting are persecuted and even killed. I could go on in this vein for hours. We will have to support those forces that are combating these abuses; the caravans of hope are coming together. We should be supporting these forces in the hope that things in Haiti may take a turn for the better."@en1
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