No Quick Action by Parliament on Amnesty Seen

Passage of an amnesty for Haiti’s military, a key part of the agreement for the resignation and removal of the Caribbean nation’s military leaders, will be troubled at the very least, Haitian observers said Sunday night.

Any expectation of quick action by the Haitian Parliament is likely to be frustrated, they said, by the complexities of Haitian politics both before and after the ouster of democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The accord negotiated by President Clinton’s three emissaries calls for Haitian military commander Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, chief of staff Brig. Gen. Philippe Biamby and the Port-au-Prince police chief, Lt. Col. Michel-Joseph Francois, to give up power when an amnesty law is passed, or on Oct. 15, whichever comes first. Supporters of the military regime predicted Sunday that the matter would be pushed to the Oct. 15 deadline.

“The Americans may not be in danger, but we could drive them crazy with frustration,” said one Haitian opponent of Aristide. “It’ll take the Americans ordering Cedras and Biamby to leave on Oct. 15, and that will prove that this is an occupation.”

“This amnesty business is going to make the Americans look like fools,” said another Haitian political source after the agreement was announced. “They think Aristide’s return will mean democracy. It looks to me like the Americans are going to have to carry this thing out right to Oct. 15.”

One problem will be that Haiti has two rival Senates. There is the Senate that existed before the military-led coup that ousted Aristide on Sept. 30, 1991. And there is the Senate that was voted in last year in an election called by the military’s appointed puppet government, then headed by Prime Minister Marc Bazin.

The 1993 election was never recognized by the international community or accepted by Aristide or his followers.

But an additional complication is that Aristide, who never formed a real political party, did not command a majority in either house of Haiti’s Parliament. Many of the parliamentarians who backed him when he was elected had already dropped their support before he was sent into exile. So it is not certain that there are enough votes to pass a bill that could hasten the restoration of Aristide’s government, even with the return of those legislators who had fled in fear in recent months.

With so many legislators having fled or gone into hiding, the Parliament has not been able to form a quorum for most of the last two years and there has been no official meeting of the entire legislature this year.

A Haitian source close to Col. Francois said there will be little resistance to the American military presence, “but that does not mean there will be cooperation with either the Americans or Aristide.”

“We will drive them crazy by doing what we always do--delay, refuse to cooperate and even lie. Aristide is still supported by the people, but not by the elite or the military and not by the government work force.

“What are you (Americans) going to do? Make government workers go to work? And what if Aristide tries to fire a bunch of them?”

This source laughed when told that U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher called the Haitian judicial system “a sound legal structure” that could deal with people suspected of crimes and human rights violations not covered by an amnesty.

“Even in good times, it didn’t work,” the source said. “The idea that it will be able to deal with disputes, particularly if Aristide does try to prosecute anyone, is both funny and horrifying.”

The announcement of the agreement to remove the military leaders left unspecified the fate of Haiti’s 7,000-man army. U.S. policy regarding the army has varied over the last three years; at times, officials have said that it would have to be completely dismantled, but at others, they have called for it to be left intact but retrained.