Ignoring widespread opposition, the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide pushed ahead this month with a sweeping World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) that will further devastate the already precarious social and economic situation of most Haitians.
We know in all countries, SAPs cause damage,
conceded Prime
Minister Smarck Michel in a press conference earlier this month.
But, he added, we have something that makes us different from
the other countries because 3 years of the coup d'etat already
did 60% of the adjustment.
Nevertheless, the Aristide/Michel
government intends to administer the remaining 40% of
adjustments, starting with the privatization or complete
abolition of public institutions, in accordance with the Paris
Accord
of August 1994. That document, negotiated by the World
Bank and the IMF with the Aristide government, called for the
drastic
reduction of tariffs and import controls, an open
foreign investment policy,
aid to the export sector, massive
retrenchment in the public sector, the elimination of price
controls, wage restraint, and privatization.
In an Aug. 10 press conference, Prime Minister Smarck Michel
outlined some of the first state-run industries to be
democratized.
He said that Haiti's state-owned flour mill and
cement plant -- two key factories in Haiti -- will be reopened
and privatized, either through outright sale or through a
management sub-contract. Michel said that out of the 667 flour
mill workers, only 150 would remain. He also announced that
Teleco (the telephone company), EDH (the electrical authority),
and the ports and airports will also be privatized.
The union representing workers at the National Airport Authority
(AAN) denounced the cavalier and irresponsible attitude of the
prime minister.
We've inherited a bad administration that we
are in the process of correcting,
noted Henry Michel, head of
the airport workers union, adding that the state should not be
getting rid of an important source of income.
Responding to criticism, Prime Minister Michel warned that the
Haitian government had no choice but to pursue privatization. If
this structural adjustment does not succeed...the government will
face enormous budgetary problems whose consequences are
incalculable as much on the economic as on the social level,
he
said, alluding to the possibility of a complete cut-off of
international financial backing should the government not
implement the SAP. As it is, Michel said about half of the
government's budget of 4 billion gourdes (about US$267 million)
comes from international sources, and most of that in the form of
balance of payments loans and loans to pay off the principal on
Haiti's debt. (To be sure, very little of the much trumpeted $1.2
billion package of loans and aid promised by the international
community
has arrived and, as usual, the loans which have come,
immediately return to the coffers of Western banks.)
Meanwhile, on Aug. 28, several hundred students and teachers
marched through Port-au-Prince to protest the government's plans
to bring austerity measures to the state university system. Down
with privatization! Long live free quality public education!
the
demonstrators chanted. The immediate target of the students ire
was a 4-day Symposium,
to start on Aug. 29, organized by
Education Minister Emmanuel Buteau to discuss his proposals for
the university system's modernization,
a code word, similar to
democratization,
meaning privatization.
The essence of Buteau's immediate reforms is to give 25% of the government's budget for higher education to Haiti's 56 private universities (38 of which are in the capital), while making the students of the State University pay 20% of their school's budget. The result would be, for example, that a student at the College of Sciences would pay $1,088 (Haitian) instead of the present $30, an increase of 3,627%. Medical students would pay $900 instead of their present $50. Agronomy students, who were entitled completely free education, would now pay $1,559.
The large and spirited student demonstration forced postponement
of the symposium, according to Buteau, to give more time for
consultations
and debate
for the construction of this
democratic state to which we all aspire.
Student protests also forced the resignation of the State University's embattled provisional executive council, composed of intellectuals Roger Gaillard, Marie Carmelle Austin, and Michel Hector. Student groups are calling for the formation of 33 member council formed of 11 students, 11 professors, and 11 deans.
Such unrest has pushed Aristide to hold an Aug. 24 meeting with about 50 popular organizations at the National Palace. Many groups have begun to question and criticize Aristide's supposed unawareness of the march of privatization in Haiti.
At the closed door meeting, Aristide revealed that he was not as
out-of-touch as he feigned. We realized that the Haitian state
did not have enough money to finance the functioning of certain
public enterprises and that it was necessary to open them to an
injection of private capital, both Haitian and foreign.
Of course, the injection
will be more of an extraction
and it
will be above all foreign, especially with the World Bank
overseeing the democratization
of the 9 Haitian state
industries on the auction block.
But Aristide is feeling the glare of popular organizations and the heat of protest, and even spoke about the demonstration last Aug. 7 in Costa Rica, where 100,000 people took to the streets to protest against the neo-liberal reforms being implemented there.
To govern is to foresee,
Aristide said of Costa Rica, meaning
that he wants to prevent
such protests in his own country. But
it is surely to late. In addition to the college students, six
popular organizations issued an Aug. 29 statement which condemned
the government's privatization push as a measure which would
turn the Haitian people into an reserve army of unemployed for
the international bourgeoisie.
The statement also noted that
privatizing a country with a private sector which would rather
make a coup d'etat than pay their taxes, and close their
factories to bring in contraband, that is like replacing your
intestines with hay.
Meanwhile the Collective for Mobilization Against the IMF said
that the accords signed in Paris and Washington governing Haiti's
economic and political future in no way engages the Haitian
people as President Aristide would like to make believe.
Aristide, feeling such challenges to his authority, declared at
the Aug. 24 meeting: The head of state is me and me alone for
the moment.
In fact, the head of state
Aristide is trying to pass the buck
to the head of government
Smarck Michel. When the sale of the
flour mill and cement plant was announced this month, Aristide
claimed ignorance and tried to distance himself from Smarck
Michel's privatization push. I don't have a problem with the
fact that the president does 'political management' while I
handle the 'administrative management,
Michel said on Aug. 15.
Michel made it clear that Aristide was just posturing and pointed
out that he is simply following the Paris Plan
which was agreed
to before he became prime minister.
As protest mounts, however, it is becoming clear that the Aristide/Michel good cop/bad cop routine will not dupe the Haitian people for long.
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