Ja: Suck it up, Patterson

Prime Minister P J Patterson said yesterday that he would personally have "great difficulty" sitting around the same table with Haitian rebel leaders who helped oust President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

But the Jamaican leader suggested his aversion to the men who helped drive Aristide from power would not necessarily translate to a suspension of Haiti from the Caribbean Community (Caricom) when regional leaders meet here today to decide on their response to what they see as a coup d'etat in a member state.

In fact, Patterson told reporters that when Caricom welcomed Haiti into the 15-member trade and economic grouping in 1998, part of the ideal was to end the country's "decades of isolation to help promote the growth of institutional democracy".

"To those objectives we still remain committed," the Jamaican prime minister said.

I'd have continued with the same respect for PM Patterson had he not said this. Apparently, Patterson couldn't bear to sit at the table with Aristide either; where was Patterson when Haiti celebrated its independence a while back? Like the rest of the Caricom heads, Patterson was missing in action; like his fellow heads of state, he didn't want to seem to be conferring legitimacy on Aristide when there were issues about the election. The issue is not so much the rebels, I am inclined to think, but that Caricom's initiative (vis-a-vis power sharing between Aristide and the rebels) was proven to be unsuccessful after the heads vested so much time and energy in it. Word to Patterson: you sucked it up with Aristide, continue sucking it up with the new government in Haiti.

In the same article, there is this:

Patterson said that Caricom would also have to take into account the unanimous passage of a resolution, by the United Nations Security Council authorising the presence of an international peace keeping force in Haiti.

"We hope it will have the desired objective of ensuring the rule of law, the restoration of peace and order in that country," Patterson said. "We also have to look to the welfare and interest of the Haitian people themselves who remain our paramount concern."

On the one hand, I respect Caricom's regard for the rule of law; on the other hand, I deplore their narrow focus on that almost to the exclusion of the humanitarian. There has to be a middle ground between the two.