By G. Dunkel, Work­ers World

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of Haitians have been liv­ing in mis­ery for more than seven months — with­out houses, jobs, san­i­ta­tion, potable water or elec­tric­ity. The lucky ones have tents for shel­ter, oth­ers only tarps or sheets.

There are 1,370 offi­cially rec­og­nized camps where more than 1.7 mil­lion peo­ple live, accord­ing to the Camp Man­age­ment Coor­di­nat­ing Clus­ter. Fewer than 10,000 have been moved out to a new camp, but it is iso­lated and on bar­ren ground with­out trees, grass, stores or shops. Its sin­gle hur­ri­cane shel­ter, accord­ing to a July Al-Jazeera Fault Line pro­gram, is flimsy and far too small.

The Autonomous Fed­er­a­tion of Hait­ian Unions on Aug. 23 denounced the increased exploita­tion of the small num­ber of work­ers who still have jobs. Employ­ers are ignor­ing labor laws that reg­u­late over­time, hours and min­i­mum rates of pay and are sup­posed to pro­tect the rights of laid-off work­ers. (Haïti-Liberté, Aug. 25–31)

The major new prob­lem for the peo­ple in camps, accord­ing to a num­ber of Hait­ian com­mu­nity groups, is that pri­vate land­lords, claim­ing they own the land on which the camps are built, are forcibly evict­ing them. About one-fifth of camp res­i­dents have been evicted. The landlord’s thugs often give no notice and demand peo­ple leave in a few hours.

Deeds to land in Haiti were prob­lem­atic even before the earth­quake, which destroyed most records. The Hait­ian gov­ern­ment is reluc­tant to use emi­nent domain to block the evictions.

The gov­ern­ment is also hav­ing a great deal of dif­fi­culty obtain­ing land to dump debris; pri­vate land­lords don’t want to give up vacant land. They are bet­ting on a tourist boom in Port-au-Prince, based on what Finance Min­is­ter Ronald Beaudin said in a July press con­fer­ence: “Port-au-Prince will have elec­tric­ity 24 hours a day, will have many big hotels, with lux­u­ri­ous houses fac­ing the sea.”

In the midst of all this suf­fer­ing and chaos, the Interim Haiti Recov­ery Com­mis­sion has decided to spend $30 mil­lion on an elec­tion in Novem­ber. The IHRC, which makes all major finan­cial deci­sions for the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment, is co-chaired by for­mer U.S. Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton and Jean-Max Bel­lerive, Haiti’s prime min­is­ter. Half its mem­bers are for­eign donors.

How the gov­ern­ment will reg­is­ter and iden­tify the nearly 2 mil­lion Haitians who have lost their homes and doc­u­ments hasn’t been addressed.

The IHRC is call­ing for hur­ri­cane shel­ters for 400,000 peo­ple — about one-quarter of the peo­ple in the camps — to be built by Novem­ber. That’s when the hur­ri­cane sea­son will be over.

The power that the U.S. has over the IHRC and Haiti’s finances has led many Hait­ian pro­gres­sives and rad­i­cals to say that the U.S. has estab­lished a neo­colony in Haiti.

With the coun­try occu­pied by U.N. forces and the peo­ple fac­ing chaos, the Pro­vi­sional Elec­toral Coun­cil (CEP) has dis­qual­i­fied 15 of the 34 can­di­dates run­ning for pres­i­dent. The CEP still won’t even accept an appli­ca­tion from Fanmi Lavalas, the party of for­mer Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide and the most pop­u­lar in Haiti.

Wyclef Jean, the rap star, was one of the can­di­dates dis­qual­i­fied, sup­pos­edly because he didn’t meet a res­i­dency require­ment. Jean had told the Hait­ian press, “Don’t worry, I’m not a pop­ulist, I’m a cap­i­tal­ist.” (Ezili Danto’s blog, Aug. 29) Jean’s can­di­dacy has been the major story in the impe­ri­al­ist media.

http://www.workers.org/2010/world/haiti_0909/