With parliamentary and presidential elections in Haiti on the horizon, possibly in November, there are indications of significant shifts in policies , both in Washington and Port au Prince, to improve the human rights climate in that Caribbean nation.

Rickey Singh

This includes ending the policy of long imprisonment, without charges and court trials, of presumed political prisoners and advocates of violence.

Since September last year there have been more than 900 reported killings by armed political gangs and criminals, despite the presence of a 7,000 plus UN peace-keeping force.

Former Haitian prime minister, Yvonne Neptune, is expected to be one of the immediate beneficiaries of this unfolding policy that has come in the face of the appointment of new United States ambassador assigned to Port au Prince and with increasing pressures on the interim regime of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue from the United Nations.

Arrested since last year for alleged murder, Neptune, who was prime minister under the administration of deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was only charged after months of protests at home, in the region and internationally for him to be placed before the courts or be set free.

Bertrand Aristide

A recent significant voice for the immediate release of Neptune was that, last week, of UN special envoy to Haiti, Juan Gabriel Valdes, who said the former Haitian prime minister's continuing imprisonment was a source of deep concern for Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the UN Security Council itself, according to a Reuters report.

Latest political developments suggest a deal that involved key American and Haitian players for the release of some high-profile political prisoners who have been associated with killings and political violence during the administrations of Aristide as well those that followed the downfall of his government in February 2004 with the support of the USA.

One of the best known of such prisoners, recently released, is a frontline leader of the notorious former CIA-funded anti-Aristide organisation, FRAPH, Louis Jodel Chamblain, who had fled to the USA after Aristide was returned to power under the Bill Clinton administration.

Gerard Latortue

Critics of US policy on Haiti and of the interim regime in Port au Prince argue that it is simply untenable to have Chamblain freed from detention while Neptune remains a prisoner.

Leading human rights organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch continue to point to the threats to Haiti's future by armed groups, both supporters and opponents of Aristide's Lavalas Family Party.

Like another controversial, violent anti-Aristide campaigner and beneficiary of US intelligence support, Guy Philippe, Chamblain is not without ambitions for high political office. There will have to be close monitoring by the UN peace-keeping forces in Haiti to prevent influential elements like Chamblain and Phillippe disrupting arrangements for the coming elections.

While the Electoral Council is pressing ahead - amid continuing political tension and sporadic killings and violence - to complete an electoral roll for the parliamentary and presidential elections, those who remain pessimistic about such elections this year have reminded that the local government elections, originally scheduled for October, have already been postponed.

By last week, the Electoral Council was still below 50 per cent of its targeted four million eligible voters on the election roll. But the Latortue administration is hopefully to have at least more than two million armed with the laminated identification cards in readiness to vote in the forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.

At the close of nominations last week, there were some 63 parties registered to contest the elections, among them that of Aristide's Lavalas, which is still reputed to be the most popular mass-based organisation of all contenders for state power.

But Aristide, who remains in exile in South Africa, will not be in Haiti to assist Lavalas, which could face an internal leadership problem of its own, especially in the choice of a presidential candidate.

This possibility looms larger, according to some Haitian human rights activists, since the arrest on a charge of murder of the priest and political activist friend of Aristide, Fr Gerard Jean-Juste.

He is accused of the kidnapping and murder last month of the popular Haitian journalist and poet, Jacques Roche, a crime he firmly denies amid conflicting reports that he was in Miami at the time of Roche's death.

Kidnappings for ransom has been on the increase - a concern for the UN peace-keeping mission, the Latortue regime as well as the US government, which has allocated some US$2. 5 million to assist the administration in Port au Prince to expedite the reform over a system that leads to arbitrary detention and lengthy imprisonment without charges.

A clear signal that the Latortue administration and the US State Department might be signing from the same hymn sheet on ending arbitrary detention, with pro-Aristide elements and Lavalas activists being affected, came last week when new Justice Minister Henri Dorlean publicly declared his opposition to judges and prosecutors misusing their powers to keep people in prison in violation of Haitian laws.

According to a Reuters report outof Port au Prince, Dorlean estimated that approximately 95 per cent of the 1,300 pisoners at the national penitentiary had been jailed for months without being charged or tried. A similar situation existing in the country's other prisons.

Human rights advocates view Dorlean as a "breath of fresh air" in Latortue's administration since his replacement in June of the controversial Bernard Gousse, who was forced to resign. Ex-prime minister Neptune was one of the leading sufferers of Gousse's concept of administration of the criminal justice system.

Meanwhile, in another significant development, the US State Department has decided to replace Tom Foley, its ambassador to Haiti, with Tim Carney, who was America's ambassador in Port au Prince during the 1990s.

What perhaps makes Carney's appointment significant, is the fact that until his nomination to replace Foley, he was chairman of the Haiti Democracy Project in Washington, an organisation known for some sharp criticisms of the George Bush administration's policies and strategies on Haiti.

However encouraging the signals from the Latortue regime and its backers in Washington, the reality is that life for the Haitian masses remain quite grim as the poverty-stricken nation lurch from crisis to crisis.

Indeed, the prevailing mood, based on various reports, point to serious doubts that the coming elections would indeed herald a new beginning for democratic governance and a brake on political violence, corruption, fear and grinding poverty.