15283: Karshan: COHA Letter to Editor of Toronto Star re: Freeing Haiti: A cautionary tale (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MKarshan@aol.com

Letter to the editor of The Toronto Star from the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs (COHA) in response to their March 30, 2003 article, `Freeing' Haiti:
A cautionary tale by Oakland Ross

To the Editor:

Your feature writer, Oakland Ross, was indeed correct in suggesting that the
fate of democracy in Haiti following the 1994 U.S. intervention does not
augur well for Iraq ("Freeing" Haiti: A Cautionary Tale, March 30). However,
lamentably, he got almost everything else wrong. To begin, he says "score one
for Lawrence Pezzullo" (the State Department's then-special envoy to Haiti).
Quite to the contrary, rather than its hero, almost every Haitian scholar
will tell you that Pezzullo was the story's rogue.

Always distrustful of Haiti's constitutionalist President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, for several years an arrogant Pezzullo singlemindedly toyed with
him, trying to marginalize or at least force the exiled Haitian leader into
power-sharing with a brutal and drug-sodden military junta. During this time,
Pezzullo never once publicly referred to Gen. Raoul Cedras' drug mafia role,
something which Ross correctly does. Incidentally, Pezzullo didn't resign as
much as he was forced out by a Congressional Black Caucus delegation which
went to President Clinton and communicated its members' rage at his
patronizing tactic of nonstop harassment of the Haitian president.

Other Aristide bashers include the leaders of such archly-conservative U.S.
agencies as the International Republic Institute and the National Endowment
of Democracy. Together with former Senator Jesse Helms, they mendaciously
portrayed Aristide as an unmanageable radical, as Castro lite. The opposition
"Democratic Convergence," a coalition of tiny, largely discredited
pro-military and other self-serving groups on the island, used the leverage
borrowed from Foreign Relations Committee chairman Helms, the aforementioned
agencies and a circle of rightwing anti-Aristide congressional activists,
along with the curious caviling of Human Rights Watch, to exercise a de facto
veto in their name to frustrate any dialogue over outstanding differences.
Since then, the strategy of these right-wing gun-slingers has been one of
economic denial, even after Aristide's rule was restored in 1994, and after
President Carter, acting as a peace broker, foolishly negotiated sending off
Gen. Cedras and his illicit millions in bribes into a golden retirement.

Ross' assertion that Aristide's rule is fraudulent is not acceptable. He does
not tell your readers the details of the year 2000 electoral scandal which he
deceptively presents as prime evidence of Aristide's skullduggery. Aristide's
enemies have used this event to freeze $500 million in desperately needed aid
promised to Haiti by donor nations, notably the U.S. Seven senate seats were
disputed, almost all of which, under any circumstances, would have been won
by Aristide's backers. But they won by a plurality rather than an absolute
majority. While there should have been a run-off, the dereliction was a minor
one, given that no one would claim that Haiti is a Switzerland. But this was
used as a pretext by Aristide's enemies to obstruct a settlement. In any
event, the holders of these seats have long since resigned at the behest of
Aristide.

As for Aristide's re-election race, while boycotted by the Convergence
because it faced a certain defeat, it was anything but a "fraud," as charged
by Ross. In fact, every international monitor called the election completely
honest.

While Aristide is not without blemishes, he is nonetheless Haiti's greatest
democratic asset. He has had to rule a country that was never adequately
reformed due, in part, to Canada and the U.S.' feckless exercise in nation
building. Your author might also have addressed himself to the sanctions
leveled against Haiti, which force most islanders to spend 10% of their daily
pittance on potable water, while rich nations perpetuate an economic
auto-da-fé against it, which is nothing less than torture on a grand scale.

Matthew Ward, Research Fellow and Larry Birns, Director
Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Washington, D.C.