19548: Esser: Coup d'etat in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Jamaica Observer
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/

Coup d'etat in Haiti

Monday, March 01, 2004

The deed is done.
Haiti has been raped.
The act was sanctioned by the United States, Canada and France.

For despite the fig leaf of constitutionality with which these
Western powers, and supposed bastions of democracy, have sought to
shroud the act, what happened in Haiti yesterday was nothing short of
a coup d'etat.

Indeed, having pressured President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into
resigning and going into exile, these powers have firmly placed their
imprimatur on a politics that rewards violence and a process that
abjures principle in favour of narrow ideological positions and
personality preferences.

It is a lesson that Caribbean countries, and particularly Caricom
states - which may feel a certain coziness about their democracy -
ought to take seriously. For if they thought otherwise,
democratically-elected leaders are easily expendable if they, at a
particular time, do not fit the profile in favour with those who are
strong and powerful.

It is an issue that Caricom leaders must seriously contemplate when
they discuss the Haiti issue in Kingston tomorrow. These islands are
all vulnerable.

The truth be told, Mr Aristide was never the flavour of the Parisian
set, the inside-the-beltway crowd of Washington or the new Canadians.
And hardly was Mr Aristide ever going to be the favourite of the
types in Haiti who fomented yesterday's coup d'etat, who engineered
his previous overthrow in 1991, and who have been the fulcrum of real
power in pre-Aristide dictatorships, even if they did not directly
hold the reins of Government.

For all his faults and flaws, Mr Aristide represented something very
fundamental in Haiti. A possibility. The possibility of the assertion
of Haiti's majority. Its under-class.

Stripped to its core, this, fundamentally, has been what the
demonstrations and unrest in Haiti these past several months, have
been about. Indeed, no one who has followed the debate, as
articulated by the official Opposition, has heard the enunciation of
a cogent and coherent position, except the demand for Mr Aristide's
resignation.

That demand was superimposed on allegations of corruption and
irregularities in the elections of 2000, which were boycotted by the
Opposition. The truth, though, is that no one has credibly questioned
that Mr Aristide's victory represented the will of the Haitian
electorate. And if election irregularities were a substantial part of
the reason for Mr Aristide's removal, then the United States would
perhaps wish to examine the conduct of its own poll at around the
same time that Mr Aristide was facing Haitian voters.

Which, really, is the crux of the matter. Mr Aristide was the
legitimately-elected president of Haiti.

But Messrs Powell, de Villepin and Graham, having reneged on their
endorsement of a Caribbean Community initiative, under which Mr
Aristide undertook to share power with his opponents, deemed that the
Haitian president was expendable. The niceties of democracy were
thrown out the window, and the matters of principle so vigorously
defended by President Chirac and Foreign Minister de Villepin over
Iraq were quickly shunted aside. And new Canadians went with the flow.
Having seen the back of Mr Aristide, trampled on the considered
position of their friends in the Caribbean, and welcoming a putsch in
Haiti, the troika is ready to sanction a UN-backed peace-keeping
mission to Haiti to restore order and DEMOCRACY!
There are several lessons here for Caricom, not least of which is the
imperative of the region getting its economic act together so that
its voice can be heard beyond its appeals for economic aid. Also,
last July, Mr Owen Arthur placed on the agenda the proposal for a
Caricom security system. This demands attention.
.