19608: Lemieux: The Guardian (UK): Various Editorial comments about regime change (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>


'The new regime could be worse'

Observers welcome Aristide's departure, but fear for the
country's future

Tuesday March 2, 2004
The Guardian

Wall Street Journal Europe
Editorial, March 1
"About the best thing that can be said about President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's misrule in Haiti is that he
finally abandoned it [on Sunday] to save himself, thus
sparing his country further bloodshed ...

"The French, Canadian and American governments had all
concluded that Mr Aristide had to go, and the rebels
marching on the capital of Port-au-Prince have paused to
give the petty despot a chance to depart on his own ... We
all hope that Mr Aristide's departure will now lance the
boil and allow the country time and calm enough to restore
legitimate self-government ... Given Haiti's tragic past,
optimism requires a leap of faith. But at least with the
obstacle of Mr Aristide gone, the country can begin to
search for a new political consensus."

François Hauter
Le Figaro, France, March 1


"Mr Aristide was ... a pathetic comedian ... who pushed
Haiti, during 10 years of direct and indirect power, into
the abyss ... To the international community, [he] has long
been seen as a dangerous anarchist, supported by drug
barons and their money, who turned his country over to drug
trafficking ... America rarely tolerates, for more than a
few months, a regime that organises, under its nose, the
trafficking of cocaine ... Mr Aristide, reinstalled to
power by 20,000 [US] marines in 1994, has now been dropped
for forgetting this."

Times
Editorial, March 1


"Mr Aristide will doubtless protest that a democratically
elected figure such as himself should never be asked to
submit to the will of self-appointed rebels. He has a
point, but, in his case, it is a limited one. Mr Aristide
won a second term in office four years ago in a manner that
suggested fraud on a substantial scale. The resentment left
by his flawed victory, his increasingly despotic and
erratic rule and the wholesale collapse of the local
economy inspired the rebellion against him.

"A distinctly motley collection of hoodlums and chancers
have acquired a degree of popular support because Mr
Aristide has been such an unmitigated failure in office."

New York Times
Editorial, March 1


"Sending the marines was the right thing to do, but
President George Bush should have done it days ago, when
there was still a chance for an American-proposed
compromise that would have reinforced the framework of
constitutional democracy. Mr Bush's hesitation leaves
Washington looking as if it withheld the marines until Mr
Aristide yielded power, leaving Haitians at the mercy of
some of the country's most vicious criminal gangs ...

"Mr Aristide did not deliver the democracy he promised. But
the former death squad leaders and army thugs whose
undisciplined forces seized power in a succession of cities
and then surrounded ... Port-au-Prince are men who have
never accepted democracy and now menace Haiti's democratic
future."

Daily Telegraph
Editorial, March 1


"Critics argue that the Bush administration has cynically
betrayed a democratically elected leader. Mr Bush certainly
does not want trouble in his own backyard during an
election year, but he cannot be fairly blamed for the fall
of Mr Aristide. The president's first duty is to the
American people, who would rightly regard the arrival of
thousands ... from Haiti as a serious failure of policy.

"By making US intervention conditional on the replacement
of Mr Aristide by a neutral figure, Washington intends to
quell the uprising, prevent an exodus and restore
democracy. The presence of Mr Aristide - with his record of
electoral fraud, corruption and violence - would scarcely
have made that task any easier."

Independent
Editorial, March 1


"It is a measure of the state of Haiti that the new regime
could well be worse. The rebels are held together not by a
shared love of democracy but a combined dislike for Mr
Aristide ... Despite Mr Bush's fond hopes for 'world
democratic revolution', the keys are passed from one gang
of gangsters to another with his blessing. Haiti is on the
brink of an all-too-familiar trajectory: the state will
collapse into anarchy, a flood of refugees will leave ...
for the US, and drugs will pour into the US."

Washington Post
Editorial, March 1


"There is much to be learned from the last US effort at
stabilising Haiti a decade ago. US forces left too quickly,
and they provided too little training and aid to the police
they left behind. Not enough was done to help Haitians
build democratic institutions ...

"Without a more concerted effort at nation-building
-comparable to that which the US has supported in the
Balkans, or Iraq - the pattern of crisis and foreign
intervention in Haiti will not be broken. So far, the
administration's approach offers scant grounds for
optimism."

Toronto Star
Editorial, March 1


"It's revolting to watch Canada's senior elected officials
seek refuge in comforting legalisms when the rights of
millions have just been erased. Canada should stand for
something better. Problematic as Mr Aristide was, with his
divisive style, his alleged corruption and his reliance on
gangs to impose control, those who seem likeliest to
replace him arrive with still less legitimacy."



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