19647: Esser: Canada parrots U.S. line on Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

The Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com

Mar. 2, 2004

Canada parrots U.S. line on Haiti

THOMAS WALKOM

The United States, aided and abetted by Canada, has just sponsored a
coup in Haiti. That's what the supporters of ousted president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide say. "Coup" is also the word that Jamaica's
government uses to describe the weekend events in Port-au-Prince.

Certainly, it's hard to argue against this analysis. Aristide was a
democratically elected president — one of only two in Haiti's
100-year history. According to Larry Birns of the Washington-based
Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Aristide's Lavalas party would almost
certainly have won free parliamentary elections if the opposition had
allowed the elections to take place.

This, incidentally, is one of the weirder elements of the Haiti
story. Aristide wanted legislative elections. It was the opposition
that blocked him.

When so-called rebels — made up mainly of soldiers and death squad
members associated with past dictatorships — seized towns and began
to execute police officers last month, the U.S., Canada and France
refused Aristide's pleas for help.

They said they would intervene only if the unelected opposition
agreed — which, of course, it didn't.

In itself, that's a perfectly legitimate position. Why should Canada
or the U.S. send soldiers to help out in other people's countries?

But what became clear this weekend was that the big countries were
not averse to military intervention at all. They just wanted to
ensure that when they did intervene, they would do so on the side of
the unelected opposition.

Thus, only when news broke late Saturday night that Aristide was
going, or being sent, into exile, did Canada, the U.S. and France
announce they were sending troops to restore order.

One can be pretty sure that the order they restore will not be
favourable to supporters of the deposed president.

Coups are not always terrible. In 1986, the U.S. tacitly supported a
so-called people power coup against Philippine dictator Ferdinand
Marcos. A couple of years later, Washington backed what was in effect
an internal military coup against South Korean dictator Chun Doo-hwan.

In both cases the coup plotters were not as virtuous as they claimed.
But in both cases what emerged was at least somewhat more democratic
than what had gone before.

Will Haiti be more democratic as a result of this coup? Given the
nature of the opposition, a rag-tag band of disgruntled
professionals, wealthy capitalists, unrepentant Tontons Macoute and
other death squad veterans, it is hard to be optimistic.

It's also hard to understand why Washington found Aristide so
loathsome. True, he spoke for, and was supported by, the poor, a
characteristic that U.S. regimes always find disturbing.

Indeed, a populist leader may easily become a demagogue, particularly
if the civil rights the middle classes hold so dear — the right of
property, the right to criticize government — interfere with the
economic rights the poor demand, such as the right to eat.

But it seems that Aristide learned his lesson in 1991 after the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency sponsored its first coup against him.

By 1994, when a different U.S. administration restored Aristide to
power, he had become a willing convert to the revealed truths of our
times — free trade, globalization, the rights of capital.

Under pressure from Washington, he slashed tariffs, cut food
subsidies and set up low-wage manufacturing zones.

The tariff cuts allowed cheap, U.S. government-subsidized rice to
flood Haiti, throwing thousands of local farmers out of work.

By 2000, Haiti had become America's fourth-largest rice market. By
2002, with per capita income falling, Haiti's already pitiful economy
was even smaller than it had been before the globalization reforms.

Those reforms were supposed to be the price for $500 million in aid
from the usual international agencies. But in 2000, Washington
effectively shut down this aid arguing that legislative elections
held that year had been unfair. At the time, the Organization of
American States expressed "concern" but refused to declare the vote
illegitimate.

Meanwhile, Canada hardly covered itself in glory. In 1994, with much
fanfare, Ottawa sent both troops and RCMP officers to help Aristide
reclaim his presidency. The Mounties were supposed to train a new
Haitian police force and, by some accounts, were gradually succeeding.

But three years later, citing costs, Canada pulled most of its
officers out. The results showed this year when rebels overran towns
defended only by poorly trained officers.

Now, with Aristide out of the way, Canada is going back into Haiti.

Exactly why, is unclear. Or maybe, given Canada's new policy of
cleaving even closer to the U.S. on matters foreign, it's all too
clear.

Prime Minister Paul Martin says he is sending forces to restore
constitutional order and rule of law. Yet Ottawa did little to
support Haiti's constitutional order and rule of law when it first
came under threat last month.

Foreign Minister Bill Graham says the government wants to get Haiti
"on the way to democracy." He doesn't say how supporting the
overthrow of Haiti's flawed, but democratically elected president
will help to accomplish that.

Thomas Walkom's column appears on Tuesday. twalkom@thestar.ca.
.