20421: Esser: Patterson, Powell and the Haitian crisis (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Jamaica Gleaner
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com

March 14, 2004

Patterson, Powell and the Haitian crisis
by Ian Boyne, Contributor

P.J. PATTERSON and Colin Powell. Two sons of Jamaica. One cast in the
role of Supreme Villain, the other as Hero in the Haitian crisis.

Well-known civil rights activist Randall Robinson has scorchingly
dismissed US Secretary of State Colin Powell as the most troubling
black official in anyone's memory. And the Washington-based Council
on Hemispheric Affairs, dubbed by US Senator Edward Kennedy as "one
of the most respected bodies of scholars and policymakers", said on
Monday that no one's reputation is "more likely to be tarnished by
the role played in bringing down President Aristide's constitutional
rule than Secretary of State Colin Powell".

Saying that he had become a "willingly captive of the Bush
Administration's obsessive right-wing ideologues", the Council said
Powell's Haitian policy was "dazzlingly inept". In a stinging article
on Monday which also attacked France, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Mexico,
the United Nations(UN) and the Organization of American States(OAS)
for their inaction in preventing Aristide's fall, the Council said,
"reminiscent of Ethiopia's Haile Selassie's mournful appearance
before the League of Nations in Geneva in 1936, where he pleaded for
help to suppress Mussolini's legions, only the English-speaking
Caribbean, led by Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, displayed
any spunk in challenging the inelegant US-orchestrated game plan".

The sharply-worded piece from the US capital said, "Mexico's silence
over Haiti on the eve of President Fox's visit to the Bush family
ranch was sadly understandable, given the Mexican leader's lonely
quest for immigration reform, but the silence of the region's other
heavy hitters was totally incomprehensible".

Said the Council: "At the end of the day, standing almost alone, it
was Jamaica's Prime Minister PJ Patterson who upheld the region's
honour by implicitly rebuking the timidity of other hemisphere
leaders in their hiding behind 'Jesuitic' reasoning to justify their
decisions to be irrelevant, if not indifferent to the fateful
interruption of the democratic process in Haiti. Patterson took this
stand in spite of the vulnerability of Jamaica's sagging economy and
its need for Washington's financial backing." Michael Manley from the
grave, as it were, must have been smiling pleasingly at his
successor. It is not hard to see why Powell and Patterson could be
compared unfavourably in the Haitian scenario. In a February 19
interview on radio with Sam Donaldson, Powell strongly defended
Jean-Bertrand Aristide against the rebel attacks he was coming under.
In a report prepared by the US State Department itself , Powell is
quoted as telling Donaldson that "Since he (Aristide) is the elected
leader, we should not be putting forward a plan that would require
him to step down. Right now President Aristide is the elected
president of Haiti and that is what we are standing behind".

The State Department writer noted that "Armed gangs - have vowed to
attack the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince within a week if
Aristide does not step down. Powell insisted that these threats must
not succeed." Note that very carefully. Now here's the direct quote
from Powell: "We cannot allow these thugs to come out of the hills or
even an opposition to simply rise up and say "we want you to leave"
in an undemocratic, non-constitutional manner. We want this situation
to play out in a constitutional manner". That was February 19-not
2002 or 2003, but 2004. By February 29 he had changed his tune
completely and was in the media saying what an awful fellow Aristide
was.

GOVERNING POORLY

Just this past Monday in an interview with National Public Radio's
Juan Williams, Powell said though Aristide was democratically elected
he was "governing very poorly. He governed in a way that allowed
thugs to take over. He governed in a way that allowed the
legislature, frankly, to be unable to do its work and finally had to
come out of existence. The police became corrupt and he essentially
allowed conditions of chaos to exist".

While on February 19 he rightly attacked the thugs, vowing that they
should not be allowed to force out a democratically elected
Government and while he had said plainly that "Aristide is the
elected president of Haiti and that is what we are standing behind",
a few days later he was saying that Aristide had corrupted democracy
and was unsupportable. Did his knowledge of the Haitian situation
change so dramatically in a few days?

The Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs said in its
statement on Monday that "While Powell's rhetoric at the time
appeared to represent the high road on the issue, he continuously was
being undermined by Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega and
White House Aide Otto Reich in their off-the-record briefings to
journalists and other interested parties. In contrast to Powell's
line, these Press sessions implied that regime change was very much
an option and that Aristide could be muscled aside in any negotiation
process".

The Council noted that despite Powell's pledge to seek a
constitutional solution to Haiti's crisis, "he reversed himself by
ignoring Haiti's constitution which stipulates that a president can
only convey his resignation to the country's legislature."

AN EMBARRASSMENT TO BLACKS

If Powell had been consistent in his denunciation of Aristide, he
would not come out of the Haitian crisis with so much egg on his
face. It is a source of embarrassment to people of African descent
that Colin Powell is made to seem so contradictory and confused. At
least the Caucasian hawks in the Bush Administration have never
hidden their aversion to Aristide.

Wilmot Perkins has raised a valid point and that is that it is not
enough to note that a person was elected democratically and to behave
as though how he behaves between elections is irrelevant to his rule
being characterised as democratic. Indeed, we are witnessing
increasingly in the world the phenomenon of what Fareed Zakaria calls
"illiberal democracies" in his 2003 book The Future of Freedom:
Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. We are seeing Governments
democratically elected suppress human rights, trample on the rule of
law and corrupt national institutions. It is not enough to draw
attention to the fact that a particular Government was voted into
office.

Colin Powell has the right to comment on how Aristide governed, not
only that he was democratically elected. (And keep in mind, too, that
the 2000 elections were disputed and were at the heart of the issues
that led to his downfall). Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch
and others showed that Aristide violated human rights and persecuted
journalists. He did, indeed, have thugs who murdered people and he
seemed to have corrupted the police force. He was no saint or pure
black hero, as some is mythologising him.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights carried out on-site
visits to Haiti in 2002 and issued a report stating that it was
"deeply preoccupied by the weakness of human rights in Haiti, the
lack of an independent judiciary, the climate of insecurity, the
existence of armed groups that act with total impunity and threats,
to which some journalists have been subjected." And the OAS Special
Rappateur for freedom of expression documented increases in the acts
of harassment against journalists.

What is significant about CARICOM's mediatorial effort was that it
did not gloss over these problems and, in fact, that CARICOM Prior
Action Plan which Chairman Patterson and the group had Aristide agree
to contained steps to deal with this issue. It is not true that
CARICOM simply wanted to save Aristide and was unconcerned about the
quality of his governance. The facts don't bear that out.

THE CARICOM PLAN

On January 31 when P.J. Patterson hosted Aristide in Jamaica and came
up with the CARICOM Plan, with the OAS in attendance, measures were
outlined to deal with the security issues. The Opposition groups in
Haiti had been saying for years that Aristide had not made enough
progress on the security issues, which were pivotal to previous OAS
resolutions. And, incidentally, while Aristide is totally blamed by
some for not holding elections as promised, it is not usually noted
that the opposition groups continued to refuse to nominate
representatives to the Provisional Electoral Council, a prerequisite
for holding new elections under Resolution 822 of the OAS, passed in
2000.

The CARICOM Plan brokered by Patterson included measures to improve
the security climate and improve confidence by the Opposition. The
CARICOM Prior Action Plan also dealt with such crucial issues as the
release of detainees, negotiation for rules for demonstrations, the
disarmament of strong-arm groups and the "enjoyment of fundamental
freedoms". CARICOM was not cozening up to a repressive Aristide.
Indeed, the evidence was that CARICOM was pressuring Aristide to
adhere to the finest traditions of Caribbean democracy.

The plan envisaged the establishment of an electoral commission, the
formation of a council of eminent persons which has now been adopted
by the U.S-inspired regime and the appointment of a neutral and
independent Prime Minister. It also called for the formation of a new
Government through a process of consultations involving the Prime
Minister, the President and the Council and it included the
Opposition in a power-sharing arrangement. This was as good and as
fair as it gets and is a tribute to the brilliant and well-honed
negotiating skills of P.J. Patterson. Not many people know that the
Security Council itself had issued a statement deploring the
rejection of this excellent plan by Opposition groups. It's inaction
prior to Aristide's departure, therefore, is scandalous.

The Opposition had been using one excuse after the other not to
co-operate with the Government and had made it clear for a long time
that it would accept nothing less than the removal of Aristide. And
you have the situation of the world's only Superpower bowing to this
rag-tag group of people.

"The coup against Aristide, and by extension the Haitian people, was
prolonged, a chronic coup", says the U.S . magazine, The Nation, in
its March 22 edition. "One should be clear about the opposition in
Haiti right now: Although it includes some very good people, it is
largely a group of malcontent career politicians, wealthy businessmen
and ambitious power-seekers. It is exactly the kind of 'civil
society' opposition the United States encouraged and financed when it
was attempting to remove Manuel Noriega in Panama".

HAITIAN DEMOCRACY

Aristide should not be deified. But it is not about Aristide. It is
that Haitian democracy however fledgling, however halting, however,
imperfect should have been given a chance with the CARICOM Prior
Action Plan. The US decision was based on realpolitik and represents
the triumph of the Realist school of thinking in the State
Department. Colin Powell should have remembered his words just
published in the January/February issue of the highly influential
Foreign Affairs Journal: "America must stand firmly for the
non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law, limits on
the absolute power of the state. Free speech - equal justice. We
should stand by these values now and always. Beyond Partnership comes
principle."("Partnership and Principle").

It is time Colin Powell stops talking like an Idealist and starts
walking like a Realist.

Ian Boyne is a veternan journalist. You can send your comments to
ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
.