20505: Esser: Haiti, a wake-up call for us all (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

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

March 17, 2004

Haiti, a wake-up call for us all

President Aristide's ouster places in stark relief the extreme
dangers inherent in Caribbean nations permitting external powers to
stoke and intensify whatever political divisions may exist within our
small and precious democracies. Unless we become less trusting of
others' efforts to help us "build democracy", unless we are willing
to undertake the hard work and assume full responsibility for
ensuring that our nations are indeed stable and that within our
borders justice does indeed prevail, we will, sooner or later, find
ourselves once again, in the words of President Thabo Mbeki, objects
of pity, objects of ridicule.

I have long lamented the fact that too many African, Caribbean and
Pacific (ACP) nationals allow "friends" in the United States, France,
Canada and other industrialised nations to encourage us to overthrow
our governments, massacre each other, destroy crucial public
infrastructure, and bring our countries to a state of total and
absolute chaos in order to register our displeasure with our elected
officials. Tragically, we comply - never pausing to question why our
"friends" never use the same methods to express their displeasure
with their elected officials, no matter how great the provocation. In
the United States, for example, Republicans think that President
Clinton utterly defiled the presidency. Democrats insist that
President Bush, without question, stole the 2000 presidential
election. Yet, even the most ruthlessly ambitious American
politicians always decide, as though it is by now etched onto their
DNA, that the place to inflict the ultimate punishment, in their
countries, is at the polls.

My most insistent message in the wake of President Aristide's ouster,
therefore, has been that in an increasingly hostile, globalised
environment, the governments and peoples of the Caribbean absolutely
must learn to band together in defence of sacred and time-honoured
principles - justice, equity, democracy. Failure to do so will leave
our individual nations, as well as our Caricom family, woefully
ill-equipped to withstand the multifaceted and never-ending
subterfuge and machinations of the world's "leading democracies".

Prime Minister Patterson has announced that the Aristide family will,
for the next several weeks be residing in Jamaica. In doing so, the
prime minister has shown himself to be a leader of calm courage and
steadfast principle. He is also demonstrating that not only do our
nations have a proud, strong tradition of parliamentary democracy, we
are also a people whose history have made us concerned about
fairness, justice, and human decency.

In the United States, the most ruthless criminals are routinely given
"a new chance at a new life", at taxpayer expense, under the US
witness protection programme. How, then, can any American policymaker
with even a smidgen of understanding of, or regard for, Caribbean
people, in good conscience, pressure our governments to isolate the
first democratically-elected, and recently-ousted, president of Haiti
- a nation whose very existence holds such profound psychological
significance in our slave-descended hearts?

Consider the irony of France and the United States having arranged
the comfortable exile of Haiti's brutal military dictator, Jean
Claude Duvalier in France, or the United States having arranging for
Haiti's ruthless military coup leaders Cedras and Biamby to lead
equally comfortable lives in Panama, while France, Canada and the
United States now insist that Haiti's twice-elected, and recently
ousted, president be proclaimed persona non grata within the
Caribbean family.

President Aristide co-operated fully with Caricom as the latter
attempted to forge a non-violent, constitutional solution to the
Haitian crisis, for this is the Caribbean tradition. Haiti's
so-called opposition stubbornly refused, year after year, to go to
the polls, deeming a selected government more appropriate for the
Haitian people than an elected one, thereby pushing Haiti into a
vortex of instability which to this day has not abated.

And the people of the Caribbean are now supposed to close their
hearts to the Aristide family?

I pray that in the months ahead, the people of Jamaica - and the
wider Caribbean - will apply their considerable talents and precious
energy to promoting and strengthening respect and civility across
party lines; working for peace and justice within our islands and
throughout the region; creating and revitalising opportunities for
economic and political collaboration within and between our member
states; ensuring that only elected governments be allowed to
represent Caricom nations in multilateral institutions; sharing with
the broader global community the importance of our values to a world
of stability and peace.

We are a special people, with a special history. Let us move forward
together, free of rancour and political opportunism, focused on
meeting the practical exigencies of managing small-island economies,
but ever mindful of importance of insight, wisdom and integrity to a
safe and secure future for us all.

Hazel Ross-Robinson is a former foreign policy adviser in the US
Congress and president of Ross-Robinson & Associates, a firm of
foreign policy consultants. She is an adviser to President
Aristide.hrr@rosro
.