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[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Marina <marinawus@yahoo.com>

From: roger milcéus
> Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 12:19 AM
> Subject: Who will pay the price, Jamaica Observer?
>
>
> Who Will Pay The Price, Jamaica Observer?
>
> In a demeaning editorial published on May 9, 2004,
> the Jamaica Observer committed a public relations
> faux-pas that is quite uncharacteristic of this
> well-respected publication. I say "uncharacteristic"
> because the author (or authors?) seem to have
> allowed their emotions and biases to get the best of
> them at a time when cool heads should prevail.
>
> On the face of it, the indignation of the Jamaica
> Observer seems correct. Here was Mr. Latortue
> (please note the correct spelling of his name!)
> appealing to CARICOM for help when he had a couple
> of months earlier frozen relations from them. What
> the Jamaica Observer failed to note however is that
> Mr. Latortue's angry reaction at the time stemmed
> from a quite understandable feeling of betrayal from
> the Jamaican government. When CARICOM closed ranks
> behind PM Patterson, they had unwittingly thrust
> themselves into the controversy. Subsequent open
> expressions of support by PM Patrick Manning of
> Trinidad and PM Ralph "Aristide is a friend"
> Gonsalves of Saint-Vincent have made the situation
> worse. I will add that to this day, a large number
> of Haitians remain skeptical of the explanation for
> the "unfriendly" act of Prime Minister Patterson and
> his government, with the tacit support of other
> CARICOM leaders. Just as CARICOM believes that Mr.
> Latortue has some explaining to do, we believe
>  that the whole CARICOM political class owes the
> Haitian people an explanation about their complete
> silence regarding the undemocratic acts of Mr.
> Aristide and their sudden, vocal support for this
> tyrant when he was ousted.
>
> However, beyond the actual diplomatic controversy,
> there are issues of style and substance in the
> editorial that are quite troubling. I learned in
> conflict resolution classes that, in times of open
> conflict, it is always preferable to minimize
> differences and eschew inflammatory statements. From
> the opening paragraph of the editorial, the Jamaica
> Observer clearly decided that diplomacy was not on
> its mind. Instead, its editorialist(s) showed
> his/her (their) antagonism against Prime Minister
> Latortue in using uncharacteristically harsh
> descriptions of the Haitian Prime Minister ("smart
> Aleck, three-card trickster" comes to mind.) One
> must wonder what purpose the Observer would have in
> openly disparaging the Prime Minister with
> schoolyard - I am tempted to say childish - language
> that has no place in a respectable newspaper
> article, let alone an editorial. The effect has been
> in many Haitian circles a resolve to protect the
> country's current leader - no matter his
> shortcomings -
>  because it is no longer about Mr. Latortue but
> about national pride.
>
> Going beyond the style issue, the editorial rests on
> a few assumptions that need to be revisited because
> they are quite problematic. First, the Jamaica
> Observer assumes that CARICOM's original plan - a
> cohabitation of Lavalas and the Opposition until the
> general elections in 2005 - would have been
> possible. At the much ballyhooed Kingston summit,
> President Aristide made some promises that might
> have assuaged the Opposition but which he never
> kept. Of course, he did not do so because he had no
> intention of sharing power with anyone and managed
> to sabotage the hard work put in by CARICOM
> officials from the time he came back to Haiti from
> Jamaica. He never freed the "political" prisoners
> (university students, trade unionists, protestant
> pastors, etc.) who had been arrested on trumped-up
> charges; he never stopped the harassment of pacific
> marchers who were protesting the increasing
> political intolerance in the country; he continued
> to unleash the Haitian National Police and his armed
>  gangs against civilians of every walk of life. Yet,
> CARICOM remained silent and never called him to task
> for reneging on his words. Were the CARICOM
> officials stationed in Pétion-Ville (at the Bahamian
> Embassy on Place Boyer) oblivious to these
> undemocratic acts? What can explain that they never
> followed up on the goings-on in the country? Or did
> CARICOM decide for political reasons to pretend that
> nothing was happening? Did the Jamaica Observer
> bother to dispatch a reporter to figure out why
> Aristide never followed through on the promises?
>
> The Jamaica Observer states in its editorial: "the
> Haitian opposition, which apparently did not see
> its, and Haiti's, interest in the broad,
> transformational context perceived by Caricom,
> remained intransigent." Clearly, the Observer never
> bothered to interview the opposition to find out the
> root causes of this intransigence. If they had, they
> would have learned about the incredible tactics of
> Aristide's supporters to stifle dissent and
> democratic expressions of opposition, from the
> beatings administered to marchers under the
> complacent eye of the police in 2002 (a humiliating
> event organized by Annette Auguste aka Sò Ann that
> took place on Place d'Italie downtown) to the
> unsavory practice of showering the marchers with
> human waste of all kinds (at just about every march)
> to the cancellation by police of duly planned
> marches to the increasingly violent behavior of the
> police and armed gangs against marchers. This
> culminated in the disgraceful attack against the
> Dean of the Haitian
>  State University, Dr. Pierre-Marie Paquiot, by
> Aristide supporters on December 5, 2003. He was left
> with two broken legs and is now wheelchair-bound,
> perhaps forever. I don't remember CARICOM saying
> anything about that.
>
> So, while I don't agree with every decision that the
> Opposition took, we all know the old English
> expression "once bitten, twice shy." I cannot say
> that I would have done differently from the
> Opposition in that case.
>
> Second, there is a sense in the CARICOM world that
> there was nothing wrong with sheltering Mr. Aristide
> so close to Haitian shores at a time when the
> situation in Haiti was quite fluid, to say the very
> least. The Aristide gangs were still (and are still)
> armed and made sure to silence a number of critics,
> particularly in the slum of Cité Soley. But of
> course, the humanitarian gesture by PM Patterson was
> a noble one that would not in any way inflame the
> passions of unruly gangs who had just lost their
> champion and were on the verge of losing the
> priviledges that they had been accustomed to:
> monthly payents from the Haitian Treasury, the
> ability to traffic in drugs and weapons with total
> impunity, the right to kidnap and ransom civilians
> with no fear of the security forces. Did CARICOM
> expect that Haitians would applaud the return in the
> region of Aristide?
>
> As un-diplomatic as Mr. Latortue's decision may have
> been, we believe that he had no choice but to signal
> to CARICOM (and to everyone else for that matter)
> that Haiti could no longer be viewed as the
> diplomatic doormat that Aristide and his government
> had turned it out to be. The act posed by PM
> Patterson carried some potentially ominous
> consequences. The mere fact that the Jamaica
> Observer could write such a vitriolic editorial
> against a government leader, contested or not, whose
> country is considered to be a member of CARICOM
> (well, depending on the mood of the other members of
> the community,) shows that we are still perceived by
> the rest of the Caribbean as those "stupid Haitians"
> who need to be taught a lesson or two.
>
> That the Jamaica Observer would engage in a foreign
> policy initiative of its own and dictate to the
> Haitian government under what unilateral terms it
> can extricate itself out of its predicament is
> symptomatic of the low esteem in which we are held.
> There is no inkling of negotiation, simply a set of
> demands that must be met or else. As if we are just
> going to cave in to all these requests and allow a
> foreign newspaper to interfere in our internal
> affairs. I certainly hope that the CARICOM ministers
> of foreign affairs will not adopt the arrogant and
> paternalistic attitude of the Jamaica Observer's
> "diplomatic experts." The results would be
> disastrous for the integrity of CARICOM.
>
> I have already pointed out that there is great
> ambivalence in Haiti about our membership in a
> community that seems not to care a wit about the
> Haitian common person and is only interested in
> using us as a political football to support one
> former Haitian president and to thumb its nose for
> reasons only it knows at the United States. By
> having failed to reach out to other Haitian
> constituencies that have relations with CARICOM
> countries, namely the private sector, and which
> could play an intermediary role in defusing the
> crisis, CARICOM is basically saying to Haiti that
> only the "wise men" of the Conference will decide on
> our fate within CARICOM. To not try to seek out
> those Haitians that have influence on political
> affairs (after all, Mr. Latortue is not the only
> influential person in Haiti), CARICOM risks
> alienating the rest of the Haitian "establishment"
> that might have pleaded for a solution. This would
> undermine any attempt to reintegrate Haiti in the
> organization and would
>  basically make our membership meaningless. Could it
> be that the CARICOM diplomats in post in Haiti never
> bothered to forge alliances within the different
> sectors of Haitian society because they thought that
> Lavalas was the be-all-and-end-all of all things
> Haitian? If Haitians don't go through the efforts of
> adjusting to the economic community and the court of
> justice, what's the point of belonging to the
> organization? And if Haitians reject en masse the
> notion of belonging to CARICOM, then what?
>
> Third, the Jamaica Observer resurrects this notion,
> firmly espoused by US Congresswoman Maxine Waters
> and her fellow Aristide backers, that there is an
> ongoing persecution campaign going on against
> Lavalas. So far, a few members of Aristide's
> government (not necessarily synonymous with Lavalas)
> have been arrested on charges ranging from
> embezzlement of public funds to political
> persecution to murder. To pretend that these arrests
> is tantamount to persecution is ridiculous at best,
> dishonest at worst. Many of us espoused the original
> creed of Lavalas in 1990 because we believed that it
> was the party that would bring Haiti into the modern
> political age. We believed in "justice,
> transparency, participation."
>
> As the 14 years of Lavalas power have revealed to
> us, we actually went backward, not forward on all
> three counts. The embryonic independent judiciary
> that existed in 1990 had become a tool in the hands
> of a despotic Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2003, going
> so far as to chase into exile any judge that would
> try to get close to the truth of high profile
> political murders, such as that of journalist Jean
> Dominique. Does the name Claudy Gassant ring a bell
> to the Jamaica Observer? I didn't think so.
>
> As for transparency, this word simply did not exist
> in Aristide's vocabulary. The chronic abuse of our
> national budget and the impossibility of obtaining
> any information on the use of taxpayers funds had
> become so routine that any leak of such information
> became a national event. The most egregious example
> of that was the leak to the press of the costs of
> the 2004 celebrations, which prompted then-Prime
> Minister Yvon Neptune to chastise the Minister of
> Finance Faubert Gustave for allowing such
> "confidential" information to be released. How could
> the cost of the celebration of our bicentennial be
> considered a national secret? In a country where we
> don't know how our taxes are being spent, doesn't it
> stand to reason that the government should at least
> give us some information? Or were the powers-that-be
> so concerned about the theft and mismanagement of
> funds that ocurred that they didn't want the
> information to become public?
>
> The "participation" that Aristide had promised in
> 1990 never materialized. Ironically, the December
> 16, 1990 elections were probably the best expression
> of a democratic process in Haiti. It was all
> downhill from there as the 1995, 1997 and the 2000
> elections demonstrated.
>
> The most disturbing part of the Observer's false
> assumption is that Lavalas in fact has been given
> every chance to join the political process underway
> and has turned down all such offers on the excuse
> that they don't feel secure going into the
> elections. What an ironic turn of events, especially
> since Lavalas maintained a climate of political
> insecurity from 2002 onward and that their
> accusations are not warranted. Ms. Waters makes the
> same claim that Lavalas is being unfairly treated
> and kept out of the political process. She further
> claims that over a thousand Lavalas supporters have
> been killed since Mr. Latortue. There are two issues
> with that: 1) who are they? where are the bodies?
> how could such a carnage be kept so secret in a
> country where there are no secrets? 2) why is it
> that on Monday, two well-respected Haitian human
> rights organizations - CARLI and NCHR - totally
> refuted the allegations made by Ms. Waters? And how
> come the rebuttal of these charges has not been
> carried
>  by any foreign news organizations, the Observer
> included? Is it that we Haitians are not credible in
> the information we provide? Or is such a rebuttal a
> "pavé dans la marre", an inconvenient fact which
> destroys the editorial line that the Observer has
> espoused?
>
> I believe that the Jamaica Observer, to be
> considered credible, must disclose the sources of
> its information and tell us exactly who is making
> the claim that Lavalas is not being allowed to be
> part of the process. Who is reporting from Haiti on
> behalf of the Observer?  What are the sources? Are
> they credible?
>
> Last but not least, CARICOM suffers from a
> credibility deficit in Haiti which is serious enough
> to have stalled its efforts to contribute to the
> resolution of the situation. Yesterday's article by
> Mindell Small in the Nassau Guardian entitled "No
> decisons on troops yet in Haiti" suggests that
> CARICOM is stuck on how to make up from its own
> mistakes in the handling of the situation. To shift
> the blame to the developed countries' portrayal of
> CARICOM as the reason for potential hostilities
> against CARICOM troops in Haiti and delaying a
> decision on committing troops to Haiti, as Bahamian
> Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell suggests,
> is not only cowardly, it is not believable. I live
> in Haiti and I have not read or heard any interview,
> commentary or advertising in newspapers or on the
> radio by the US, France, Canada, Brazil or Chile
> (all countries that have troops in Haiti at present)
> suggesting that CARICOM was "a big stumbling block
> to the stabilisation process of Haiti." I
>  believe that CARICOM (or at least the Bahamas) is
> hiding behind this excuse to shield its own
> inability to overcome its incapacity to manage the
> situation correctly. Of course, by the time the
> Heads of Government meeet again in July, the UN
> force will be fully constituted and there will be no
> need for CARICOM to even consider the issue. If the
> troops that CARICOM planned to send are not trained
> in disarmament, then they might as well stay home as
> we have learned before that unless a serious
> disarmament effort is undertaken in Haiti, the
> usefulness of foreign troops is nil. Jamaica seems
> to suffer from a serious problem of weapon
> proliferation and an unacceptably high murder rate
> in a country that is democratic and at peace, as
> multiple articles in the Observer and the Jamaica
> Gleaner since the beginning of the year suggest, so
> I am sure the Jamaican government understands well
> the issue of disarmament.
>
> Journalistic integrity demand that a newspaper
> avails itself of all the facts, not just the ones
> that fit with its philosophy, when it writes
> editorials as punchy and controversial as the
> Observer's May 9 open attack against Mr. Latortue.
> This editorial shows to me that, either the
> editorial writers have a serious problem of
> information about Haitian political history, or that
> they already have decided which camp in Haiti they
> want to support. Either way, this editorial fails
> the basic test of enlightening the Observer readers
> on the true conditions on the ground in Haiti.
>
> As I have pointed out before, through two centuries
> of great changes in the world, Haiti has managed to
> eke out a living. If such great powers as France,
> the United States and Spain were not able to grind
> us into the ground - and Heaven knows they tried - I
> am sure that we will be able to inspire ourselves
> from our history to get ourselves out of this mess,
> with or without CARICOM's help. And if the
> Conference were to espouse the unilateral hard line
> advocated by the Observer - without recognizing that
> it also made mistakes in its handling of the crisis
> - I am not so sure that Mr. Latortue will be the
> only one to pay the price. I doubt that the
> Observer, ten years hence, will want to discuss the
> bill that CARICOM as a whole might have to pay.
>
> Roger Milceus
>
> PS: I have already excoriated Mr. Latortue in print
> for his position on "freedom fighters" so no need to
> bring that up again. Let's now focus on what CARICOM
> needs to do to get itself out of its impasse.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Link to "Jamaica Observer" Sunday May 9, 2004
> Editorial:
>
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/editorial/html/20040508t230000-0500_59586_obs_there_is_a_price__mr_latortue.asp
>
>
>
>
>
>





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