21881: Esser: David Lee of OAS in Haiti should have gone before (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Jamaica Observer
www.jamaicaobserver.com

May 15, 2004

Editorial
David Lee should have gone before

Mr David Lee, who headed the Organisation of American States (OAS)
office in Haiti has resigned. He should have done it several weeks
ago.

That would have been the decent and accountable thing to do.

It is one thing to have been critical of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as
Mr Lee often was, ostensibly because Mr Aristide was not doing enough
to end the violence in Haiti and had failed to push through electoral
and democratic reforms.

But it is quite another for Mr Lee to have appeared in Gonaives on
the same platform as Haiti's installed prime minister, Gerard
Latortue and the rebel insurgents who helped to overthrow Mr Aristide.

These rebel leaders, it is recalled, are convicted death squad
leaders and drug smugglers. Mr Latortue hailed them as liberators. Mr
Lee shared the platform.

Mr Lee - having been part of the grand performance at Gonaives -
subsequently gave some ineffectual excuse for his presence on the
same platform, at a political rally, with killers and drug dealers
who would hardly pass muster with the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights. He apparently couldn't see, or couldn't hear, or was at
the back of the stage, or didn't know what was going on. Or something
of the sort.

If all or any of these things, had caused Mr Lee's lapse at Gonaives,
it would have been his duty, having become aware of the circumstance
of the rally and the content of the declarations, to speak out,
making it clear that neither he nor the OAS would truck with the
Phillippes and the Chamblains and others of that ilk.

Whatever his reason for failing to do so, Mr Lee clearly, in our
view, brought the OAS into disrepute. His action positioned the OAS
as a narrowly politically-partisan institution. And even if he did
not affect the OAS' standing as an institution, Mr Lee at the very
least, forfeited his ability to act as an honest-broker in Haiti.

More fundamentally, Mr Lee would have lost the trust of a significant
portion of Haiti's political players. Indeed, it would be hard to
believe that anyone in Lavalas, Mr Aristide's party, already
sidelined by Mr Latortue and forced underground for safety, would,
subsequent to Gonaives, trust Mr Lee to seriously, or adequately
evaluate their position in the Haitian political process.

We would also find it difficult to believe that the Caribbean
Community (Caricom) could be comfortable with Mr Lee, especially
given the Community's principled position on the coup d'etat against
Mr Aristide.

Perhaps now that Mr Lee is leaving the OAS office in Haiti, the
organisation can begin to rebuild its credibility with all parties,
especially domestically. It has a chance to rebuild lost trust and to
restore the sense that it can be even-handed.

At the very least, Mr Lee's designated successor, Mr Denneth Modeste,
has a ready-made blue print of one sure thing that ought not to be
part of his mandate. He ought not to go around praising killers or
drug dealers or be on platforms with people praising killers and drug
dealers.

And if he finds himself being so compromised he has a right to speak
out firmly and clearly against that type of behaviour.
.