23164: Esser: One Man's democracy is another man's chains (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

The Black Commentator
http://www.blackcommentator.com

One Man's democracy is another man's chains: The untold story of
Aristide's departure from haiti
by Kevin Pina, Associate Editor

Sept 16, 2004


A recounting of recent events in Haiti is reminiscent of a statement
written by an American Marine private during the first U.S.
occupation of Haiti that began in 1915 and lasted nineteen years. The
homesick marine wrote:

“Dear Mother,

All is well for me here. I have taken well to my duties in Haiti but
I still can’t believe how they let the niggers have the run of the
place.” 

Haitians running Haiti?

Now let’s fast forward to last December 31, 2003 as Luigi Einaudi of
the Organization of American States (OAS) is ushered into the lobby
of the Hotel Montana for Haiti’s bicentennial celebrations. While
checking into the luxury hotel he makes this comment in front of
several witnesses: “The real problem in Haiti is that the
international community is so screwed up and divided that they are
letting Haitians run Haiti.” When questioned about his objectivity
given his attendance at the opening of the Haiti Democracy Project
(HDP), a Washington think-tank funded and supported by right-wing
Haitians opposed to President John Bertrand-Aristide, he becomes
defensive and denies he had been there at all. After it is pointed
out to him that there are photos on the organization’s website of him
with HDP Director James Morrell he quips, “Maybe I was there, I don’t
remember, but I really think Morrell is a kook.”  The exchange turns
to the question of Otto Reich’s role as “fixer” for the Bush
Administration in Haiti, at which time Einaudi grows red in the face
and visibly angry, shouting, “You are ignorant, you don’t know what
you are talking about,” as he makes a mad dash for the Hotel’s
elevator.

It is duly noted that Mr. Einaudi has since gotten his wish. Haitians
no longer run Haiti.

The Golden Rule of U.S. sponsored Democracy: He Who Owns the Gold
Makes the Rules

The forced ouster of Haiti’s president on February 29, 2004 begins
with the economic and political isolation of Aristide’s party, known
as Lavalas, following the national elections of May 21, 2000.
Aristide’s predecessor, President Rene Preval, delays the elections
several times. Preval’s stated purpose is to insure proper voter
registration. The opposition accuses him of delaying the national
elections to coincide with the upcoming presidential elections. The
opposition and several “undisclosed diplomatic sources” claim this is
being done to give Lavalas candidates the advantage of “riding on
Aristide’s coattails.”

Preval finally relents despite his continuing concerns over
inadequate time for voter registration and security preparations for
polling stations throughout the country. The elections are finally
held on May 21, 2000 and initially praised as the “most free and fair
election in Haitian history” by the U.S. State Department and the
Organization of American States (OAS). When it becomes clear that the
Lavalas party has won by a landslide, despite the absence of
Aristide’s mythical coattails, these very same forces discredit the
results of the elections.

After initially praising the process of the elections, the OAS later
claims that Lavalas purposely miscalculated the vote to favor seven
of their senatorial candidates. It is interesting to note that the
OAS, and several non-governmental organizations contracted by the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID), are at
the same time deeply involved in overseeing and monitoring these
elections. They are included and present during discussions by
Haiti’s Provisional Election Council when it determines the method to
tabulate the final results. OAS representative Orlande Marville,
another apostle of the HDP and the “kook” James Morrell, eventually
leaks an internal memo criticizing the ballot counting methods to the
press rather then quietly negotiating a solution.  The OAS shows its
hypocrisy when it turns a blind eye to President Alberto Fujimori’s
brazen electoral fraud in Peru the same year. In Haiti, the OAS
double standard results in Lavalas ultimately forcing the seven
contested senators to resign and creating a timetable for new
elections as a formula for compromise.

Why Should I Play if My Rich Uncle’s Gonna Pay Anyway?

Any political compromise is categorically rejected by the Haitian
“political opposition” as it becomes more emboldened and entrenched
due to increasing funding and nurturing through programs sponsored by
the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and
the European Union (EU). The opposition and their allies use the
issue of the seven contested senate seats to question the validity of
the entire election of May 2000. What is conveniently ignored,
especially today, is that these elections filled more then 7500
national, municipal and local positions of government largely due to
a huge investment of money and human resources by the United States
and the international community. They got the democratic process they
demanded of Haiti but when the results finally sink in, they do their
best to distance themselves and finally take to actively supporting a
minority “political opposition” to sully the results. This policy
trajectory justifies suspending all direct international assistance
and loans to the government of Haiti. As a result, it becomes
increasingly difficult for the majority political party, Lavalas, to
implement strategies to alleviate the conditions of extreme poverty
among the country’s poor majority – the party’s popular base.

In November 2000, Aristide is re-elected president of Haiti after a
terror campaign of mysterious drive-by shootings and bombings rock
the capital. Despite the violence and the political opposition’s
decision to boycott the election, independent international observers
rescue their validity by pronouncing the vote free and fair despite a
low turnout. The press gives ample attention to the detractors of
this election but are conspicuously silent on the three weeks of
terror that preceded it.

Following this period, most international press attention focuses on
the negatives of the Aristide government. The Lavalas party’s land
reform for the peasants and universal literacy programs are ignored
and dismissed as insignificant by the outside world. Financial and
political isolation begins to take its toll. This becomes a period in
which anything positive about Lavalas appears to be censored while
anything that damages the credibility of the Haitian government is
magnified. In this political climate, even former “leftist” allies of
Lavalas, so-called Haitian human rights organizations and members of
Haiti’s press, justify accepting tours to the United States – paid
for by the U.S. State Department. During these tours they are
encouraged to develop contacts with the alternative media and the
United States “Left” as they preach the evils of Aristide and Lavalas
to a largely uninformed American audience.

The political and financial isolation of Aristide and Lavalas
following the May 2000 elections also opened new and unprecedented
levels of support for the “political opposition” from the U.S. and
their partners in the international community. Although this
“political opposition” was incapable of winning at the polls, the
U.S. and the international community provide legitimacy to their
Haitian surrogates by giving them the option to paralyze the country
with a veto over any political compromise that will break the
stalemate over the elections. The final attempt to force the
opposition to make a reasonable compromise with Aristide is a power
sharing solution brokered by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in
early February 2004. The opposition, which clearly sees no advantage
in negotiation as long as the U.S. and the EU continue to support
their intransigence, once again rejects compromise.

The Death Insurance Policy

Two years prior to CARICOM’s last ditch effort to save democracy in
Haiti, new and ominous reports emerge of killings by paramilitary
forces comprised of former death squads and disbanded military using
the Dominican Republic as a safe haven. At the same time, Haiti’s
small but powerful economic elite is slowly rehabilitated as the
legitimate leadership of the opposition to Lavalas. Andre Apaid, a
wealthy owner of many sweatshops in Haiti, is suddenly touted as an
indigenous Gandhi fighting the evil dictatorship of Aristide while
the press and much of the Haitian left conveniently refrain from
questioning the conditions he imposes upon his own employees. With
U.S. and EU support, Apaid is ultimately able to turn out thousands
of demonstrators demanding Aristide’s resignation. The real power
behind these numbers soon becomes apparent. Apaid’s “movement”
evaporates into next to nothing following Secretary of State Colin
Powell’s disingenuous statement in mid-February 2004 that Washington
will not accept removing Aristide through unconstitutional means. In
the blink of an eye, what was touted in the press as tens of
thousands, mobilized by Apaid to demand Aristide’s resignation, is
reduced to a raucous and violent crowd of several hundred. While
Apaid organizes the opposition demonstrations on the ground, it is
always the U.S. State Department that holds the power of life or
death over Haiti’s fledgling democracy and Aristide's presidency. 
Powell’s words soon turn hollow as those now infamous "undisclosed
officials" in Washington are heard from once again. This time they
claim that only a change in the way Haiti is run, and that includes
the possibility of Aristide stepping down, will solve Haiti's
"political crisis."

It is at this moment that the aforementioned paramilitary forces in
the Dominican Republic are suddenly “discovered” in Haiti by the
corporate media amid significant fanfare. While President Aristide
and his spokesmen were left to shout at the wind about deadly armed
incursions by these same forces for more than two years, corporate
media organizations suddenly cough up nice salaries, per diems and
expense accounts in February 2004 to provide the “rebels” with
unprecedented media coverage. These well-armed and trained forces in
Haiti are led by a former Haitian military officer, Guy Phillipe,
accused of human rights abuses by organizations such as Human Rights
Watch and labeled a drug trafficker by the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) in the spring of 2001. Phillipe’s fellow
ringleader is Jodel Chamblain, the infamous former second in command
of the dreaded paramilitary death squad, the Front for Advancement
and Progress in Haiti (FRAPH). FRAPH was trained by the CIA and
unleashed upon the Haitian population in the aftermath of the violent
military coup against Aristide in 1991.  This band of former military
and death squad killers now wreaks havoc in the north of Haiti – the
ultimate threat and justification for the U.S. government to remove
the country’s democratically elected president.

Dressing the Stage to Orchestrate the Fall

The media’s grand entrance and belated discovery of the paramilitary
forces from the Dominican Republic ushers in what is generously
described by many observers in Port au Prince as “superb theater.”
Foreign embassy after foreign embassy publicly pleads with their
citizens to flee Haiti as the “rebels surround the capital.”
Suddenly, fifty U.S. marines fly into Haiti dressed in full battle
gear, ostensibly to check on security preparations at the U.S.
Embassy. Representatives of the U.S.- and EU-backed opposition to
Aristide take to the airwaves with daily pronouncements that an exit
strategy has already been prepared for the president and it is just a
matter of time before his eventual departure. Then there is the
frightened reaction of the masses of Lavalas partisans who erect
elaborate and deadly barricades at all entrances to Port au Prince
and, finally, throughout the main thoroughfares of the capital
itself. It becomes clear to most observers on the ground that the
so-called rebels never stand a chance of entering the capital despite
U.S. claims to the contrary. Supplies of diesel gasoline, which is
needed to run the mighty turbine generators that provide electricity
to the capital, begin to dwindle as nightly blackouts combine with
the sporadic gunfire of determined Aristide partisans to create an
atmosphere of fear and tension. The drama reaches epic proportions,
as the U.S. demands all of its citizens to abandon Haiti and, for
some unknown reason, suspends all commercial airline flights to the
capital. All of this despite the fact that not a single foreign
national ever receives so much as a scratch during this period, nor
is there ever any threat whatsoever to the now seemingly sacred
tarmac of the Toussaint Louverture International Airport. The stage
is now set to provide a plausible pretext to remove Haiti’s elected
president. All that’s needed is one more turn of the screw to bring
on the final act.

Friends in Struggle: Venezuela and South Africa Force Washington’s Hand

The second week of February 2004 President Aristide made a public
pronouncement that he would never resign his elected authority,
invoking the image of the fallen democrat Salvador Allende of Chile
by announcing he was “willing to die in office.” The following week
it appeared Washington had all the pieces in place to take him out
including the final gambit of a “rebel” paramilitary army surrounding
Port au Prince. In Washington it was thought this was more than
enough to pressure Aristide into voluntarily resigning his office and
fleeing Haiti. More important was that all of Washington’s window
dressing would give the impression of yet another embattled dictator
of Haiti falling upon his own sword. The State Department needed just
a little more time to close the noose around Aristide’s neck. The
plan was to allow Phillipe and Chamblain’s forces to move closer to
the capital and clash with defending Lavalas partisans, thus making
the scenario complete for the gullible international press.
Unfortunately, this calculation depended upon a weakened and docile
president of Haiti, paralyzed and incapable of defending himself.
Reality caught U.S. planners by surprise and led to what history will
recall as one of the greatest scandals of U.S.-sponsored democracy in
Latin America and the Caribbean.

In the days preceding Aristide’s overthrow a press report surfaces
that causes panic in the U.S. State Department. An undisclosed
Venezuelan diplomat is quoted as saying his government is prepared to
provide unilateral assistance to the Haitian government under the
terms of the Rio Treaty and the Democratic Charter of the
Organization of American States.  At about the same time a credible
source working in the U.S. Embassy in Port au Prince leaks word of
intercepted phone calls of advisors close to Aristide who are
“actively procuring additional arms and ammunition to re-supply the
Haitian National Police. These same advisors discussed releasing
existing stockpiles of arms to local auxiliary forces aligned with
Lavalas.”  This new information means that Aristide and his advisors
were actively pursuing means to defend his government by force of
arms, and that the image the U.S. State Department promulgated of a
defeated president reconciled to his fate would no longer play with
the media. It was determined that they had to act fast before
Aristide regrouped for the final showdown.

While the United States watches Venezuela closely for any move on the
part of the Chavez government to aid Aristide, CARICOM quietly
negotiates with a second friendly nation to provide arms, ammunition
and riot control gear for the Haitian police. The Republic of South
Africa, whose President Thabo Mbeki was one of the highest ranking
international dignitaries to attend Haiti’s bicentennial
celebrations, agrees to send 150 R1 rifles, 5 000 bullets, 200 smoke
grenades, and 200 bullet-proof vests to re-supply Haiti’s embattled
police. The U.S. Marines enter Aristide’s residence with overwhelming
force and put him on a plane the very moment a Boeing 747 filled with
this equipment is refueling on a tarmac in Kingston, Jamaica, less
than 300 miles away.

Jamaican Prime Minister PJ Patterson later admits the plane was
refueling in Jamaica before heading on to Haiti, but that it had been
stopped after Aristide's departure. A far cry from the image
presented by the governments of Washington, Paris and Ottawa of a
defeated leader resigned to his fate, it is now clear that Aristide
was prepared to fight to the end to continue his democratic mandate
and the right of Haitians to run Haiti. The U.S. Marines intervened
to insure this would never happen.
.