25719: Lemieux: Aristide in Exile: Our Times (ca) columnist Naomi Klein (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

Aristide in exile
> by Naomi Klein
July 15, 2005
When United Nations troops kill residents of the
Haitian slum Cité Soleil, friends and family
often place photographs of exiled President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide on their bodies. The
photographs silently insist that there is a
method to the madness raging in Port-au-Prince.
Poor Haitians are being slaughtered not for being
?violent,? as we so often hear, but for being
militant; for daring to demand the return of
their elected president.

It was only ten years ago that President Clinton
celebrated Aristide's return to power as ?the
triumph of freedom over fear.? So what changed?
Corruption? Violence? Fraud? Aristide is
certainly no saint. But even if the worst of the
allegations are true, they pale next to the rap
sheets of the convicted killers, drug smugglers
and arms traders who ousted Aristide and continue
to enjoy free rein, with full support from the
Bush Administration and the UN. Turning Haiti
over to this underworld gang out of concern for
Aristide's lack of ?good governance? is like
escaping an annoying date by accepting a lift
home from Charles Manson.

A few weeks ago I visited Aristide in Pretoria,
South Africa, where he lives in forced exile. I
asked him what was really behind his dramatic
falling-out with Washington. He offered an
explanation rarely heard in discussions of
Haitian politics ? actually, he offered three:
?privatization, privatization and privatization.?


The dispute dates back to a series of meetings in
early 1994, a pivotal moment in Haiti's history
that Aristide has rarely discussed. Haitians were
living under the barbaric rule of Raoul Cédras,
who overthrew Aristide in a 1991 U.S.-backed
coup. Aristide was in Washington and despite
popular calls for his return, there was no way he
could face down the junta without military
back-up. Increasingly embarrassed by Cédras's
abuses, the Clinton Administration offered
Aristide a deal: U.S. troops would take him back
to Haiti ? but only after he agreed to a sweeping
economic program with the stated goal to
?substantially transform the nature of the
Haitian state.?

Aristide agreed to pay the debts accumulated
under the kleptocratic Duvalier dictatorships,
slash the civil service, open up Haiti to ?free
trade? and cut import tariffs on rice and corn in
half. It was a lousy deal but, Aristide says, he
had little choice. ?I was out of my country and
my country was the poorest in the Western
hemisphere, so what kind of power did I have at
that time??

But Washington's negotiators made one demand that
Aristide could not accept: the immediate sell-off
of Haiti's state-owned enterprises, including
phones and electricity. Aristide argued that
unregulated privatization would transform state
monopolies into private oligarchies, increasing
the riches of Haiti's elite and stripping the
poor of their national wealth. He says the
proposal simply didn't add up: ?Being honest
means saying two plus two equals four. They
wanted us to sing two plus two equals five.?

Aristide proposed a compromise: Rather than sell
off the firms outright, he would ?democratize?
them. He defined this as writing antitrust
legislation, insuring that proceeds from the
sales were redistributed to the poor and allowing
workers to become shareholders. Washington backed
down, and the final text of the agreement ?
accepted by the United States and by a meeting of
donor nations in Paris ? called for the
?democratization? of state companies.

But when Aristide began to implement the plan, it
turned out that the financiers in Washington
thought his democratization talk was just public
relations. When Aristide announced that no sales
could take place until Parliament had approved
the new laws, Washington cried foul. Aristide
says he realized then that what was being
attempted was an ?economic coup.? ?The hidden
agenda was to tie my hands once I was back and
make me give for nothing all the state public
enterprises.? He threatened to arrest anyone who
went ahead with privatizations. ?Washington was
very angry at me. They said I didn't respect my
word, when they were the ones who didn't respect
our common economic policy.?

Aristide's relationship with Washington has been
deteriorating ever since: While more than $500
million in promised loans and aid were cut off,
starving his government, USAID poured millions
into the coffers of opposition groups,
culminating ultimately in the February 2004 armed
coup.

And the war continues. On June 23, Roger Noriega,
assistant secretary of state for Western
Hemisphere affairs, called on UN troops to take a
more ?proactive role? in going after armed
pro-Aristide gangs. In practice, this has meant a
wave of Falluja-like collective punishment
inflicted on neighborhoods known for supporting
Aristide. On July 6, for instance, 300 UN troops
stormed Cité Soleil, blocking off exits and
firing from armored vehicles. The UN admits that
five were killed, but residents put the number of
dead at no fewer than 20. Reuters correspondent
Joseph Guyler Delva says he ?saw seven bodies in
one house alone, including two babies and one
older woman in her 60s.? Ali Besnaci, head of
Médecins Sans Frontières in Haiti, confirmed that
on the day of the siege 27 people came to the MSF
clinic with gunshot wounds, three-quarters of
them women and children.

Yet despite these attacks, Haitians are still on
the streets ? rejecting the planned sham
elections, opposing privatization and holding up
photographs of their president. And just as
Washington's experts could not fathom the
possibility that Aristide would reject their
advice a decade ago, today they cannot accept
that his poor supporters could be acting of their
own accord ? surely Aristide must be controlling
them through some mysterious voodoo arts. ?We
believe that his people are receiving
instructions directly from his voice and
indirectly through his acolytes that communicate
with him personally in South Africa,? Noriega
said.

Aristide claims no such powers. ?The people are
bright, the people are intelligent, the people
are courageous,? he says. They know that two plus
two does not equal five.

Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences
and Windows. This column has appeared in The
Nation.




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