26710: Wharram (commentary) Undermining Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Bruce Wharram <bruce.wharram@sev.org>


Undermining Haiti
    By Mark Weisbrot
    The Nation

    12 December 2005 Issue

    History is repeating itself in Haiti, as democracy is being destroyed
for the second time in the past fifteen years. Amazingly, the main
difference seems to be that this time it is being done openly and in broad
daylight, with the support of the "international community" and the United
Nations. The first coup against Haiti's democratically elected government,
in September 1991, was condemned even by the George H.W. Bush
Administration. This although the CIA had funded the leaders of the coup
and - according to a founder of the death squads that murdered thousands of
people during the 1991-94 military dictatorship - also sponsored the
repression. All this was covert, and the official position of the United
States and most other countries was that the dictatorship was not
legitimate.

    But when in February 2004 Haiti's democratically elected president,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown for the second time by remnants of
that prior dictatorship - including convicted mass murderers and former
death squad leaders - this was considered a legitimate "regime change." The
Caricom countries, showing great courage, objected strenuously, as did some
members of the US Congress. But these voices were not powerful enough to
influence the course of events.

    The fix was in: The US Agency for International Development and the
International Republican Institute (the international arm of the Republican
Party) had spent tens of millions of dollars to create and organize an
opposition - however small in numbers - and to make Haiti under Aristide
ungovernable. The whole scenario was strikingly similar to the series of
events that led to the coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in
April 2002. The same US organizations were involved, and the opposition - as
in Venezuela - controlled and used the major media as a tool for
destabilization. And in both cases the coup leaders, joined by Washington,
announced to the world that the elected president had "voluntarily
resigned" - which later turned out to be false.

    Washington had an added weapon against the Haitian government. Taking
advantage of Haiti's desperate poverty and dependence on foreign aid, it
stopped international aid to the government, from the summer of 2000 until
the 2004 coup. As economist Jeffrey Sachs has pointed out, the World Bank
also contributed to the destabilization effort by cutting off funding.

    Now the coup government, headed by unelected Prime Minister Gérard
Latortue, is trying to organize an election. But it is an election that
would not be seen as legitimate in any country, not even Iraq. Everything is
being arranged so that the country's largest political party, Fanmi
Lavalas - which at any moment before the coup would have overwhelmingly
swept national elections - cannot win. Many of the party's leaders are in
jail, generally on trumped-up or nonexistent charges, including the
constitutional prime minister, Yvon Neptune, and Father Gérard Jean-Juste, a
Catholic priest and likely presidential candidate if he were not jailed.
Jean-Juste has been declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty
International. Other leaders are in hiding or in exile, since the murder of
political opponents is common. In one massacre in August, witnesses
described Haitian police arriving at a soccer match and pointing out people
in the crowd, who were then hacked to death by civilian accomplices with
machetes. UN troops have also been implicated in some of the violence, and
the UN has promised an investigation.

    The coup government, with an electoral commission that has no pretense
of impartiality, is also set to disenfranchise a huge number of its
opponents. There have been about one-twentieth as many registration sites
for this election as there were for previous elections, and it is mostly
Fanmi Lavalas voters who have been excluded. According to party
spokespeople, the party has not registered any candidates for president, and
many of its voters will boycott the election unless their demands for the
release of political prisoners and an end to the persecution are met.

    The election has been postponed three times, most recently to December
27. Setting the date two days after Christmas will also help minimize voter
turnout.

    Will the world accept this farce of an election? The Bush Administration
and its allies seem to be hoping that Haiti is just too poor and too black
for anyone to care about whether democratic, constitutional or even human
rights are respected there. They have also cited the violence from both
sides of the conflict to disguise the fact that most of that violence is
directed at supporters of the ousted government to prevent them from
returning to power through a fair election.

    But if this election goes forward without the release of political
prisoners and the restoration of basic rights and security, it will not only
be a tragedy for Haiti. It will be a throwback to the days when the United
States was able to destabilize, overthrow and replace elected governments
that it did not like. It will be a huge step backward for democracy in this
hemisphere.


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    Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research.








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