27801: Tortora: Haiti Elections: The Pottery Barn Rules (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From Patrick Tortora vtortora@capecod.net

Haiti Elections: The 'Pottery Barn Rules'
by John Maxwell from THE Jamaica Observer Feb. 12, 2006


If you really want to know what's wrong with Haiti consider this: On Thursday
night, when it
was clear that Rene Preval was getting something over 60% of the votes in the
UN organised
Haitian election, one of his opponents, the man coming second with about 12%
of the votes was
a former stand-in president, Leslie Manigat.
Manigat, recognising reality, said that the trend suggested that Preval had
swept the board and
that there might be no need for a runoff.
The candidate running third, a millionaire sweatshop owner named Charles Henri
Baker, had a
different opinion. Mr Baker, with about 6% of the vote,one tenth of Preval's
and half as many as
Manigat's, was promising to launch an election petition, charging fraud,
hoping to overturn the
results.
I cannot imagine anything which more clearly illustrates the mind-set of
Haiti's so-called ruling
class, the Elite, whose rapacious greed, racist intransigence and bone-headed
stupidity have
provided the main roadblock in Haiti's 200 year long struggle to establish a
free and civilised
society.
I don't think it is possible for anyone, anywhere else in the world, to
believe that Mr Baker's
initiative makes any sense whatever. I don't believe that even in the US
Embassy in Port au
Prince or in the State Department itself that there is anyone who could
believe that there is
any way, short of assassination, to deny the people of Haiti their basic human
rights after this
week's demonstration of resolution and will.
For the last ten years Charles Henri Baker and an assortment of freebooters
like himself,
notably fellow sweatshop owners Reginald Boulos and Andy Apaid, have been able
to convince
the United States that 'populists' like Preval and Jean Bertrand Aristide do
not represent the
Haitian people. The Elite's stiff-necked refusal to cooperate, negotiate or
participate in the
democratic process recruited support from the most backward and primitive
forces in US
politics and effectively brought the operations of Haitian government to a
standstill.
'Enhancing democracy''
They also managed to recruit the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, whose
Jamaican heritage
should have informed him that he and the rest of the world, were being samfied
(conned) by
the Haitian elite and their co-conspirators against democracy - the
International Republican
Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Haiti Democracy
Project, among
others. Under the guise of "enhancing democracy" these apparatchiks sabotaged
the hopes of
the Haitian people for a new birth of freedom after generations of savage
dictatorship initiated
by the American invasion of 1915.
The American 1915 intervention was explicitly and essentially racist and was
perhaps best
exemplified by the notorious remark of the American Secretary of State at the
time, William
Jennings Bryan. Upon discovering the ethnic character of Haiti he was
appalled: "Imagine!" he
expostulated, "Niggers speaking French!" encapsulating for a century white
American
incomprehension of the humanity of people who don't look like them.
This incomprehension extended to the first black American secretary of State,
Colin Powell,
and even more strongly to his successor, another "brilliant African-American"
Dr Condoleezza
Rice.
Powell bought the Elite nonsense so thoroughly that he was able to say, with a
perfectly
straight face, that President Aristide's "...failure to adhere to democratic
principles has
contributed to the deep polarization and violent unrest that we are witnessing
in Haiti today...
His own actions have called into question his fitness to continue to govern
Haiti. We urge him
to examine his position carefully, to accept responsibility, and to act in the
best interests of
the people of Haiti"
And he suggested that President Aristide was corrupt and that the US with its
high tech and
pervasive reach, would very soon charge Aristide with high crimes and
misdemeanours.
That was two years ago
According to the North American pundits, the best interests of Haiti meant
selling off the few
national productive assets and accepting the wise guidance of people like
Apaid, Boulos and
Baker, all of them suspect as collaborators with the dictatorships under which
they had
amassed immeasurable wealth and power. .Aristide was also supposed to accept
the dictates of
the International Financial institutions (IFIs), the World bank, the IMF et
al, to mortgage his
poverty-stricken country to foreign usurers to build super-highways and other
hard
infrastructure when what Haiti wanted was the development of its people first
so they could
handle the work of re-inventing and rebuilding their country.
One of the Poorest countries in the World
It wasn't that the the US the World Bank and the IFIs didn't know what was
needed. "Haiti is the
poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest countries in
the developing
world. Its per capita income--$ 250--is considerably less than one-tenth the
Latin American
average. About 80 percent of the rural Haitian population live in poverty.
Moreover, far from
improving, the poverty situation in Haiti has been deteriorating over the past
decade,
concomitant with a rate of decline in per capita GNP of 5.2 percent a year
over the 1985-95
period.
"The staggering level of poverty in Haiti is associated with a profile of
social indicators that is
also shocking. Life expectancy is only 57 years compared to the Latin American
average of 69.
Less than half of the population is literate. Only about one child in five of
secondary-school age
actually attends secondary school. Health conditions are similarly poor;
vaccination coverage
for children, for example, is only about 25 percent. Only about one-fourth of
the population
has access to safe water. In short, the overwhelming majority of the Haitian
population are
living in deplorable conditions of extreme poverty.." - The World Bank -
Challenges of Poverty
Reduction.
And they all pledged to support Haiti get her back on her feet. But the Elite,
citing Aristide's
supposedly divisive populism and dictatorial tendencies, convinced anyone who
could help to
put their investments somewhere else. The Elite despised 'the ghetto priest' -
as poor and black
as his parishioners. Aristide nevertheless went ahead. Haiti wanted doctors;
with the help of
the Cubans he established a medical school for the children of the poor. Haiti
wanted teachers;
Aristide built more schools in his short time than had been built in Haiti in
200 years. Yet, to
the foreign NGOs, busy building 'civil society' the man was a menace. They
could not and would
not work with him. They 'knew' that in a fair fight they would defeat him, so
they refused to
contest elections, because they would be stolen.
This time round the ground was better-prepared. Dozens of convicted rapists,
torturers and
murderers were let loose when the Marines took over. The Marines drove out the
students and
took the medical school for their barracks; their accomplices in 'civil
society' burned the new
Museum of Haitian Folkloric history. They shut down the children's television
station. It was
clearly subversive of good government and capitalism.
Press freedom became a memory with journalists tortured and murdered. Leaders
of the
Lavalas popular movement were sometimes murdered, sometime simply imprisoned
without
charge. The Prime Minister was jailed, as was the country's leading
folklorist, a 69 year old
woman named Anne August who was arrested at midnight on Mothers Day 2004 by
Marines using
stun grenades to shatter her front door. They shot her dog and carried away
her young
grandchildren in handcuffs. She is still in prison.
Convicted terrorists were freed by a compromised judicial system and one of
the most notorius
and dangerous even ran for the presidency. The work of years in bringing the
torturers and
murders to Justice was undone overnight. The US installed 'President'
acclaimed the murderers
as "Freedom Fighters" He was in good company, the Canadian representative of
the OAS was on
his bandwagon as he hailed the criminal resurgence.And Condoleezza Rice, with
more
doctorates than common sense, was ecstatic about the prospects of an election.
After all,
lavalas had been silenced, the chimeres (Lavalas 'terrorists') had been
murdered, the people
were leaderless. When a leader stepped forward in the person of Father Gerard
Jean Juste, a
Roman Catholic priest like Aristide, he too was thrown into jail, prevented
from becoming a
candidate for President and only released two weeks before the election
because he had been
examined in prison by the internationally known Professor Paul Farmer and
found to be
suffering from leukemia. Not even the State Department could challenge that
diagnosis.
Spreading 'democracy'
All was set fair for democracy to sprout. In a country of 8 million people
with 4 million voters
spread over 28,000 sq. km ( about the size of the US state of Maryland and
nearly three times
the size of Jamaica) there were 800 designated polling stations. about as many
as would serve
in the city of Kingston, Jamaica. There were three polling stations outside of
the main slum
cities adjacent to Port au Prince - to serve nearly 300,000 voters. There were
none inside.
Condoleezza Rice had a message for the Haitian people. In an interview last
September, before
the election was postponed three times, her "message for the Haitian people is
don't miss this
chance to go out and vote and to decide your own future. There is nothing more
important to a
human being than to control his own future and the vote is the way to begin to
control your
own future."
"Nou lèd, Men Nou La!"
The election was expected to be a shambles in which anything could happen to
frustrate the
popular will: widespread violence, too few polling stations, too many voters
convinced that the
rich would get many chances to vote while they waited, shoeless and voteless,
in mile-long
lines under the hot Haitian sun.
Yet, suspecting the worst, the Haitians were disciplined and resolute. There
was one violent
incident in the whole country.
People fainted as they waited for hours to vote, were revived, waited again
and no doubt
fainted again. All were hungry, I am sure. But they were hungrier for their
rights than for food.
Despite all the odds, they made the election work. Despite the intimidation,
the confusion, the
bad faith and the UN peacekeeping forces, they made the election work. If ever
there were a
people deserving autonomy, it is the Haitians. They proved it 200 years ago,
when the
Enlightenment made a soft landing in Haiti, when in advance of France and the
United States
and the world, the Haitians abolished slavery and promulgated the inalienable
Rights of Man.
They proved it again on Tuesday when they cocked a snook at
their 'benefactors' "Nou lèd, Men
Nou La!" as they say in Haiti - "We may be ugly, but we are here!' or as we
say in Jamaica "You
a-go tired fi see mi face"!!
Preval won even in upscale Petionville.
And of course, we need to remember that despite this 'election' there is no
vacancy in the
office of President of Haiti. The President of Haiti is alive and well. He has
been prevented
from discharging his duties by the illegal machinations of the United States,
Canada and
France, aided and abetted by Kofi Annan. Those characters are simply
attempting to legitimise
the illegitimate.
The Haitian people know this and have used the election to explain to the
world, as best they
can under the circumstances, that they want their democracy and their
President back. Of
course, the American viceroy in Haiti, Timothy Carney, doesn't buy that:
Carney said he was
not concerned about Préval's former alliance with Aristide and dismissed
speculation that
Préval would bring Aristide back to Haiti. ''Aristide is as much a man of the
past as Jean-Claude
'Baby Doc' Duvalier is," Carney said in an interview. ''I believe the
electorate has absolutely
understood that." And of course, Mr Carney, like Dr Rice and Mr Bush, know
what the Haitians
want - much better than the Haitians themselves.
Colin Powell was fond of speaking about what he said were "the Pottery Barn
rules":
'You break it; you've bought it."
The United States, Canada and France broke Haiti on behalf of a thoroughly
toxic Elite. The
French already owed Haiti $25 billion in blood money extracted by blackmail in
the nineteenth
century and the Americans, who financed that extortion at usurious rates, owe
them even
more having destroyed Haitian governance, killed and exiled their leaders and
depraved their
landscape as well as their politics.
Will they do the honorable thing and pay for their depredations?
Stay tuned.
Poetic Justice
They say revenge is a dish that men of taste prefer cold.
In his position as Foreign Minister of Canada Mr Pierre Pettigrew was one of
the leading
conspirators and mobilisers against President Aristide and Haitian democracy.
So, it is with
some satisfaction that I record that Mr Pettigrew, a rising star in the
Liberal party, lost his seat
in the Canadian Parliament in the recent elections. Pettigrew was defending a
seat which had
been safe for the Liberals for nearly 80 years - since 1917. He was defeated
handsomely by -
WAIT FOR IT...... (DRUMROLL and FANFARE!!!)
...... A Haitian woman.
I am sure that you too will feel that somehow, somewhere, there is,
occasionally, some
Justice.
Copyright ©2006 John Maxwell



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