28236: News: Rossier LA Times BACK HAITI, OR BACK OFF (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From NRossier



The Los Angeles Times
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe- 
bell31mar31,1,3612857.story >

March 31, 2006

OP-ED


BACK HAITI, OR BACK OFF
President Rene Preval's election should stand without interference
from the U.S.

By Madison Smartt Bell

Haiti has suffered terrible shocks since 1990, in part because of its
own internal problems but also thanks to the inconsistent, often
contradictory policies of the United States. For a decade or more,
the U.S. has persistently exported its own deep and dangerous
political divisions to its Caribbean neighbor, and during that time,
Haiti has drifted closer to total anarchy than ever before.

In 1991, under the administration of George H.W. Bush, the United
States did nothing to hinder a military coup against Haiti's first
fairly and democratically elected government in almost a century. The
U.S. stood by while President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was expelled
from the country and his supporters who remained there were harassed,
tortured and assassinated by the death squads of the military junta
that had seized power.

The Clinton administration, by contrast, wanted Aristide back. So in
1994, the U.S. launched a military invasion to restore the elected
government.

But even as U.S. forces were reinstating Aristide, the U.S. far right
was working assiduously, and with little hindrance from either the
Clinton administration or the Bush administration that succeeded it,
to encourage Haitian paramilitaries and members of the disbanded
Haitian army to destabilize the democratically elected government.

Yes, it's true that Aristide's second presidency collapsed, in part,
under its own weight. But there's no question that the armed
"revolution" that expelled him for a second time in 2004 was
vigorously abetted by the U.S. right, using the International
Republican Institute (a foundation linked to the Republican Party
that was created to support democratic activities abroad) as its
instrument.

According to the New York Times, among others, the institute worked
with the apparent collusion of members of the Bush State Department
and over the protest of U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Brian Dean Curran.

> From then until the recent election of Rene Preval to the presidency,
the country has continued to fracture into heavily armed camps run by
various warlords, reminiscent of Somalia or perhaps post-invasion
Iraq.

The pretext for the destabilization of Aristide's second
administration was an irregularity in the parliamentary elections
held in the summer of 2000, when several candidates of Aristide's
Lavalas Family party were declared winners based on a plurality of
the vote, rather than the absolute majority required by the Haitian
constitution. On that pretext, most international aid to Haiti was
blocked (often at the behest of the U.S.) - pointedly including all
support for the judiciary and for the civilian police force that had
been trained, organized and deployed under the intervention of 1994.
> From that point on, the disastrous outcome was inevitable.

In the most recent election, held in February, Preval ran in a field
of 33 candidates. He won close to the 50% of the vote
constitutionally required to establish him as the winner in the first
round - although election officials were at first unable to tell
whether he was just above or just below the threshhold. In the midst
of accusations of fraud on all sides, Preval's base poured into the
streets to demand that its candidate be recognized as the winner.

The problem of getting an exact vote count in a close election is
familiar to Americans. But the results of this election in Haiti
leave no reasonable doubt that Preval has far more support than any
other candidate. His closest competitor, Leslie F. Manigat, received
less than 12% of the vote. Preval is, by all the evidence, his
people's choice.

Still, the rules are the rules, and without a clear 50% of the vote,
Preval would have to face a runoff. But at the last minute, under an
agreement brokered by the current United Nations mission to Haiti and
the Organization of American States, election officials discounted an
estimated 85,000 blank ballots included in the original tally. By
excluding them, Preval's share of the vote rose slightly - from an
estimated 48.7% to about 51%. Thus, no need for a runoff.

But the great risk now is that the same factions - both in Haiti and
in the United States - that labored so ceaselessly to overturn
Aristide's second presidency will seize this apparently similar
pretext to continue to undermine Preval's new government in much the
same way as before.

In Washington, enthusiasm for this negotiated solution has been
muted. But the legitimacy of Preval's election this year is at least
as clear as that of Bush's election in 2000. Since the turn of the
21st century, our adventures in nation building have been nothing to
write home about. If the United States can't get wholeheartedly
behind Haiti's new government, it should at least spare it the kind
of pernicious interference that has done the country so much damage
in the recent past. Preval's new presidency is the best chance for
Haiti now, and we owe it to the Haitian people - if not to ourselves
- to let them have it.


Novelist Madison Smartt Bell's trilogy about the Haitian revolution
includes "All Souls Rising," "Master of the Crossroads" and "The
Stone That the Builder Refused."