#5058: A Remarkable Coincidence: Chamberlain comments (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

> Kathy Grey wrote:

> Le Matin of August 31, 2000, contained an article about the US Embassy's
statement that the refusal to invalidate the most recent legislative
elections "can not but cast doubt on the legitimacy of the new
legislature"... and on the same page, a statement from the International
Republican Institute's number two man, Stanley Lucas, that the election is
"a film last seen in 1993..." and referring to Haiti's legislature as a
"Parlement croupion, de facto".  (...)  What a remarkable coincidence that
the US government's position should so neatly align with the IRI's big lie!
 

____________

If non-Lavalas groups, more and more Haitian intellectuals and former
senior Lavalas figures all condemn the recent election outcome, can their
positions be waved away because they happen to be the same as those of the
IRI and the US government?

By the same logic, all vaudou is foreign-controlled, bogus etc. because
mambo Kathy is a pass-for-white foreigner brought up outside Haiti.

Is it _by definition_ impossible that the present situation can bear even
the slightest resemblance to some things that happened under the military
regime?  Were the rampages of the chimères simply "in support of the
people" ?  Did the chimères smash the market stalls of the poor because it
was in the er... interests of the people?  And were all those shouts of
Vive Aristide only from the mouths of CIA provocateurs secreted among them?
 And who were the mobs who appeared on the streets a few hours after it
became (privately) known that CEP president Manus had refused to endorse
the crooked Senate results?  Were they too provocateurs and CIA agents?

Haitian politicians are still mostly fighting for power in the same old
ways (seize control of the police, unleash street thugs, electoral
malpractice -- mocking all those honest voters casting ballots freely).  So
what's the big surprise that some events recall earlier ones from a
politically incorrect era?  

These same politicians prate endlessly about laws and constitutions and
both the OPL _and_ Lavalas contrived to paralyse parliament for two years
in the name of legality while people starved.  Yet they have no qualms at
all about violating the spirit and letter of the law when it suits them
(Aristide I; the entire coup regime; Aristide-Préval, violating the
electoral law and then lying about the methods used in previous elections).
 

They can of course (and do) have it both ways, but let them not expect
other Haitians and many foreigners to rubber-stamp such behaviour or treat
them as operators worthy of any respect.  The voters yes, their crooked and
manipulating political leaders (along with their mouthpieces Haiti-Progrès
and Haiti-Observateur) no.  


        Greg Chamberlain