#5137: Elections/resistance: Chamberlain responds to Grey (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

> If they are all charged up about a second round of voting
> that didn't happen, where on earth were their voices when
> the whole legislative and executive branches of the 
> Haitian government were arbitrarily contravened by 
> a mutinous military funded by a corrupt plutocracy?  

How on earth would that invalidate their criticisms today?


> I don't really recall any of those people in the forefront of the
resistance!  

Well, others do.  Most of those on the list of Aristide "defectors" that I
gave in another post (which includes some the names of the one you're
referring to) spoke out firmly and sometimes heroically against the
military.  

What is "the resistance" ?  There were mostly (for a variety of reasons)
only tragic victims, but no resistance in any meaningful sense beyond words
-- no uprisings, very few physical attacks -- and not just because of the
extent of the repression.  Aristide kept saying he was coming back, the OAS
said it would restore constitutional government, that the embargo would
bring the generals down.  So people overwhelmingly just waited.  No crime
in that.  Mightn't we all do the same?  And in the end, as ever, something
came out of the sky (all human beings respond to that) -- Aristide in a US
helicopter.  

Maybe this is one reason the political class has so abysmally failed to
respond to the challenge -- because it was all pretty much handed to them
on a plate.  I'm sure Kim and Simidor would agree with me that this was
dependency theory, imperialism par excellence.  But what did they offer as
an alternative to Aristide being restored by a foreign power?  Aristide
certainly thought it was a good idea, because he accepted it (a few months
after saying publicly that he would "never, never, never" agree to return
to Haiti that way).  Well, he was right to change tactics and give Haiti a
new chance.  The only problem is that that chance seems pretty much to've
been wasted.


        Greg Chamberlain