[Peace-discuss] Haiti

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Mort has posted here an important article -- notably, from the Brit press
(and from a notorious American economist).  Here's another, also Brit.
--CGE]

 Comment
Why they had to crush Aristide 

Haiti's elected leader was regarded as a threat by France and the US

Peter Hallward
Tuesday March 2, 2004
The Guardian

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was re-elected president of Haiti in November 2000
with more than 90% of the vote. He was elected by people who approved his
courageous dissolution, in 1995, of the armed forces that had long
terrorised Haiti and had overthrown his first administration. He was
elected by people who supported his tentative efforts, made with virtually
no resources or revenue, to invest in education and health. He was elected
by people who shared his determination, in the face of crippling US
opposition, to improve the conditions of the most poorly paid workers in
the western hemisphere.

Aristide was forced from office on Sunday by people who have little in
common except their opposition to his progressive policies and their
refusal of the democratic process. With the enthusiastic backing of
Haiti's former colonial master, a leader elected with overwhelming popular
support has been driven from office by a loose association of convicted
human rights abusers, seditious former army officers and pro-American
business leaders.

It's obvious that Aristide's expulsion offered Jacques Chirac a
long-awaited chance to restore relations with an American administration
he dared to oppose over the attack on Iraq. It's even more obvious that
the characterisation of Aristide as yet another crazed idealist corrupted
by absolute power sits perfectly with the political vision championed by
George Bush, and that the Haitian leader's downfall should open the door
to a yet more ruthless exploitation of Latin American labour.

If you've been reading the mainstream press over the past few weeks,
you'll know that this peculiar version of events has been carefully
prepared by repeated accusations that Aristide rigged fraudulent elections
in 2000; unleashed violent militias against his political opponents; and
brought Haiti's economy to the point of collapse and its people to the
brink of humanitarian catastrophe.

But look a little harder at those elections. An exhaustive and convincing
report by the International Coalition of Independent Observers concluded
that "fair and peaceful elections were held" in 2000, and by the standard
of the presidential elections held in the US that same year they were
positively exemplary.

Why then were they characterised as "flawed" by the Organisation of
American States (OAS)? It was because, after Aristide's Lavalas party had
won 16 out of 17 senate seats, the OAS contested the methodology used to
calculate the voting percentages. Curiously, neither the US nor the OAS
judged this methodology problematic in the run-up to the elections.

However, in the wake of the Lavalas victories, it was suddenly important
enough to justify driving the country towards economic collapse. Bill
Clinton invoked the OAS accusation to justify the crippling economic
embargo against Haiti that persists to this day, and which effectively
blocks the payment of about $500m in international aid.

But what about the gangs of Aristide supporters running riot in
Port-au-Prince? No doubt Aristide bears some responsibility for the dozen
reported deaths over the last 48 hours. But given that his supporters have
no army to protect them, and given that the police force serving the
entire country is just a tenth of the force that patrols New York city,
it's worth remembering that this figure is a small fraction of the number
killed by the rebels in recent weeks.

One of the reasons why Aristide has been consistently vilified in the
press is that the Reuters and AP wire services, on which most coverage
depends, rely on local media, which are all owned by Aristide's opponents.
Another, more important, reason for the vilification is that Aristide
never learned to pander unreservedly to foreign commercial interests. He
reluctantly accepted a series of severe IMF structural adjustment plans,
to the dismay of the working poor, but he refused to acquiesce in the
indiscriminate privatisation of state resources, and stuck to his guns
over wages, education and health.

What happened in Haiti is not that a leader who was once reasonable went
mad with power; the truth is that a broadly consistent Aristide was never
quite prepared to abandon all his principles.

Worst of all, he remained indelibly associated with what's left of a
genuine popular movement for political and economic empowerment. For this
reason alone, it was essential that he not only be forced from office but
utterly discredited in the eyes of his people and the world. As Noam
Chomsky has said, the "threat of a good example" solicits measures of
retaliation that bear no relation to the strategic or economic importance
of the country in question. This is why the leaders of the world have
joined together to crush a democracy in the name of democracy.


Â
· Peter Hallward teaches French at King's College London and is the author
of Absolutely Postcolonial

peter.hallward at kcl.ac.uk 

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Guardian Unlimited 
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004