COALITION FOR DEMOCRACY IN HAITI -- CHILDREN'S HOPE

Leisa's Haiti Journal #1, January 2012 - "The Good Life"

2012-01-10T16:17:00.000-08:00

Leisa and the children at the Lamp
for Haiti clinic in Cite Soleil

Haiti Journal #1, January 2012 - "The Good Life"

I had always thought a good life should roll smoothly along like a sauntering stream through a meadow. Lately, I noticed that the good life is not always milk-toast (no offense to my mother – who used to make us the best hot sweet milk-toast). Sometimes, the “good life” is chock full of surprising twists. Just this week our first grandson tried to rush his way into the world 2 ½ months early, but was gently persuaded by his anxious parents and a good doctor to wait a titch longer to make his mark on the world.

So last night we raised a bit of Guiness at the Elephant Bar in relief. (“How can an elephant own a bar?” Luke wanted to know.) Then we toasted in the first night of the new school year. Tomorrow, after our second class, we catch a red-eye pointed toward Haiti.

We celebrate the almost $6,000 of support designated for Children’s Hope sponsored feeding programs in Haiti. (Thanks to Empty Bowls and the El Dorado Peace & Justice Community!) We celebrate the “Jam Cruise” shipping us 500 pairs of school shoes to Children’s Hope in Haiti. Thanks to “Positive Legacy” for taking on this project. (These shoes mean so much more than just shoes – school shoes can mean the chance at an education – a chance to change a life.) We celebrate our friend Marcorel who on one day’s notice agreed to drive twelve tortuous hours eating dust to pick up those shoes. We celebrate our Children’s Hope team members who regularly and quietly send the exact supplies and donations we need from as far away as Switzerland, and we dearly celebrate four year old Charlotte’s gathering her toys and asking her parents to send them to Haiti.

At the start of this new year, I raise my pen and pound my yellow pad in honor of those amazing folks who take on the twists and turns with grace and resolve. May they continue to have rich abundance – not of wealth – but of service and surprise.

We celebrate those like little Charlotte, who found ways to serve without money of their own, like the students at Sac State who sold wrist bands and bought new beds for Mabe Orphanage, like the woman who got her friends to commit to a small amount each month and ended up sending us several thousand condoms for distribution.

If you want to join the Children’s Hope team there are many ways to help out. You can make a monetary donation by clicking on the "donate" button on this page or by sending a check to the address below. You can start a children’s vitamin drive at your soccer club or church. You can collect used graphing calculators for the future doctors in Haiti, cell phones for the women’s group leaders, or laptops for schools. You can get your fourth grade class to draw pictures of friendship and solidarity for the Sopudep School children in Port au Prince or for the disabled children up at Wings of Hope orphanage to put on their walls, as our friend Stacey did with her class recently. The need is great, the possibilities are endless, and every little bit helps.

We always find a next need. Right now, for example, we need to find $400 to pay for gas and a rented truck that can make the twelve hour trip on rutted roads for children’s shoes sake.

As Luke lugs in our worn-out duffle bags we wonder what Haiti has to teach us this time. On my last trip to Haiti in August, I stumbled onto folks who needed someone to distribute four cargo containers full of free medical supplies that had arrived in Haiti after their doctors had returned to the states (approximately $20,000 worth). I thought I was there to do work at the U.S. Embassy, instead I had the happy errand of meeting with Haitian women’s groups who facilitated the distribution of all these valuable supplies. What an experience it was for me to see these magnificent women pull together the security and networks necessary to get these supplies fairly spread to clinics and groups throughout the tent city. It was like magic. There were streams of women in place carrying bundles of diapers, cases of soap and bleach, boxes of first aid supplies and sanitary goods and more – mostly on their heads to a make-shift tent with a dirt floor. No bossing, no fighting, no theft. Just by the quiet order of women. Haiti has its lessons. Whatever it turns out to be this time, we’ll take it – ruts and bumps in the road and all.

You are part of the Children’s Hope team, even if you just share these journals with one friend. You never know where that may lead. Thousands of lives have been changed through this work. And after all, Marx once said, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways…The point, however, is to change it.”

Peace, all ways and always, Leisa

Leisa Faulkner, Founder of Children’s Hope and Adjunct Professor of Sociology, University of the Pacific

Checks may be sent to:

Children’s Hope, 3025A Cambridge Road, Cameron Park, CA 95682.

Leisa Faulkner, Executive Director

Children's Hope

3025 A Cambridge Road
Cameron Park, CA 95682
Text me @ 916.801.4184
Email: childrenshope@live.com
Blog: http://coalitionfordemocracyinhaiti.blogspot.com/

Summer 2011 -- Leisa's Haiti Journal #4

2011-08-10T12:40:00.000-07:00

Luke, Leisa, Paul and the children
and staff of the MABE orphanage

Dear Friends,

Haiti was saved from most of tropical storm Emily this week, so we were able to continue serving the children in Port au Prince area without any disruption, save an occasional welcome breeze and the slight flooding we saw in Cite Soleil. Three cases of condoms have been delivered, and 10 cases of supplies ordered for "Wings of Hope" children's home for the severly disabled. I took Marcorel Lisius to tour Grass Roots display of examples of locally sustainable/approprate housing. Besides having founded MABE orphanage, Marco is an expert in sustainable building (specifically sanitation). I will meet with folks for medical services to register for PROMISS on Monday which should enable us to use our dear donations to get even better prices on rxs. Also, we did accept as a partner "Grass Roots" who in turn will offer us free medical supplies we can pick up in Haiti, saving shipping costs. It has been a very busy last week.

We did find our car and ourselves seated front row to a volatile demostration of some very frustrated young men looking for work in front of the Haitian Social Services building. Rocks and a few shots were fired, but no one seemed to be injured.

Thank you so very much for supporting our Children's Hope work in Haiti...without you the work could not move forward.

Peace always and all ways,

leisa

Summer 2011 -- Leisa's Haiti Journal #3: Amputee Clinic

2011-08-02T15:39:00.000-07:00

Our two new Haitian sons packed, carried and delivered donations into the Prosthetika amputee lab, their eyes round with awe and reverence as they were handed molds used to make new limbs for other Haitian children.

This was their first service trip with Mommy Leisa and Papi. Though every excursion away from the orphanage is a grand adventure, this time the full force of service work came down hard on our two little sons. They had only seen us deliver toys, food, water and medicine. Our visits to Mabe Orphanage were characteristically full of cheerful things: a Disney movie under the stars, surprise ice cream, soccer balls, new beds…When D’Alessandro held up the small prosthetic leg it looked as if the burden of all street children came to rest on his young shoulders. Some part of him will always carry the burden of having once been a street kid himself, struggling to care for his two year old brother…without shelter, safety or clean water.

Now, that burden is an opportunity. I return to Port au Prince today for yet another meeting at the U.S. Embassy that may soon allow us to bring Dro and Tevez to their new home in America . Haiti will always be their home as well, as it has almost become for us. Very soon, though, we hope, their world will become much larger, their opportunities much greater and that huge compassion they carry may grow wings of its own.

Peace, all ways and always,

Leisa

Leisa's Haiti Journal #2 - The Sun Set Backwards

2011-06-21T23:20:00.000-07:00

June 22, 2011 - Fort Lauderdale, Florida

We watched the sun set backwards in Florida last night on our way to Haiti. (As born and raised Californians, we know the sun is supposed to set over the ocean). Tomorrow before the sun has a chance to come up again, we'll be off to Haiti with thousands of dollars worth of supplies that we are not sure we can pay for when the bill comes due. Somehow, though, we have confidence.

Florida's opulent beauty and abundance stand in such stark contrast to what we know we will experience tomorrow. More than the sun setting seems backward today. Tourist's drippy plastic bottles of icy water remind me of the day last year when we helped fill water buckets from a truck we flagged down in Cite Soleil. A long line of dust-dry children and their desperate mothers patiently waited for their portion of water. We hadn't budgeted for a truck load of water, but what could we do? Normally scrubbed Haitian children had grime and bugs sticking to them with equal determination. Their mother’s eyes which normally both confront and comfort me with their centuries old wisdom, strength, and determination were for once, downcast. Post quake, mid-cholera has left nearly everyone in Port au Prince suffering either loss or illness at the start of this new hurricane season.

It’s not too late to help. This trip, we purchased all the medicine, tarps, toys and books we could pack up to our weight limit of 100 pounds per person (not sure how many more trips Paul’s chronically sore lower back has in it). We printed and carry 20 copies of the 200 page research project from last trip, and some of my new children’s book, “Children of the Coup.” We have committed to visit three amputee sites, a few clinics, orphanages, a boy’s home, and the new site for Sopudep School, yet we never really know where need will take us. What we do know is that we cannot meet these needs without your support.

In short, it will take us a few months to get back to a balanced budget. We trust, though, that it will happen, as it always has.

So, if you planned on making a pledge and just haven’t done it yet, write back now.

If you have pledged, and not sent your check, now is a good time.

If you ever wondered how you could make genuine difference in someone’s life, be part our team. Our most valued team members often never come to Haiti . They may help with funding, write grants, throw concerts or organize collection drives. (Thanks to Karen B., Jessica D., and Will L.)

Three ways to contribute:
1. Go to the blog: http://coalitionfordemocracyinhaiti.blogspot.com/
2. Send a check to Children's Hope, 3025A Cambridge Rd., Cameron Park, CA 95682
3. Reply to this email with a pledge of any amount (Please follow up with a check).

Peace, all ways and always,
Leisa

Leisa's Haiti Journal #1 (Saturday, June 4th, 2011)

2011-06-21T16:19:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Today, little Emma (age 8) is lugging duffel bags and counting bottles of children's vitamins bound for Haiti. Trouble is, there is not enough medicine to fill up all the bags she set out. After paying off the last Children's Hope trip to Haiti in January this year, (aside from the $1,350 earmarked for amputee services) we have only $350 remaining for our pharmaceutical supply order. (We usually order $1,000 to $4,000 in new medicines).

We are fortunate to have five student interns this time to help carry supplies. They will also assist in the distribution of the $1,000 they raised that will be spent locally in Haiti to address needs at Mabe Orphanage primarily, and perhaps some at Sopudep School, The Lamp Clinic (Cite Soleil) and St. Joseph's Home for Boys (Port au Prince).

Each intern also raised their own expenses for the trip. We are very proud and grateful to the Peace and Conflict Resolution Club at Sac State for taking the lead on the fund raising on campus.

Once again, I have faith that the rest of us can match their dedication to service. I will order meds this Tuesday, depending on how many pledges we get. Please remember that the cholera epidemic is not going away. Over 5,300 people have died from cholera in Haiti since October (mostly from a lack of clean water). Hurricane season is just starting (June to Nov), as the earthquake induced homeless are now facing bull-dozers plowing down their tent city camps with little or no warning.

Like many of you, little Emma cannot come join our team going to Haiti this month, but she is doing her part. If you find you have a bit to share, it will certainly go far to help those in need who are still suffering. Help us give Haiti a chance to heal.

Ways to donate:

1) Go to: http://coalitionfordemocracyinhaiti.blogspot.com/
2) Send a check to Children's Hope, 3025A Cambridge Road, Cameron Park, CA 95682
3) Reply to this email with a note to me pledging to send any amount, and I will order that amount of meds in your name, (Please remember to mail a check the address below).
4) Forward this email to a friend who has always wanted to support a small, local non-profit that works in solidarity with local community leaders in Haiti, and who hand delivers those supplies and services to the most needy.
5) Collect things we always need, such as:
*children's vitamins, infant tylenol, children's tylenol, children's advil (generic from Costco is the best buy)
*adult generic advil or tylenol (large bottles from Costco are the best value)
*Mary Jane style black girls shoes (needed to attend school - any size - nearly new are fine)
*used cell phones
*web worthy new or used lap tops
*graphing calculators for Haitian high school students (have any in your drawer?)
*light weight rubber sandals (Flip-flops - new only but dollar store is ok)
*children's calculators (dollar store is ok - we need about 300 of these)
*sponsor a child's tuition and uniform/supply costs ($450 per child a year)
*Condoms (we have had a great team working on getting these, and they exceeded their commitment, but it is coming to a close)

6) Activate your own church, club, reading group or service organization - you never know what may come of it. I had three children decide to help Haiti by selling brownies and they raised over $300 dollars, came by and packed up supplies with me. Donations from the above list may be delivered to my address below anytime (but to have them included in this trip they must be here by June 16th).

peace, all ways and always, Leisa

p.s. I just finished my thesis on acutely impoverished children in Cite Soleil. If you want a copy of the PDF file, just write me at ChildrensHope@live.com and I will be more than happy to send you a free copy.

Father Roy Bourgeois on Democracy Now!

2011-06-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

Human rights group sues mayor in Haiti for terrorizing earthquake victims during unlawful evictions

2011-06-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

For Immediate Release:
May 31, 2011

Contact:
Mario Joseph, Av., Managing Attorney, Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, mario@ijdh.org, +509-3701-9879/ +509-3554-4284 (in Port-au-Prince) (French)
Jeena Shah, Esq., Legal Fellow, Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, jeena@ijdh.org, +509-3610-2781 (in Port-au-Prince) (English)

Human rights group sues mayor in Haiti for terrorizing earthquake victims during unlawful evictions

On Wednesday, June 1, 2011, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) will file a complaint with Haiti’s National Prosecutor against Delmas Mayor Wilson Jeudy for his recent spree of illegal evictions in displacement camps created after the January 12, 2010 earthquake. Grassroots human rights organizations and tent camp residents also plan to stage a protest at 10 am at the Ministry of Justice, while the complaint is being filed, to draw attention to their grievances. The protest will end before the nation’s Parliament.

At least three camps housing approximately 1,000 displaced persons in the Port-au-Prince suburb were destroyed last week by Mayor Jeudy, his armed security personnel and units from the Haitian National Police, as a part of the Mayor’s declared mission to remove camps from public lands. The police came with little to no warning and raided the camps under the pretext of searching for criminals, slashing tents with machetes and assaulting residents trying to protest the raids.

BAI’s complaint on behalf of individual victims of the evictions charges Mayor Jeudy with violations of the rights to life and housing protected by Haiti’s Constitution and crimes against the person and property, articulated in the Haitian Penal Code. “As a public official, Mayor Jeudy is not above the law,” said BAI Managing Attorney Mario Joseph. “Haitian law only permits him to enter private domiciles, regardless of where they are located, with a judicial mandate or a Municipal Decree published in advance, neither of which the Mayor had to justify his acts.”

Last week’s evictions in Delmas are just a snapshot of a larger epidemic of forced evictions that began almost immediately after the earthquake struck 16 months ago. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued directives to the Haitian government last fall to impose a moratorium on evictions and protect displaced communities from the violence often associated with forced evictions. However, due in large part to government inaction, the International Organization on Migration estimated that 166,000 people were still facing imminent threats of eviction as of April.

Mayor Jeudy tried to defend his actions by arguing that the public spaces occupied by tent camps needed to be open to the communities at large. “Mayor Jeudy is ignoring his duties as a State agent,” said BAI attorney Jeena Shah. “Since Haiti is a party to the American Convention on Human Rights and a host of other human rights treaties, Mayor Jeudy has a duty to not only protect displaced persons from forced evictions, but also facilitate their resettlement into decent housing.”

While the Mayor believes that many of the camps’ residents have housing but were staying in camps to access free services, the appalling conditions of displacement camps make apparent the fact that if the earthquake victims had somewhere else to go, they would have left long ago.

Founded in 1995, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) is the only public interest law firm in Haiti. With the support of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, the BAI uses litigation, advocacy, documentation and grassroots empowerment to advance the rule of law and challenge the unjust structures that violate the human rights of Haiti’s poor majority. Visit haitijustice.org. Follow @IJDH.

Haiti: Just When You Think It Can't Get Any Worse

2011-05-07T17:42:00.000-07:00

Funeral of Samuel Georges, an 18-year-old who died eight hours
after contracting cholera. Cholera is on the rise in Haiti. Credit:Ben Depp, www.bendepp.com

Beverly Bell

BERKELEY, California, May 5 (IPS) - We may soon look back on this period in Haiti with greater appreciation.

Amidst the world-historic levels of death and suffering from last January's earthquake, citizens have at least been spared the scale of government violence that has marked much of their nation's past (notwithstanding attacks against internally displaced persons during forced evictions, and occasionally against street protesters.)

This may change under Michel Martelly, the incoming president. For starters, he wants to bring back the army that former president Jean- Bertrand Aristide dismantled in 1995. Since Haiti already has a police force to maintain public order and the country is not expected to go to war, Martelly can have only one aim for reintroducing armed forces: to reclaim the tool that past presidents have used to shore up their power by means of violent repression of dissent and competition.

Forces are already readying for violence, which will likely be exerted both through the army and through gangs.

Journalist Isabeau Doucet filed this eyewitness report last month: "For over a year, on a hillside south of Port-au-Prince, around 100 former soldiers and young recruits train three times a week. They claim to have a network of camps all over the country where Haitian men meet and exercise, learn military protocol and martial arts and receive basic training... The black-and-red flag of Jean-Claude Duvalier's party hangs in their tarpaulin dressing room… Somebody is paying for this, even though they claim that it's all-volunteer, and the current government is turning a blind eye, if not giving tacit support."

Just how the forces of violence may ally with various backers - some combination of Martelly and those surrounding the returned former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier - is one question. Another is how much they may tyrannise a citizens' movement which is demanding solutions to widespread homelessness, unemployment, and extreme poverty.

Two U.S.-based groups supporting community organising in Haiti are already preparing emergency responses in case significant political violence should erupt.

Beyond Martelly's plans for an army, his past associations raise concerns about what policies he may bring to office. Martelly was public in his support for the death squad-friendly regimes that reigned after coups d'état against Aristide (1991 and 2004). More recently, Martelly has made such public statements as "I would kill Aristide to stick a dick up his ass."

Martelly won in a run-off in which less than one in four registered voters bothered to turn out, meaning he was endorsed by 16.7 percent of all registered voters. If this sounds abysmally low for a mandate, it is lofty compared to the 4.6 percent who are believed to have supported Martelly in the first round.

No one knows the figure for sure, because that round was so fraudulent that even the government's Provisional Electoral Council refused to ratify it with a majority vote.

While legally, this should have nullified the first round, the Organization of American States and the U.S. government intensively pressured the Haitian government to approve the elections and send Martelly to the run-offs. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even traveled to Haiti to ensure these outcomes.

After Martelly was declared president, Clinton said, "Now he has a chance to lead and we are behind him. He is committed to results. He wants to deliver for the Haitian people. And we are committed to helping him do so."

Other bad news dogs Haiti. The lives of those left displaced from the earthquake are growing more, not less, vulnerable, contrary to what one might expect with the passing of time and the many billions of aid dollars circulating.

A primary risk is cholera, which is due to spike once the imminent rainy season hits, because the near-daily storms will leave standing water and mud in most camps. The camps are already the perfect breeding ground for this disease of poverty, with their densely concentrated populations who are frequently weak and ill, often lack water – not just drinking water but often any water at all – and suffer from a dearth of hygiene options and medical care.

A recent study in the medical journal The Lancet predicted 779,000 cases and 11,100 deaths from cholera by the end of November.

With all humanitarian and international agencies in Haiti aware of the dire risk of this illness, which can result in death only a few hours after infection, 39 percent of 'transitional shelters' still do not receive water or basic sanitation services.

Michelle Karshan, an American advocate engaged in anti-cholera efforts, reported: "There is a deadly shortage of available cholera prevention and treatment supplies. And the most important prevention of cholera transmission – creation of a water system infrastructure making treated water widely available – is still not off the ground, while distribution of water continues to reach only a minuscule number of camps. The majority of the resource-poor camps are left to fend for themselves."

The U.N. Cholera Appeal for Haiti has only received 45 percent of the funds it needs.

The deeper worry is why, with up to 1.5 million people still homeless after 16 months, water purification tablets and port-o-potties are being discussed as a solution. The only way to make people safe from this disease is to resettle them into decent housing. Yet still neither the international community nor the Haitian government has any workable plans.

The government has yet to invoke its constitutional right to declare eminent domain and claim large plots of unused private land in order to relocate people. International aid has yet to be significantly employed in clearing rubble, 80 percent of which remains, rendering much of Port-au-Prince uninhabitable.

Another hazard that internally displaced persons (IDPs) face is being forced out of their camps, left in even greater precariousness. According to the International Organization for Migration, 820,000 of the original set of IDPs dwellers – more than half - have left the camps, but not because they have found a better situation.

Only 4.7 percent have gone to new or repaired housing. The remainder, as reported by the International Organization for Migration and substantiated by many community watchdog groups in Haiti, have fled for two reasons. One is an anywhere-but-here response, in which families have escaped to dangerously earthquake-damaged structures, ravines, crowded rooms, or whatever they can find. Others have been evicted in a growing wave of expulsions – some violent, many illegal - by both government institutions and private landowners.

As they have since the earthquake, coalitions of progressive NGOs, community groups, and camp committees are trying to mount pressure to win gains in a broad-based agenda which includes democratic participation and socio-economic rights. Predominant strategies include popular education, legal support for camp residents, policy advocacy, and grassroots mobilisation.

A snapshot of some of the groups' activities in the three-week period surrounding this article includes: a three-day May Day mobilisation for workers' rights; a three-day symposium critiquing disaster capitalism, "What Financing for What Reconstruction?", and a three-day exchange to strengthen efforts to force resettlement of IDPs, "International Forum for the Right to Housing".

These movements currently lack funding and cohesion. At many points in Haitian history, however, pressure from below has proven to be the critical variable in forcing change. Given the disappointing track record of the international community and development industry, and the ominous prospects of Martelly's presidency, they may be Haiti's best hope.

*Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book 'Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance'. She coordinates Other Worlds, www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Martelly: Haiti's second great disaster

2011-05-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

Many of Haiti's poorest citizens were not dissuaded by former singer Michel 'Sweet Micky' Martelly's near-total lack of political experience. [Gallo/Getty]

Haiti's new president is a friend of coup-plotters, fascists, and armed right-wing groups in his country and abroad.

Greg Gandlin, aljazeera.net

No sooner had Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly been confirmed the winner in Haiti's deeply flawed presidential election than he jumped on a plane and headed to Washington, where he met with his country's real power brokers: officials from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the US Chamber of Commerce and the State Department.

There, he committed his desperately poor country - where some 700,000 people are still homeless as a result of last year's earthquake - to fiscal discipline, promising to "give new life to the business sector". In exchange, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave him a strong endorsement. "We are behind him; we have a great deal of enthusiasm," she said. "The people of Haiti may have a long road ahead of them, but as they walk it, the United States will be with you all the way," she added.

Martelly, a well-known kompa singer, is an unusual choice to lead Haiti. With no political experience, he represents a clear break with the country's other democratically elected presidents since the island nation ousted the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and ushered in an unprecedented era of democracy.

The US press billed his victory as "overwhelming". But with Haiti's most popular political party, Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas, banned from participating in the election, a vast majority of Haitians didn't vote. Martelly took the presidency with just 16.7 per cent of the electorate.

Compare this dismal turnout with the election of Haiti's last two presidents. Aristide, a popular liberation theologian priest, won the presidency twice in landslides where a majority of the electorate voted, first in 1990 and again in 2000. Aristide's first prime minister, Rene Preval likewise was elected twice by large margins with high turnouts, in 1995 and 2006. In this election, Martelly got two-thirds of the vote - but three-quarters of registered voters didn't turn up.

It bodes ominously for Haiti, but Martelly may have more in common with Gerard Latortue, the head of state imposed on Haiti following the 2004 US-backed coup d'etat against Aristide. A South Florida talk-show host, Latortue, like Martelly, had no background in politics. But, like Martelly, he did have friends in Washington. During Latortue's brief stint in office, 2004 - 2006, Haiti experienced some 4,000 political murders, according to The Lancet - while hundreds of Fanmi Lavalas members, Aristide supporters, and social movement leaders were locked up - usually on bogus charges. Latortue's friends in Washington looked the other way.

Martelly's Washington friends include Damian Merlo, his presidential campaign manager. Merlo's CV should alarm anyone concerned with democracy in Haiti. Merlo has worked for Otto Reich, the Iran-Contra veteran and supporter of coups in Honduras and Venezuela. Merlo has also worked with the International Republican Institute, which - under the banner of "democracy promotion" - funds "civil society" organisations to destabilise governments it deems to be a problem.

During his stint at IRI, Merlo took steps to weaken Brazil's governing Workers' Party. Prior to taking on Sweet Micky's campaign, Merlo beefed up his experience with John McCain's failed 2008 presidential bid. McCain, interestingly, chairs IRI's board, and brought Reich on as a foreign policy adviser during the 2008 campaign.

Many Haiti observers may be familiar with the IRI for the key role it played in overthrowing Aristide's government during his second term. IRI trained and funded various anti-Aristide groups, promoted anti-Aristide propaganda, and, as described in a New York Times feature article in 2006, even worked to undermine political solutions being negotiated with Aristide by the US embassy and the Organisation of American States. Two years earlier, the IRI was also deeply involved in the failed coup against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

Support and campaign

While in Washington, Martelly promised his supporters that he would promote transparency when it came to foreign aid. That openness, however, apparently doesn't apply to his campaign donations, raising the possibility that he is funded by the same groups which drove Aristide from power in 2004. Martelly admits that he received financial support from foreign sources but, in response to questioning by the Miami Herald, he refused to identify them other than saying they are "people who believe in us". When pressed, he deflected, telling the interviewer, "you talk to them".

All told, Martelly reportedly spent some six million dollars on his campaign - the equivalent of $15billion in the US. To put this in perspective, Obama is hoping to spend US$1billion on his upcoming reelection campaign. These deep pockets were probably the deciding factor in his victory.

It was Merlo, along with right wing Spanish PR group Ostos & Sola with close ties to Spain's neo-fascist Popular Party, that successfully made-over Martelly's public persona, putting him in a suit and encouraging him to tone down his rhetoric. These spin doctors counselled him to go from "Sweet Micky" - popular and bawdy entertainer, to the more respectable Michel Martelly - presidential candidate.

Still, some disturbing "Sweet Micky" outbursts bubbled up towards the end of the campaign - troublesome YouTube moments that might have doomed a presidential contender in the United States. In one, apparently recent, video, Martelly was filmed surrounded by a small group of friends at a club. "All those shits were Aristide's faggots," he shouts in kreyol in the candid video, while pulling his T-shirt up and rubbing his belly. "I would kill Aristide and stick a dick up his ass." This was followed by an audio recording - also posted on YouTube, accompanied by a photo of Martelly in a suit - in which the candidate denounced Fanmi Lavalas: "The Lavalas are so ugly. They smell like s**t. F**k you, Lavalas. F**k you, Jean-Bertrand Aristide."

Martelly's ties with coup-supporting Republicans in the US and neo-fascists in Spain are perhaps the least worrisome of the president-elect's relationships. His relationship to Haiti's violent far-right goes way back. It is well known, for instance, that he ran a nightclub frequented by Duvalierists in the late 1980's and early 1990's. He has also admitted to having joined the Tonton Macoutes - the world-infamous, murderous militia of the Duvalier dictatorships - in his younger days. Martelly has also spoken freely about his friendships with convicted murderer Michel François and others involved in the coups against Aristide - which Martelly also admits he supported. His famous song, "I Don't Care" is a rebuff to controversy about such associations.

Obama's push

Despite all these documented troublesome statements and associations, the Obama administration went to great lengths to ensure that Martelly wound up running in the election's second round.

Official results in the disputed first round initially had the government-supported candidate, Jude Celestin, placed second, with Martelly close behind in third. Martelly's campaign alleged widespread fraud and other irregularities. True enough, but it was not clear that the net fraud went against him. When an Organisation of American States "expert" mission was sent in to determine the actual runner-up, they selected Martelly by recounting only a sample of the ballots, without using any statistical inference. The 234 tally sheets that they disqualified turned out to be from areas where Celestin had strong support. Six of the seven members of the OAS mission were from the US, Canada, and France - that is, the countries that supported the 2004 coup against Aristide. When questioned by independent experts from the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (who actually counted all the voter tally sheets in their independent election report), the mission could not explain its methodology.

In fact, the mission's chief statistical expert - US statistician Fritz Scheuren - admitted that the OAS mission had no statistical basis for its recommendation: to replace Celestin with Martelly. Observers noted that it was also highly unusual - perhaps unprecedented - for an election to be overturned without a full recount.

But that is exactly what happened. The Obama administration insisted that Haiti's electoral authorities accept the OAS mission's conclusions and put Martelly on the ballot. Hillary Clinton made a surprise trip to Haiti - in the midst of the Egypt uprising - just for this purpose. Preval was threatened with a cut off of US aid and even with being flown out of the country before his term was up - ala Aristide in 2004 - to pressure him to weigh in with the electoral council - even though the council, by law, is supposed to be independent.

Ultimately, the council never achieved a majority of members to support putting Martelly on the ballot. But the council's spokesperson publicly stated that it had, and the election proceeded - with Martelly running instead of Celestin - with legal experts unsure whether the election would have any legal validity.

In short, the US government got its way. Following the deeply flawed first round of elections, Martelly supporters launched violent protests, sometimes attacking other candidates' partisans. By the time they were over, five people had been killed in the riots. Other disturbing incidents persisted even after Martelly was selected for the runoff ballot. On March 8, for example, three campaign workers for Martelly's opponent, Mirlande Manigat, were found murdered, their bodies mutilated in apparent signs of torture. The killers remain unknown, as does the motive.

Martelly and the army

To many observers, the violence seemed well-orchestrated, and Martelly conspicuously did or said little to attempt to reign in his raging supporters. Journalist Kim Ives has noted that, during the campaign, Martelly began organising something that looked familiar to the old system of Tonton Macoute "volunteers".

"For $30, before the election, potential voters could join the Base Michel Joseph Martelly," writes Ives, "and invest in a pink plastic membership card, with photo, which promises many advantages (such as a job, say) when the Martelly administration comes to power."

As Ives notes, during the Duvalier period, "every Macoute received a card that afforded him many privileges, like free merchandise from any store he entered, entitlement to coerced sex, and fear and respect from people in general". The Macoutes became one of the most notorious death squads to wage terror in the region during the Cold War - no small accomplishment.

Considering this history, one proposal Martelly made on the campaign trail is especially alarming. He has promised to reconstitute the Haitian army, which Aristide disbanded over fifteen years ago.

The modern Haitian army was notoriously bloodthirsty. Established by the US military during its 1915-1934 occupation of Haiti, the army has long been denounced as a prolific human rights abuser. Since its 1995 disbanding - following overwhelming support for the measure in a popular poll - its "veterans" (including suspected narco-trafficker, Guy Philippe, and Louis Jodel Chamblain - head of security for Duvalier since his surprise return in January) have played a prominent role in the country's violent right wing. They were involved in overthrowing Aristide in 2004 and, in the past, have also engaged in occasional attacks on police stations, pro-Fanmi Lavalas communities, and even the presidential palace - sometimes wearing their old uniforms. When the death squad named the Front for the Advancement of the Haitian People terrorised the Lavalas support base following Aristide's 1991 ousting, it too was headed up by former soldiers - who were also funded by the CIA.

The Associated Press visited one would-be "army" camp just weeks before the second round of elections, encountering men there who proudly acknowledged their role in the 2004 coup. Some had served in the military during Aristide's first exile, when the army ruled Haiti, killing and raping thousands. The AP called it "a tableaux of the pro-military fringe right, a looming presence in Haiti".

Some of these "soldiers" and "officers"-in-waiting told freelance journalists just a few weeks later that Martelly had visited their camp during his campaign - certainly an ominous sign of things to come.

In the past, Martelly has made other worrying statements. He has said that, "Haiti needs a Fujimori-style solution" - a reference to Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori's power grab, when he dissolved Congress - and called for the outlawing of "all strikes and demonstrations" - something his backers in Washington would undoubtedly welcome.

Greg Grandin is a professor of history at New York University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of a number of prize-winning books, including most recently, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan 2009), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, as well as for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Losing Latin America

2011-04-22T20:18:00.000-07:00

America's 'backyard' has never been so united and independent of U.S. influence.

A University student wears a mask with the face of President Obama during a protest against his visit at El Salvador del Mundo square in San Salvador, on March 22, 2011. Obama was on the last leg of a three-nation tour of Latin America. (Photo by Jose Cabezas/AFP/Getty Images)

By Steve Ellner, April 14, 2011

In his State of the Union address in January, President Obama pressed for quick passage of a free trade agreement with Colombia, and since then has followed up on the proposal. In doing so he has delighted Republicans who had been accusing him of failing to prioritize the issue. In his January speech, Obama made no reference to his unequivocal concern over human rights violations which he had raised in his third presidential debate with McCain.

Since 2008, little has improved to justify Obama's reversal. Human Rights Watch has reported a 41 percent increase in the number of victims in 2010 over the previous year, including the murder of 44 trade unionists. In the first six weeks of 2011, death squads assassinated three more labor activists.

In an attempt to assure members of U.S. Congress that progress is being made, on April 7 Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Obama announced from the White House the approval of an "Action Plan," whereby the Colombian government pledged to take stringent measures to curb abuses. Many Colombian trade union leaders, however, refused to buy into the arrangement and expressed skepticism about their government's resolve. Tarsicio Mora, president of the Unitary Workers Confederation (CUT), objected by saying, "It just can't be that respect for a basic right established in the constitution, such as the right to life, has to be required by a commercial transaction."

Obama's new stand has also failed to win over U.S. trade unionists. In January, Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen argued against the agreement by pointing out that 15 million Colombians representing 82 percent of the working population are not recognized as workers and thus under the law "have no rights."

Obama's change--from opposition to the free trade agreement with Colombia, to lukewarm endorsement of it, to vigorous support--is just one example of his turnabout on Latin American policy. His modified stand distances Washington from an important bloc of Latin American governments and contributes to the decline of the U.S. leadership position in the hemisphere.

Up until his early months in office, Obama appeared to be following the path of liberal Democrats dating back to the 1930s. The liberal tradition on foreign policy toward Latin America was in many ways attractive. Key features included respect for the plurality of ideas – shown by Franklin D. Roosevelt's acceptance of Mexican nationalism and its nationalization of oil in 1938; the Kennedy administration's call to "complete the revolution of the Americas" through taxing the wealthy and land reform; and the suspension of aid by the Carter administration to several Latin American governments to protest human rights violation even though they were on the U.S. side in the Cold War.

During the presidential campaign, Obama not only stepped into this liberal tradition but defied the Democratic Party mainstream with positions different from those of his then-rival Hillary Clinton. Obama boldly proposed to meet with Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and other Washington adversaries. At the same time he declared "I think our foreign policy is all messed up" and promised a "new direction" in Latin American relations.

Under the Obama administration, the United States finds its historically unrivaled position in the continent challenged on a number of fronts. This July, a summit in Caracas will formally inaugurate the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to group the 32 nations south of the Rio Grande and serve as a parallel organization to the traditionally U.S.-dominated Organization of American States (OAS).

Furthermore, in recent years of modest economic growth, Latin American nations have broadened commercial ties with nations outside of traditional spheres of U.S. influence, such as Russia, Iran and especially China. In 2010, China's direct non-financial investments abroad increased 36 percent, most of which went to Asia and Latin America, while the Asian powerhouse displaced Europe as Latin America's second largest trading partner (after the United States).

Obama, however, has failed to take bold moves to face the challenge. During his largely uneventful five-day tour of Latin America in March he did little to reverse the unfavorable trends. A statement of condemnation, or at least recognition, of the United States' long and sorry record of intervention would have represented a good first step in treating Latin American nations as "equal partners" – a pledge made by the president that created great expectations.

Instead, when asked by a Chilean journalist about Washington's role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende, Obama evaded the question. Furthermore, in Brazil, Obama failed to put forward concrete proposals to deal with the issue consistently raised by the Brazilians, namely U.S. agricultural subsidies and other practices that close the world's largest market for Latin American goods.

Capitulation to the Right on Honduras
Obama's abandonment of the liberal tradition in his stance on Latin America has been driven by the perceived need to placate rightist critics. Events following the overthrow of Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya in June 2009 put in evidence both the right's clout and Obama's failure to check the loss of U.S. influence. The Obama administration caved into pressure from Tea Partier Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who justified the coup on grounds that Zelaya -- along with Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega -- were "would-be tyrants and dictators."

In response to DeMint's threat to block ratification by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of two key State Department appointments for Latin America, the Obama administration did another about-face. In late 2009, it went from condemnation of the overthrow of Zelaya and support for his return to power to endorsement of the elections sponsored by the coup leaders. Council of the Americas Policy Director Christopher Sabatini gave the South Carolina senator major credit for the change of policy, adding "DeMint's role has been disproportionate to his interest in Latin America."

The Obama administration had other options. It could have bypassed the senate committee by attempting to muster 60 votes on the senate floor, or else make the appointments when Congress was out of session, as Bush had done with his selection of John Bolton as UN ambassador. But either move would have meant giving up Obama's much preferred style of "consensus politics."

Since then the United States has been locked in an impasse over the issue of the democratic credentials of the Honduran government. In spite of Secretary of State Clinton's active diplomacy, she has made little headway in convincing a group of Latin American governments to accept Honduras into the community of nations. The latest slap in the face to Honduran President Porfirio Lobo occurred in January when he was the only Latin American head of state to be excluded from the inauguration of Brazil President Dilma Rousseff.

The current battleground is the Organization of American States, which had suspended Honduras following the coup. A bloc of moderate South American governments including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay have joined the more leftist ones of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador in opposing Honduras's re-admission. The moderates have conditioned their affirmative vote on allowing Zelaya to return to the country, restoring his political rights and lifting charges against him.

The State Department has pressured Honduran political players behind the scenes to meet these conditions, but the rightists in Honduras (although not Lobo himself) insist on Zelaya's prosecution on charges of abuse of power. In attempting to break the impasse, the State Department is working at cross purposes with Republican hardliners. Florida Congressman David Rivera, for instance, stated in January: "The United States should be encouraging Honduras to embrace their democratic system, and not to absolve former President Manuel Zelaya of criminal charges or allow him to return to Honduras."

U.S. efforts on behalf of Lobo ignore the evidence that violation of human rights has gone unabated under his rule (see "Campesinos Rising in Honduras" in In These Times' March 2011 issue). In December, Human Rights Watch documented dozens of abuses in 2010, including the assassination of 18 journalists and human rights activists and called on the government to "finalize the impunity." To date, nobody has been held criminally responsible for the atrocities committed since the coup.

Venezuelan rapprochement torpedoed
Another incident that demonstrated the ability of Republicans to set the agenda in Washington, as well as the vacillations of the Obama administration, was the appointment of Larry Palmer as ambassador to Venezuela. In August 2010, the nomination of Palmer appeared to be a routine matter until, upon the request of Republican Senator Richard Lugar, he agreed to answer questions from members of the Foreign Relations Committee in writing.

In his responses, Palmer affirmed that the morale of the Venezuelan armed forces was "considerably low" and that the Chávez government had "clear ties" with Colombian guerrillas. Palmer's statements were then posted on Lugar's website even though the questioning was presumed to be for internal use only.

Predictably, Chávez considered the remarks unacceptable and vetoed the appointment, as most governments would have undoubtedly done. Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research commented that Washington insiders considered the incident a "set up from the right."

On January 1, Secretary of State Clinton had a brief amicable encounter with Chávez at Rousseff's inauguration in Brasilia. Two days later, then-Assistant Secretary of State Philip Crowley announced that given the importance of relations with Venezuela, Washington would "have to renominate an ambassador candidate." The hardliners reacted immediately, including the Washington Post, which wrote that the appointment of another ambassador would "hand the caudillo [Chávez] a considerable propaganda victory." The same day, Crowley changed course again by making clear that the government would stand by Palmer. Chávez blamed the latest reversal on pressure from Republicans.

Washington hardliners with a Cold War mindset place the blame for the face-off entirely on the Venezuelan government. Jose R. Cardenas, a State Department veteran known for his hard-line positions, stated "No matter how hard the Obama Administration tries to 'reset' U.S. relations with Latin America, Hugo Chávez is there to spoil the fun." Yet Chávez's decision was predictable and consistent with his nationalist stance all along. The Obama administration's behind-the-scenes maneuvering to attempt to convince Caracas that Palmer's statement came from a low-level State Department official was at best naïve.

A new stage in hemispheric relations
In spite of convergences, Obama's style and policies on Latin America are hardly indistinguishable from Republicans to his right. Obama's all-smile encounter with Chávez in 2009 and Clinton's in January of this year reinforced the president's notion of engagement with enemies, quite different from George W. Bush's "you're with me or against me" approach. Furthermore, in January, Obama broke with hardliners by easing restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba.

Nevertheless, Obama stopped short of lifting the 50-year embargo, a proposition which he himself had supported prior to running for president and which Latin American governments unanimously endorse.

The new political environment in Latin America demands more than moderate measures and a change in style. Latin America has never been so united and independent of U.S. influence. In recent years, Latin American governments, without input from Washington, have acted collectively to help resolve major conflicts involving Bolivia's nationalization of Brazilian oil and gas interests, a coup attempt in Ecuador and Colombia's incursion on Ecuadorian territory.

CELAC, which will facilitate collective action on an ongoing basis, is not solely the initiative of countries like Venezuela and Bolivia. Even countries with centrist leadership such as Mexico, Chile and Colombia have wholeheartedly endorsed the plan. Chile, along with Venezuela, is currently drafting CELAC's statutes and will host the organization in 2012.

"With CELAC, the OAS will be put to the test," Venezuelan ambassador Jorge Valero told me. Whether or not it survives will depend on how much it really defends Latin American interests."

But the biggest challenge to U.S. influence in Latin America is Brazil, an economic powerhouse. Over the recent past, the Brazilian government has pursued bold independent positions on foreign policy which it hopes will boost third-world support for its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Brazil went over the United States' head in attempting to broker an agreement with Iran on nuclear energy and has criticized U.S. plans to install facilities at seven military bases in Colombia. In December it recognized the Palestinian state with its pre-1967 boundaries. Brazil's increased political influence and its economic expansion go hand in hand. At the same time that President Lula defended the Palestinian cause on a trip to the West Bank, he pointed to a four-fold increase in Brazilian trade with the Middle East since 2002.

For U.S. hardliners, Lula strayed too far from acceptable diplomacy. During his last stretch in office, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, Lula pursued "an increasingly anti-American foreign policy."

The time period following President Obama's Latin American tour in March is an ideal moment for the administration to rethink its strategy for the continent. To check the loss of U.S. influence and prestige, the Obama administration needs to distance itself from Republican hardliners and reconnect with the best of the liberal tradition. Washington, for instance, should refrain from championing the cause of the Lobo government as long as it does little to break out of the banana republic mold. Furthermore, executive measures designed to eventually lift the trade embargo against Cuba would tear down one longstanding wall separating the United States from the rest of the continent -- and the world.

Finally, Washington needs to cease equating the open-market economic policies it advocates with democracy. This line of thinking privileges nations like Colombia, Chile and Mexico as special allies simply because they accept International Monetary Fund-approved formulas and free trade with the United States. Such preferences divide the continent in half and distance America from countries like Argentina and Brazil, whose assertions of nationalism are not always to Washington's liking. The hardliners will rant and rave about any type of renovation of U.S. foreign policy along these lines, but it may represent an important first step in regaining the respect and good will of what used to be called our backyard.

A shorter version of this story, titled "The New 'Community' in America's Backyard," appeared in In These Times' May 2011 issue.

Steve Ellner, who began teaching at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela in 1977, is currently an adjunct professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University’s. His latest book is Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict and the Chavez Phenomenon (Lynne Rienner Publishers).

This article is permanently archived at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/7171/

Mixed reviews in US for Haiti's president-elect

2011-04-08T18:17:00.003-07:00

Jamaica Observer, April 6, 2011

NEW YORK, United States (CMC) — Haitian emigrants in the United States have reacted warily to the victory of popular musician Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly in the French Caribbean Community (Caricom) country's presidential election.

Martelly received nearly 70% of the vote.

Preliminary reports show that Martelly, 50, a father of four and flamboyant figure who sometimes performs while wearing a Scottish kilt, received nearly 70 per cent of the votes cast in the March 20 second run-off presidential poll, defeating former first lady Mirlande Manigat, 70.

Some Haitians here have warned that Martelly could polarise the society.

"He has a double intensity," said Ricot Dupuy, manager and a host at Radio Soleil, which serves the Haitian immigrant community in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

"Those who love him, love him intensely. And those who hate him, hate him intensely," he added.
Brooklyn Shopkeeper Grand Drape said Martelly could be just the man Haiti needs.
"He is good for Haiti," said Drape, 68. "He loves people. He can do something better for the country. Let's give this guy a try."

News of Martelly's win on Monday night was greeted with jubilation and disbelief by Haitians, who both embraced and rejected his presidential bid.

"While Martelly is, indeed, a new leader, the structure of economic power remains the same and the old problems have not disappeared," said Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia, who has been following the elections since last year.

"In fact, the key players of yesterday have not vanished. Despite his dramatic eruption, Martelly may well be a case of "old wine in a new bottle,' but time will tell", he added.

Other Haitian observers say that the fact that most of the country's 4.3 million voters sat out the elections cannot be discounted.

They also say the fraud that lawyers inside the Vote Tabulation Centre discovered over the past 14 days, as they scrutinized more than 25,000 presidential tally sheets, is also a major factor.

Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) said it would release the final tally on April 16, after an expected appeal from Manigat is heard. According to the preliminary results, Martelly won by a 2-1 margin.
After the results were announced, Manigat's campaign sent a letter to the justice minister accusing CEP president Gaillot Dorsinvil of seeking to influence the results during a late Sunday night visit to the VTC.
Even with the challenge, Haiti's streets remained free of violence that the international community had feared if Martelly had lost.

Although there had been a perception for weeks that Martelly had won, his campaign was unsure of the outcome, even as advisors put him through governance tutorial courses.

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/pfversion/Mixed-reviews-in-US-for-Haiti-s-president-elect_8632728#ixzz1Iz6Bd1lI

Haiti's Movement from Below Endures

2011-04-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

by Jeb Sprague
Aljazeera, english.aljazeera.net, March 27, 2011

Despite those in power trying to keep him out, the return of Aristide to Haiti has rekindled hope among the poor.

As twice ousted former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his family were escorted out from the airport tarmac in Port-au-Prince, loud chants of "Titid, Titid, Titid" rose from an ecstatic gathering that filled every space of a causeway leading out from the airport.

One crowd gathers in support of the former president, Jean-Bertand
Aristide, now returned from exile [Photo credit: Wadner Pierre]

Sitting on walls, a few climbing a telephone pole, rows of youth jumped in excitement at the return of Aristide from exile in South Africa – a heroic figure for the people whose history is one indelibly rooted in resistance.

As the gates swung open for two police vehicles, an SUV with dark tinted windows and a white van carrying guests, an airport grounds man with a huge smile on his face clasped the hands of a skinny police officer motioning the cars through.

Heavily armed UN soldiers with sky-blue helmets stood in rows some 30 meters away. The caravan made its way alongside the airport route. In waves, thousands poured in from the slums carrying flags and banners on foot. One man dressed as Jean Jacques Dessalines – the founding leader of Haiti – charged down the street atop a horse, waving the crowd forward. Many were on motorcycles or piled into trucks zooming through the dusty air.

Movement songs rang out. "Nou pap janm trayi san nou, san nou se san Aristide… li menm ki rasanble nou tout, fok nou tout ansanm fe youn" sang the jubilant flood of people, calling for unity in struggle.

A small group of former presidential security men and police provided escort. Around them surged a crowd estimated at between 7,000 to 15,000 strong.

Upon reaching the grounds of Aristide's home, crowds jumbled inside- sitting on trees and opening the side gate to let more in. It was so packed in the area around the front door that the family could barely make its way inside their house.

The return of an icon

In recent weeks, rumours swirled of Aristide's return. For decades he has been the most popular figure among Haiti's rural poor and urban slum dwellers.

Even with a resource-starved state his administrations launched a steady stream of social investment programs [PDF]: building more schools than in any time in the country's history, a national literacy ALPHA campaign, constructing and refurbishing medical clinics, the hospital of La Paix, and a university training doctors with the help of Cubans.

The poor have not forgotten this. Even under intense pressure from foreign powers, Aristide was able to disband Haiti's brutal military and refuse to go forward on privatisation sell-offs of state institutions that René Préval, his technocrat predecessor, took up.

Aristide is one of the few living people referred to as a hero by those in the tent cities dotting the capital after the January 11, 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated two hundred and fifty thousand people, possibly more.

On the day of his return, one group of Cité Soleil residents explained that they were unsure of what time Aristide's plane was landing.

The expected day and time of the arrival kept shifting, as powerful forces worked to avert the return. Adding to the confusion, perhaps intentionally, one elite radio station falsely broadcast that his plane would not arrive until March 22nd.

Many in the crowd chanted that the "eleksyon/seleksyon" in the next few days was "fini" – worthless. Maryse Narcisse, official spokeswoman of Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas (FL), called for a general boycott. Aristide denounced the continued exclusion of FL from elections just after he landed.

Party time

One of the biggest concerns FL now faces is reorganising. FL today remains widely popular among Haiti's poor majority – surviving against all odds – but its infrastructure has been weakened over the years.

Those remaining closest around Aristide are battle-scarred veterans of Haiti's social conflict, who remained steadfastly loyal as Aristide and his movement were relentlessly slandered by media monopolies over the years.

Most of these core leaders are in their 40s or 50s, variously targeted for assassination, thrown in jail, or pushed into exile by the illegal regimes that took office after the coups against Aristide in 1991 and 2004.

Many in the movement fondly remember fallen comrades such as Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, one of many brilliant grassroots organisers of FL who was disappeared – the tell-tale sign of a rightist paramilitary hit job.

Setbacks aside, FL remains the only national level popular movement. It has the potential, in some ways, to be better organised and more effective than it was in the past, to learn from its successes and failures.

No longer dragged down by the opportunistic politicians who attached themselves to Lavalas after it returned to office in 1994 (with international support), which then jumped ship when the US-financed opposition gained strength.

The FL leadership remaining is more principled, committed, and progressive. The legend of the movement's struggle, and Aristide's refusal (alongside others in FL) to bow to elite pressure still has the hearts of many of the capital's impoverished youth and rural families across the countryside.

Yet sectors of Haitian society have become politically apathetic, basically exhausted by years of political violence.

The Michel Martelly campaign, one of two candidates now running for the presidency, has sought to tap into apathy and disillusionment with a massive text and voice message cell phone campaign, propelling a corporatist project through hip rhetoric.

While most appeared disinterested in the elections, Martelly's campaign has had some success.

Problems at the polls

It was clear that with the first round of elections on November 28, 2010, many people were either unwilling or unable to vote.

The two final contenders from that round received a total of 10.4% according to the initial results; 4.3% voted for Martelly and 6% voted for Manigat. With an extremely low 27.1% of registered voters taking part, the bar was set low for the second round.

It is not yet clear how the voting for the second round of the (s)election, on March 20, has gone.

Al Jazeera found at one polling station that voting papers were missing. According to independent election monitors and some mainstream media it was a lower turnout but generally peaceful, while USAID and UN officials on the ground claimed it was slightly higher than the poorly attended first round.

In neighbourhoods and tent cities in the capital it was clear that many people were going on with their normal daily affairs.

Two independent journalists, Ansel Herz and Wadner Pierre, and myself, documented at two voting centres (at Building 2004 in central Port-au-Prince and another near the Karade tent city) that the same employees of Martelly's campaign – in official ballot observer T-shirts – were handing out food, illegally campaigning and coordinating voters just yards away.

At another voting centre, election workers told us that a group shouting Martelly's slogan "tet kale" attempted to pressure them into allowing the group to vote without IDs or inking themselves.

At a voting centre in Ti Plaz Kazo, a handful of supporters of Lavalas exclaimed they would vote for Martelly to give him a chance as a political outsider.

Martelly's advertising campaign has been intense. But unknown to many he has also found allies amongst death squad leaders who reliable sources allege have cut deals with the DEA.

The Associated Press reports that 150 former soldiers are training in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Carrefour.

This is worrisome: In the past, paramilitary waves of terror were largely overlooked by the media here and the foreign journalists that parachute in for brief stints.

In the coming years, Martelly's camp and a rejuvenated FL may well become the two major political movements.

For now the left has been excluded from elections, and the right remains very divided with a number of big business politicians calling fraud, and an elite former first lady Mirlande Manigat running against Martelly's well-funded top down movement.

Reorganising a movement

While it is clear many have jumped on the Martelly bandwagon pumped up by Wyclef Jean and other popular musicians, I also spoke to some who were backing Manigat because of her academic background, or out of pure disgust at Martelly's ultra rightist-affiliations or simply his vulgar public persona.

In Pétionville, the 'green zone' of Haiti's capital – where posters of Martelly and Manigat plaster the walls – some residents will privately acknowledge their fondness for Aristide but cower in public conversations, scared of the reaction it might provoke among those heavily swayed by years of elite media propaganda.

Torn by coups and cataclysmic natural disasters, Haiti's poor majority have successfully struggled for an inspirational victory with the return of Aristide and his family. Some lost their lives for it.

Their stories – such as the trials and tribulations of the late liberation priest Gérard Jean-Juste, a valiant anti-coup pro-democracy fighter until he lost his battle with cancer – are now part of a popular history.

While Aristide will undoubtedly serve as a key figure and strategist to a reorganising popular movement, his stated intention to invest his time in education is important.

His status can bring support and attention to grassroots projects that deserve significant help, such as those being launched on a shoestring budget at the Aristide Foundation for Democracy (Fondasyon Arisitid pou Demokrasi).

Lavalas and its affiliates around this country will need to strengthen their own discipline to avoid scuffles and rogue actions, that elites and the big business media never fail to pin on the movement as a whole or on Aristide personally – a longtime bogeyman who they conveniently blame for pulling all the strings of what is a disparate and truly dirt poor mass movement.

Building collectives within the tent cities, FL's base could work with a new generation of youth alongside more veteran cadre and supporters.

The popular movement can come back stronger, shedding those that held it back and damaged it, while expanding its circle of solidarity. Its organisers know that it will have to navigate carefully the many odd alliances that will likely spring up and the eventual attempts by various opportunists to wiggle their way back into its ranks.

Following a historical and world trend

The same resistance that propelled Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Charlemagne Péralte, and Daniel Fignole, in many ways has been one single popular movement that has congealed throughout this country's history – part of what the late anthropologist Eric Wolf described as resistance to 500 years of war against the poor in the Americas.

Crucially, the movement in Haiti, while bounded to its own historical significance, is not alone.

It shares much in common with the movements in the Middle East and the Bolivarian tide that has swept parts of Latin America but run up against an onslaught of destabilisation and its own problems.

Progressives in North America are well aware of Haiti's struggle, as are many in Africa.

Haiti's popular movement can find valuable allies amongst the ALBA bloc or amongst groups organising transnationally through the World Social Forum.

It can build up its training capabilities, able to benefit from its small middle class and socialist wings.

While US and UN officials have done everything in their power to keep Aristide from returning home, he is here now – accomplishing one of the major demands of the popular movement that has proven its resilience time and again.

Jeb Sprague is the author of the forthcoming book Haiti and the Roots of Paramilitarism and was the recipient of a 2008 Project Censored Award, who also regularly blogs and tweets. Also find here a link to Aristide's entire return speech.

Haiti Abstains

2011-04-01T17:29:00.000-07:00

Dan Coughlin | March 22, 2011

Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)

Despite a massive UN mobilization, Haitians stayed away from controversial presidential elections in large numbers on March 20, raising serious questions about the legitimacy of the government poised to take power.

“The majority of the Haitian people did not vote in this election because the majority of people stand behind Lavalas,” said Wilnor Moise, a 29-year-old former bus conductor from Cité Soleil, referring to Fanmi Lavalas (FL), the democratic movement of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which was barred from participating in the elections.

Haiti’s disputed parliamentary and presidential poll, culminating in the final round of voting this past Sunday, is key to the future of billions of dollars in pledged earthquake aid and to that of the 14,000-strong UN force that has occupied Haiti since the 2004 coup d’etat that overthrew Aristide and his party.

The banning of progressive parties and the FL from this year’s polls, allegedly because of procedural and technical issues, opened the electoral landscape to two neo-Duvalierist presidential candidates: Mirlande Manigat, 70, the wife (and some say surrogate) of a former right-wing president, and Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, 50, a popular konpa musician.

Martelly appeared to emerge as the victor, although preliminary results won’t be announced until March 31 and final ones on April 16.

Both candidates supported the 1991 and the 2004 coups against Aristide and both call for reinstating the repressive US-created Haitian army, which Aristide disbanded in 1995.

Patrick Elie, a former adviser to both outgoing President Rene Preval and President Aristide, argued that the United States has played an influential, behind-the-scenes role in the election, helping to put the extreme right in power in order to perpetuate the occupation of Haiti and keep its neoliberal policies in place.

“For twenty-five years, the US and the international community have sought to remove the people and the population from the political scene, and the plan has succeeded for the time being,” said Elie, referring to what British academic Peter Hallward called one of the most prolonged and intense periods of counterrevolution anywhere in the world.

“But the victor of these elections will have very little popular legitimacy,” Elie said, arguing that the electoral process has been a farce. “And because of that the victor will be the puppet of the international community and will have no card to play and no real popular support.”

In Cité Soleil, a vast and extremely poor neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, heavily armed UN soldiers patrol the streets. Graffiti proclaims “UN = misery” and “NGOs = misery,” references to the dominant role the international UN system plays in Haiti. (The UN military mission is the third largest in the world after Darfur and Congo.)

“This is an election of social exclusion; this is a selection,” said Wilson St. Val, 35, sitting in the shadow of a Brazilian-manned armored personnel carrier outside a Cité Soleil polling booth.

A former Presidential Service guard under Aristide, St. Val—like hundreds of Lavalas supporters—was beaten and imprisoned without charge after the 2004 coup. He walked free after five years in jail when the earthquake damaged Haiti’s notorious National Penitentiary.

“Our roots are numerous under the ground, truly numerous. We will not allow those people to exclude us from society at all. They call us bandits, they call us gangs, they call us kidnappers. But we won’t give up,” he said.

Despite the high stakes for the international community, Sunday’s balloting suffered from widespread administrative flaws and massive abstention by Haiti’s 4.7 million voters. And UN forces shot and killed at least one person on election day.

A review of balloting at four large polling stations in three Port-au-Prince districts revealed a voter participation rate of less than 18 percent among a sample of more than 12,600 registered voters.

UN officials put the turnout slightly higher. The UN’s Haiti chief, Guatemalan Edmond Mulet, claimed that more people voted than in the first round of presidential polling in November, when the turnout rate was 23 percent.

Even if that is true, it would represent the lowest electoral participation rate in the hemisphere going back to 1947, according to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

And it is far from a popular mandate for Martelly, who has used his entertainment roots to define himself as a political outsider. In robocalls, he promised change and all Haitians free education.

“He’s a musician and not a politician,” noted Ulysse Louisler, a 23-year-old resident of one of Port-au-Prince’s 1,000 earthquake camps, saying he would vote for Martelly. “With him, we have no experience. That’s why we want to test him.”

Less well known than Martelly’s music has been a history of crack abuse, threats of violence and close ties to Haitian military and political coup leaders with a string of human rights violations.

And Martelly has been an open and aggressive antagonist of Haiti’s popular and democratic movement.

In a recent YouTube video, the candidate threatens a patron in a bar where he has performed. “All those shits were Aristide’s faggots,” he says. “I would kill Aristide to stick a dick up your ass.”

The Spanish firm Ostos & Sola, which ran Mexico President Felipe Calderón’s controversial elections, has handled Martelly’s campaign. Under its tutelage, Tet Kale—or bald head, as he is known—has dropped much but not all of the thuggery and trash talk.

Patrick Elie warned that the new government, given its lack of popular legitimacy, may resort to repression to maintain control, with crackdowns on freedom of speech and assembly likely.

“There will be a clash between what the international community and neo-Duvalierists want and what the population still wants,” said Elie.

“And it might start earlier rather than later because the extreme right has no popular base and because these candidates are totally anti-popular.”

Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/article/159388/haiti-abstains

The Return Of Aristide And Haiti’s Future

2011-03-31T11:10:00.000-07:00

by Bill Fletcher, Jr
NNPA Columnist
The Seattle Medium, 3/30/2011

It happened on March 18th. After more than seven years, the democratically elected—yet ousted—president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned home. Accompanied by his family as well as allies, such as actor/activist Danny Glove,r and noted journalist Amy Goodman, he returned to, in his words, make a modest contribution to Haiti.

Aristide returned immediately prior to a runoff presidential election between two individuals, a former first lady and an entertainer, that has about as much legitimacy as a crap game with shaved dice. Haiti, the victim of a U.S.-supported coup in 2004 against Aristide, followed by occupations and a disappointing administration of Rene Preval, was not permitted to have a truly democratic election for president. The proof? Neither former President Aristide nor his party (Fanmi Lavalas) was permitted to participate in the election. Permitted by who? At the end of the day, by the U.S.A. Had George Bush still been the President of the United States, I would have understood such a position, even while objecting. But, Bush is long gone and his successor, President Obama, not only refused to permit the participation of Fanmi Lavalas in the recent elections, but made its objections to the return of Aristide as clear as the beautiful blue of the Caribbean Sea.

Aristide, a former priest turned leader of the Haitian people, was overthrown twice by the forces that wanted to turn back the clock in Haiti. First in 1991 and later in 2004, Aristide was militarily ousted. In 2004 the Bush administration attempted to argue that Aristide had voluntarily left Haiti, but the facts disputed this tale.

From March 2004 until just this past March 18th, Aristide was kept in exile. For most of that time he resided in South Africa, but despite repeated requests to return to Haiti, he was refused. Finally, with the support of the South African government, Aristide flew home.

Danny Glover described the welcome that Aristide received in deeply emotional terms. Thousands of people, he told me, were there to not only meet and greet President Aristide, but to accompany him on foot as he was driven to his compound. Not only did they provide a, literally, massive bodyguard to ensure his security as he left the airport, but they surrounded his home over much of the night.

Aristide’s return presents many questions regarding the future of Haiti. Aristide remains the most popular leader in Haiti and his party, despite myriad of internal problems, remains the most significant and grounded force in the country. In other words, Haiti will never have democracy without the full and unimpeded involvement of Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas.

Haiti’s future depends as much on Aristide’s decisions and the re-emergence of Fanmi Lavalas as it does on the attitude of the Obama administration. The Obama administration has yet to explain its opposition to the return of Aristide. It has yet to explain why it apparently did everything that it could to discourage the South African government from permitting Aristide’s exodus.

The logical explanation is that Aristide’s return would disrupt the plans of the U.S. elite—as continued by the Obama administration—to put into place a puppet regime in Haiti. The U.S.A. has little strategic or economic interest in Haiti but it most certainly has an interest in ensuring that the example of a truly independent Haiti does not resonate.

In listening to Danny Glover’s description of Aristide’s return, my sense is that the Haitian people have no intention of allowing their future to be left in the hands of the U.S.A., whether in the form of the former Bush administration or today’s Obama administration.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum.

Amy Goodman's Exclusive Interview with Mildred Aristide

2011-03-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

Amy Goodman's Exclusive Interview with Aristide (Part 1)

2011-03-25T16:34:00.001-07:00

Long Night’s Journey into Day: Democracy Now!’s Exclusive Interview with Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (Part 2)

2011-03-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

Aristide's Return: "We suffered greatly, but we had faith you would return home."

2011-03-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

Etched on the older people's faces is the truth of this woman's sign, "We suffered greatly, (but) we had faith you would return home." Thousands of Haitians died during the past seven years at the hands of the U.S. and U.N. forces occupying Haiti, compounded by the over 300,000 who were killed in the earthquake and over 4,600 killed so far in the cholera epidemic. -- Photo: Etant Dupain, brikourinouvelgaye.com

Former President Aristide on His Party’s Exclusion from Haiti’s Election: “Exclusion is the Problem, Inclusion is the Solution”

2011-03-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

With Aristide's Return Comes Hope

2011-03-24T13:12:00.000-07:00

We don't know how Haiti will react to an election that excluded his party, but the former president will take his cue from the people

Selma James
The Guardian, Monday 21 March 2011

The return of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his family to Haiti ends seven long years of campaigning – the 92% of voters who elected him had never accepted his overthrow in 2004 by a US-backed military coup. They risked their lives against a UN occupation that killed and brutalised thousands to demand his return. And last Friday he flew back from South Africa, where he had been living in forced exile, to a rapturous welcome in Port-au-Prince.

Former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide greets followers
on his to his home in Port-au-Prince on 18 March.
Photograph: Andr S Mart Nez Casares/EPA

I was one of those waiting to greet him at his modest house, from where he was kidnapped seven years ago. Some of the waiting crowd were former political prisoners, others were visiting from exile. Yet others, disheartened after so many defeats – dictators, coups, hurricanes, earthquake, then cholera – had returned from Haiti's diaspora.

We listened on transistor radios for news of his arrival. Finally Aristide's plane had landed, and he was addressing supporters in a number of languages. He was back on Haitian soil two days before the fraudulent election from which his party has been excluded.

Much later his car was heard in the driveway. As the barrier that protected the house began to slide open, mainly young people began to flood the path and climb the walls, until we were surrounded by a torrent of the joyous. Lavalas, meaning "flash flood", was the name of Titid's party, and here it was. In their midst, hidden from our view, was the Aristides' car.

We waited another hour to be escorted inside through the singing and dancing crowd. I was welcomed into the arms of his wife and my friend Mildred Trouillot. She was unafraid, elated to be back and part of this historic event. Her girls, 14 and 12 years old, had to see how their father was greeted, she told me, so "they understood who he was. Nothing else can explain it". The girls' non-negotiable demand was that they bring their beloved little dog.

Later we were brought to meet their father. Aristide spoke about learning from the people, a practical strategy now.

He embraced me as the living connection with my late husband CLR James's Black Jacobins. Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa when Aristide first arrived there, had told him that when Mbeki read this history of revolutionary slaves triumphant, he felt confident they would end apartheid. It was not so much a book as a weapon for freedom fighters. James had implied in the book that that was his intention. How unfair that he never knew of his real success.

On election day we visited Cité Soleil, an impoverished area which has been an Aristide stronghold. We heard that two days earlier the presidential candidate Michel Martelly, a popular musician associated with the Tonton Macoutes – the Duvalier murder squads that terrorised Haiti for decades – had been driven out by Aristide supporters. UN soldiers from Brazil were all around the polling station, menacing, rifles at the ready.

We asked people about Aristide and the elections: they were happy he was back, but he wasn't on the ballot and they urgently needed to hold a government to account.

Yet the presence of Aristide in Haiti has immediately shifted everyone's situation. When he landed he spoke of "the humiliation of the people under tents" and said that "modern-day slavery will have to end today".

What's clear is that the 1804 revolution never ended. The US and the Haitian elite seem as determined as 19th-century France to keep Haitians enslaved, though sweatshops have replaced plantations and UN tanks Napoleon's army.

Nobody knows yet how Haitians will deal with the rigged election results. Aristide spoke to us about "learning from the people". He is likely to take his cue from their collective response. Having achieved the victory of his return, the movement has again a powerful, compassionate voice.

Barack Obama, Oscar Romero and Structural Sin

2011-03-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

Greg Grandin | March 23, 2011
Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)

In El Salvador, on the last leg of his Latin American tour, President Barack Obama paid a highly symbolic visit to the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero, shot through the heart as he raised the Eucharist chalice during a mass, in March 1980. His assassination was ordered by Salvadoran military officer Roberto D’Aubuisson [1], a School of the America’s graduate.

As El Faro [2]—an important online source of independent Central American news—put it, Obama’s homage to Romero is a “truly extraordinary” gesture, since D’Aubuisson not only ran private-sector financed death squads but was a founder of ARENA, an ultraconservative political party that until 2009 had governed the country for two decades and enjoyed excellent relations with Washington.

Today, El Salvador is led by President Mauricio Funes, head of a center-left coalition government that includes the FMLN, the insurgent group turned political party Ronald Reagan wasted billions of dollars and over 70,000 lives trying to defeat in the 1980s. By lighting a candle for Romero, Obama, it might be said, was tacitly doing in El Salvador what he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—do in Chile: apologize for US actions that resulted in horrific human tragedy.

Obama in San Salvador focused on trade and immigration and celebrated Central America’s transition away from the civil wars of the 1980s and early 1990s. But hope, in reality, is in short supply; it would be difficult to exaggerate the crisis that today engulfs Central America, one that might very well turn out to be as bad as the 1980s.

Squeezed by Plan Colombia to the south and Mexico’s disastrous War on Drugs to the north, Central American violence has skyrocketed. Whole regions in Honduras and Guatemala are either overrun by narcos, or militarized by security forces, themselves deeply involved in criminal activity, including drugs, illegal logging, car theft and kidnapping. The explosion of biofuels production and the intensification of mining (particularly gold mining) has created an ecological disaster and generated widespread social dislocation. Protesting peasants, especially in Honduras and Guatemala, have been checked by a revived planter-death squad alliance, though now “death squads” generally go under the euphemism “private security.” An increasing number activists are turning up dead. In February, the bullet-ridden bodies of four Q’eqchi’ Mayan community leaders—Catalina Muca Maas, Alberto Coc Cal, Amilcar Choc and Sebastian Xuc Coc [3]—were found in a river.

Just last week, as the Canadian human rights group Rights Action reported [4], over the course of three days—March 15–17—hundreds of police officers, soldiers and private security forces entered fourteen Mayan communities in the municipality of Panzós shooting live ammo and firing tear gas in an effort to displace peasants to make way for African palm and sugar plantations. Peasants futilely begged soldiers to allow them to harvest some of their crops. At least one person was killed, many wounded, others arrested, and thousands are now living in makeshift shelters on the side of the road. The plantations are capitalized by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, as part of the larger multilateral lending that supports the production of biofuels [5], to be sold in the United States. This social catastrophe is just one of the more recent expressions of the counter-insurgent neoliberal “security corridor,” running from Colombia through Central America to Mexico, I’ve written about here [6].

In his memoir, Obama says [7] he came to political awareness in the 1980s, opposing what he called Ronald Reagan’s “minions.” If so, he no doubt had some exposure to the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, or CISPES, perhaps the most prominent of the organizations that worked to fight Reagan’s Central American policies. CISPES still exists, and it is still doing great work.

Most recently, timed to coincide with Obama’s trip to El Salvador, CISPES has launched [8] a campaign opposing the Canadian-based gold mining corporation, Pacific Rim, which under the terms of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is suing El Salvador for $77 million. That figure corresponds to the profits Pacific Rim expected to earn had the Salvadoran government not revoked its operating permit (in response to an impressive, cross-class protest movement made up of environmentalists, progressive religious folk and peasants concerned with the high level of heavy metal contamination of water and soil and rocketing infant morality rates that resulted from similar mining operations).

That’s right, under CAFTA’s Chapter 10, private companies can sue countries for projected future profits lost as a result of national laws or regulations. But you might ask how a Canadian corporation can sue under the terms of CAFTA, since Canada isn’t a party to the treaty. Simple: Pacific Rim purchased in 2007 a Reno, Nevada, shell company to act as front. Forget that bugaboo of the jingoist right, so-called “anchor babies.” What we have here are “anchor corporations,” foreign businesses that get a toehold in the United States to secure their right to plunder. The suit will be arbitrated by the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, a shadowy appendage of the World Bank (more than half of the suits launched by corporations in the ICSID are against Latin American countries, and to give a sense how CAFTA has locked Central America into the neoliberal “security corridor,” Brazil has never joined the ICSID, Bolivia and Ecuador have withdrawn from its jurisdiction, and Venezuelan has announced its intention to pull out. Nicaragua, too, has threatened to withdraw, but it is unclear it can do so under the terms of CAFTA). As CISPES puts it, “As a candidate Obama promised to remove the rights of corporations to sue governments from trade agreements—it’s time he takes action.”

We can only hope that Obama finds inspiration in Oscar Romero’s life: Romero, after all, started his public career as a cautious moderate who believed he could quietly work with El Salvador’s ruling class to coax needed reform. The reality of Salvadoran society forced his conversion into an outspoken, confrontational leader who directly attacked those who perpetuated what he called “structural sin:” “When the church hears the cry of the oppressed,” Romero wrote [9] before his murder, “it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.” If Romero was alive today, he would recognize CAFTA’s Chapter 10, along with the broader, disastrous policies Washington is pursuing in the Mexico-Central America-Colombia security corridor, as prime examples of “structural sin.”

Like this blog post? Read it on The Nation’s free iPhone App, NationNow. [10]
Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/blog/159405/barack-obama-oscar-romero-and-structural-sin
Links:
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1891145.stm
[2] http://www.elfaro.net/es/201103/opinion/3790/
[3] http:// http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGNAU2011022521901&lang=e
[4] http://quotha.net/node/1633
[5] http://www.thenation.com/article/dark-side-plan-colombia?page=0,1
[6] http://www.thenation.com/blog/158492/building-perfect-machine-perpetual-war-mexico-colombia-security-corridor-advances
[7] http://books.google.ca/books?id=LQztrmI5GgIC&pg=PA198&dq=reagan minions obama father&client=firefox-a&cd=2#v=onepage&q&f=false
[8] http:// http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=791&Itemid=98
[9] http:// http://books.google.ca/books?
"When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises."

South Africa working to help Aristide return, says US should discuss any objections with Haiti

2011-03-16T02:01:00.000-07:00

By DONNA BRYSON, Tuesday, March 15

PRETORIA, South Africa — South Africa is helping ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide return to his homeland from exile in Pretoria, and any problems Washington has with that should be taken up with Haiti, the deputy foreign minister said Tuesday.

Marius Fransman told reporters that Aristide could return to Haiti in the next few days, or a week. A South African official last week said Aristide planned to return before a presidential run-off vote on Sunday. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner acknowledged Aristide’s right to return from South Africa, but he said returning this week “can only be seen as a conscious choice to impact Haiti’s elections.”

Toner urged Aristide to “delay his return until after the electoral process has concluded to permit the Haitian people to cast their ballots in a peaceful atmosphere.”

Fransman said: “It is not our responsibility if America feels that he should only go in two weeks or three weeks or four weeks.

“They need to engage the Haitian government,” he said.

Aristide has lived in South Africa since leaving Haiti in 2004 on a U.S. plane. He accused U.S. diplomats of kidnapping him. Washington denies the charge.

The former slum priest was Haiti’s first democratically elected president and remains popular with the poor.

Aristide has been saying for months that he wants to return to help his homeland recover from a devastating January 2010 earthquake. The way was opened when Aristide’s diplomatic passport was delivered last month.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Haiti wants Aristide: let him go

2011-03-16T01:38:00.000-07:00

Jean-Bertrand Aristide's picture is held up by a demonstrator protesting
against Haiti's President René Préval. Photograph: Ramon Espinosa/AP

Even now, to prop up a fatally flawed election, Washington is trying to sabotage the return of Haiti's ousted former president

Kim Ives
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 March 2011

Jean-Bertrand Aristide's picture is held up by a demonstrator protesting against Haiti's President René Préval. Photograph: Ramon Espinosa/AP
The arrogance of Washington's renewed efforts to thwart former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's return to Haiti from a seven-year exile in South Africa is mind-boggling.

During the 29 February 2004 coup d'état, in the middle of the night, a US Navy Seal team, under the direction of American deputy ambassador Luis Moreno, kidnapped President Aristide and his wife Mildred from their home in Tabarre and flew them, under guard in an unmarked US jet, into a first stint of exile in the Central African Republic. Since then, tens of thousands from all over Haiti have taken to the streets several times each year to demand his return.

During the US-appointed post-coup de facto government of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue (2004-2006), Haitian police and United Nations occupation troops regularly gunned down the demonstrators and carried out murderous assaults on Aristide strongholds in popular neighborhoods like Cité Soleil and Belair, killing dozens of residents, including women and children. When in late March 2004, US Congresswoman Maxine Waters and a team of other VIPs rescued the Aristides from virtual house arrest in CAR and flew them in a private jet to Jamaica, the Bush administration was livid. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice spent an hour on the phone threatening then Prime Minister PJ Patterson to get Aristide out of there.

"We think it's a bad idea," she later told the press, while Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that "the hope is that he will not come back into the hemisphere and complicate [the] situation." Three months later, Aristide was flown to South Africa.

Now, once again, the Obama administration is taking the same positions and using the same language as its predecessor, which candidate Obama once vowed never to do.

Last month, Aristide finally received his long-denied passport. Later this week, the South African government is planning to fly him back to Haiti in a government jet. But now we have the US state department's new spokesperson, Mark Toner, sanctimoniously telling Aristide "to delay his return until after the electoral process has concluded, to permit the Haitian people to cast their ballots in a peaceful atmosphere", and that his "return prior to the election may potentially be destabilising to the political process."

And what "political process" is this?

A runoff between two neo-Duvalierist candidates: former First Lady Mirlande Manigat and former konpa musician Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly. The problem? The election is illegal. Only four of the eight-member Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) have voted to proceed with the second round, one short of the five necessary. Furthermore, the first round results have not been published in the journal of record, Le Moniteur, and President René Préval has not officially convoked Haitians to vote – both constitutional requirements.

"In this election, it is the United Nations and Organisation of American States [OAS], both acting on Washington's behalf, who are convoking the people to vote for the candidates whom they have designated," a grassroots organiser told Haïti Liberté. (Last month, the OAS forced the CEP – constitutionally, the "final arbiter" of Haitian elections – to replace Jude Célestin, the candidate of Préval's party, with Martelly in the runoff.)

Why might Aristide be anxious to return to Haiti before 20 March? First, President Préval has already exceeded his mandate, which ended on 7 February. This makes his position weak and contested. Add to this the reality that, in Haiti, a president-elect becomes the de facto power even before his inauguration. Therefore, after 20 March, it might be impossible for Aristide to safely return to Haiti.

Aristide first came to power 20 years ago as the champion of the people's uprising against the Duvalier dictatorship and the neo-Duvalierist juntas that followed its 7 February 1986 fall. Seven months after his inauguration, President Aristide was overthrown by a US-backed neo-Duvalierist military putsch on 30 September 1991. "Sweet Micky" was one of the principal cheerleaders of this three-year coup, which claimed some 5,000 lives, according to Amnesty International.

In the years following Aristide's restoration to power in 1994, Martelly became obsessed with hatred for the man. In a video from not too long ago, which can be seen on YouTube, the candidate threatens a patron in a bar where he has performed. "All those shits were Aristide's faggots," he says. "I would kill Aristide to stick a dick up your ass."

Martelly is close to Col Michel François, perhaps the 1991 coup's principal mastermind and executioner. François led soldiers who machine-gunned hundreds of demonstrators in front of the National Palace on 30 September, as a fact-finding delegation led by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark learned three months after the coup.

Manigat is not much better. She is the wife, and many say the proxy, of former Haitian President Leslie Manigat. He was a perennial rightwing candidate who came to power in a 1988 election that was run and rigged by a neo-Duvalierist military junta. The rest of Haiti boycotted that election because the junta and its death squads had shot and macheted would-be voters in an aborted contest two months earlier. But Manigat and his wife had no scruples about climbing over the corpses of the November 1987 election massacre to go take up residence in the national palace. Four months later, the junta evicted them when he got too big for his britches. Mirlande Manigat has also declared her opposition to Aristide's return "before the election".

Let's imagine that the US succeeds in ramming this bogus election (Haitians call it a "selection") down the people's throats and that Aristide tries to return after 20 March. He would likely be met by policemen upon landing in Port-au-Prince. But the cops would not escort him to a luxury hotel, as they did former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier when he returned, without a squeak of US or French protest, from 25 years of exile on 16 January. Instead, Martelly's or Manigat's police would likely take Aristide directly to jail, or worse.

As his lawyer, Ira Kurzban, said, Aristide "is genuinely concerned that a change in the Haitian government may result in his remaining in South Africa". But if Aristide does arrive as planned, later this week, before the election, his mere presence in the country will eclipse the contrived hoopla of the Manigat/Martelly contest. Although they may not be able to stop the US/OAS gambit, the Haitian people may be able to mount a successful boycott, as Haitian voters did in the April and June 2009 elections, where turnout was less than 5%.

Many grassroots groups are calling for another massive boycott now to discredit the "mascarade", as they refer to it. Already, only 23% of the Haitian electorate took part in the first round (the lowest turnout for a presidential election in Haiti, or anywhere in Latin America, in the past 60 years) – in large part because Aristide's party, the Lavalas Family, was arbitrarily and unjustly excluded.

"The department of state has previously said that [Aristide's return] is a decision for the Haitian government," Kurzban said. "They should leave that decision to the democratically elected government instead of seeking to dictate the terms under which a Haitian citizen may return to his country."

Aristide's return this week is essential – because he wants it, the Haitian people want it, and, perhaps most importantly, Washington and the Duvalierists do not.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

Aristide to end exile and return to Haiti before vote, lawyer says

2011-03-16T01:16:00.000-07:00

Supporter of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide are
eagerly awaiting his return to the country ahead of March elections.

by Rich Phillips, CNN March 13, 2011

(CNN) -- Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide will end his exile and return to Haiti within the next week or so, ahead of the country's elections, his lawyer told CNN Saturday.

"He is headed back to Haiti," said Ira Kurzban, Aristide's longtime attorney. "We don't know when yet, but it will be before the elections."

A presidential runoff is scheduled for March 20.

Aristide was Haiti's first democratically-elected president. He was toppled in 2004 after a bloody revolt by street gangs and soldiers and has since been living in exile in South Africa.

The Haitian government issued a new passport to Aristide in February.

His lawyer says the former president simply wants to go home.

"He has no interest in meddling or being involved in the election. He has no interest in being involved in politics," said Kurzban.

According to his lawyer, Aristide is concerned about the perception created by returning to Haiti just days before the election. He is more worried, however, about the possibility of not being able to go back at all after the vote, if the new administration is not receptive to his return and revokes his visa, Kurzban said.

"He wants to go home. He's been in exile for seven years," Aristide's lawyer said. "He wants to get his medical school up and operating given the conditions in Haiti. That's his interest."

Aristide, who was whisked out of the country in a U.S. jet, has claimed his ouster was orchestrated by Western powers. The former Roman Catholic priest, considered by many to be a champion for the poor, remains both a beloved and polarizing figure.

He has often expressed his desire to go home and reiterated that wish in January after former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier returned to Haiti.

Aristide's return would come at crucial time in Haiti's history.

The Caribbean nation's efforts to recover from a devastating 2010 earthquake have been compounded by a cholera epidemic and political chaos sparked by allegations of fraud in the presidential elections held in late November.

Haiti: U.S. Asks South Africa to Delay Aristide’s Departure

2011-03-15T23:52:00.000-07:00

March 14, 2011
Haiti: U.S. Asks South Africa to Delay Aristide’s Departure
By REUTERS

The Obama administration said Monday that the former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide should refrain from returning to Haiti before the presidential runoff election on Sunday. A State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said that Mr. Aristide, above, had the right to return, but doing so this week “can only be seen as a conscious choice to impact Haiti’s elections.” A delay, Mr. Toner said, would “permit the Haitian people to cast their ballots in a peaceful atmosphere.” He said the United States was asking South Africa, where Mr. Aristide has lived in exile since 2004, to delay his departure. Mr. Aristide’s lawyer, Ira Kurzban, said the United States “should leave that decision to the democratically elected government instead of seeking to dictate the terms under which a Haitian citizen may return to his country.”

Latin America Breaks Free

2011-03-12T10:27:00.000-08:00

By Benjamin Dangl, The Progressive, February 2009

Five years ago, when Evo Morales was a rising political star as a congressman and coca farmer, I met him in his office in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He was drinking orange juice and sifting through the morning newspapers when I asked him about a meeting he just had with Brazilian President Lula. “The main issue that we spoke about was how we can construct a political instrument of liberation and unity for Latin America,” Morales told me.

Now President Morales is one of many left-leaning South American leaders playing that instrument. This unified bloc is effectively replacing Washington’s presence in the region, from military training grounds to diplomatic meetings. In varying degrees, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Venezuela are demonstrating that the days of U.S.-backed coups, gunship diplomacy, and Chicago Boys’ neoliberalism may very well be over for South America. The election of Barack Obama also gave hope for a less cowboy approach from Washington.

While many of the current left-of-center leaders in Latin America were elected on anti-imperialist and anti-neoliberal platforms, the general scope of their policies varies widely. On the left side of the spectrum sit Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. They have focused on nationalizing natural resources and redistributing the subsequent wealth to social programs to benefit the countries’ poor majorities. They have also enacted constitutional changes aimed at redistributing land and increasing popular participation in government policy, decision-making, and budgeting. Chávez, Morales, and Correa were also more outspoken than other leaders in their critique of the Bush Administration.

Lula, Michelle Bachelet of Chile, and Nestor and Cristina Kirchner of Argentina have been more moderate in their approach toward confronting neoliberalism, but have been trailblazers in human rights and in their dealings with the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. Though they haven’t been as radical in their economic and social policies, they have shown solidarity with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

A conflict in Bolivia this past September proved to be a litmus test for the new regional unity. Just weeks after a recall vote invigorated Morales with 67 percent support across the country, a small group of thugs hired by the rightwing opposition led a wave of violence against Morales’s supporters. The worst of these days of road blockades, protests, and racist attacks took place on September 11 in the tropical state of Pando. A private militia allegedly funded by the rightwing governor, Leopoldo Fernández, fired on a thousand unarmed pro-Morales men, women, and children marching toward the state’s capital. The attack left dozens dead and wounded.

Just before this violence hit a boiling point, Morales kicked U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia Philip Goldberg out of the country, accusing him of supporting the rightwing opposition. Morales said of Goldberg, “He is conspiring against democracy and seeking the division of Bolivia.” Numerous interviews and declassified documents prove that the U.S. Embassy has supported the Bolivian opposition. Goldberg denies these charges. At a protest in which effigies of opposition governors and American flags were burned, Edgar Patana, the leader of the Regional Workers’ Center of Bolivia, spoke to reporters of Morales’s decision to kick out Goldberg: “If he hadn’t expelled him we would be tearing down the U.S. Embassy today.” Chávez followed Morales’s lead and kicked out the U.S. ambassador in that country. The Bush Administration responded by ejecting both nations’ ambassadors from Washington.

When Morales arrived at a meeting of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in Santiago, Chile, following the conflict, he condemned the rightwing violence in his country as part of a “civic coup d’état.” UNASUR is the most recent, and perhaps most effective, new coalition of South American nations. It emerged in its present form in 2007 to ensure, among other things, sovereignty, peace, and solidarity in the region. At the emergency meeting held to resolve the Bolivian conflict, the region’s presidents unanimously backed Morales, condemned the opposition’s violent tactics, and emphasized that they wouldn’t recognize the separatists.

At the gathering, Bachelet took the leaders on a tour of the government palace, into the room where former president Salvador Allende committed suicide when a U.S.-backed coup against him took place in 1973. “The message was clear that this wasn’t going to happen, that a democratically elected leader won’t be forced from power in a violent coup while the rest of the region’s leaders watch,” says Laura Carlsen, a longtime Latin American political analyst and director of the Americas Program in Mexico City.

On September 16, just days after the U.S. ambassador was expelled from Bolivia, the Bush Administration announced that Bolivia had “failed demonstrably during the previous twelve months” to meet its “obligations under international counternarcotics agreements.” On September 26, the Bush Administration made clear its plans to cancel Bolivia’s participation in the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act because of its failure in counternarcotics efforts. The canceling of this trade act is expected to result in the unemployment of some 20,000 Bolivians. Ironically, many of these recently unemployment workers will now likely seek work in coca production as a way to make ends meet.

“As Bolivia’s South American neighbors rallied in support of the Morales government at a crucial moment, the Bush Administration devoted its attention to castigating Bolivia for expelling the U.S. ambassador—and ‘decertification’ was the nearest weapon at hand,” says a report from the Andean Information Network, a drug policy and human rights organization based in Cochabamba.

Morales responded by expelling the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency from the Chapare, a major coca-producing region in the country, and announcing plans to bolster trade with Venezuela to make up for the loss of the trade deal.

Other events over the past three years signal a shift away from Washington. The failure of neoliberalism in South America, and the subsequent rise of the new Latin American left, was clear at President George W. Bush’s arrival at a regional summit for the Organization of American States in Mar de Plata, Argentina, in 2005, where soccer legend Diego Maradona told reporters, “I’m proud as an Argentine to repudiate the presence of this human trash, George Bush.” The massive protests that greeted Bush were a physical manifestation of public sentiment bubbling under the surface of street protests and economic ministries across the hemisphere: that the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a plan promoted ardently by the Bush Administration, to extend NAFTA-style trade policy throughout the entire region, was dead.

In October of 2007, Ecuador’s Correa announced that his administration would not renew Washington’s lease on a U.S. airbase in Manta, Ecuador, unless Washington allowed Ecuador to open a military base in Miami (the U.S. refused). In March of 2008, when the Colombian military conducted a cross-border bombing into a camp of the guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in Ecuador, U.S. diplomats said Colombia was justified and should operate with flexibility in its “war on terrorism” across borders. But regional leaders condemned Colombia’s actions and solved the tense conflict diplomatically without U.S. involvement.

Last April, the U.S. Navy announced it would revive its Fourth Fleet in the Caribbean. Venezuela responded in September by announcing joint naval exercises with Russia in the same area. Venezuela and Brazil are also leading plans to develop a NATO-like South American Defense Council. “I once said that if NATO exists—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—why couldn’t SATO exist? The South Atlantic Treaty Organization,” Chávez said in a speech.

Then in Brazil in December, thirty-one Latin American and Caribbean leaders welcomed Cuba to the Summit of the Americas, which pointedly excluded Washington. “Cuba returns to where it always belonged,” said Chávez. “We’re complete.” For good measure, participants at the summit roundly denounced the U.S. embargo of Cuba.

The U.S. is also losing influence in Latin America due to the decline of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an institution through which the U.S. wielded significant power.

“In the last four years the IMF’s total loan portfolio has shrunk from $105 billion to less than $10 billion,” explains Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington D.C., explains in a recent report. “The organization itself is currently running a $400 million annual deficit and has been forced to downsize.”

The Bank of the South is a lending institution first advocated by Chávez, and now embraced by seven South American nations as a substitute for institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.

Other agreements involving trade with each other are in the works. And some South American nations, particularly Venezuela and Bolivia, are looking to Russia and China—rather than the U.S.—for new trade and military deals. According to the Associated Press, China’s trade with Latin America jumped from $10 billion in 2000 to $102.6 billion in 2007. Recently, Bolivia signed a deal with Russia to purchase five new defense helicopters, and Venezuela announced plans to buy Russian tanks and reconnaissance vehicles. Meanwhile, Brazil inked an $11 billion deal with France in December for military items.

The current financial crisis in the U.S. may signal the end of thirty years of neoliberal trade policies pressed upon the region from the Global North. Some analysts believe the departure from such policies in South America will allow individual economies to better weather the U.S. crisis. Rather than trembling in fear, many Latin American leaders see the U.S. crisis as an opportunity to widen regional integration. “This is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Carlsen explains. For his part, Chávez mocked Bush’s sudden conversion to nationalizing banks, calling him “Comrade Bush.”

It’s unclear whether he’ll be calling the new President “Comrade Obama.” Last May, Obama labeled Chávez a “demagogue” and said, “His predictable yet perilous mix of anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government, and checkbook diplomacy offers the same false promise as the tried and failed ideologies of the past.” Obama also called Morales’s and Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega’s vision “stale.”

Obama’s national security spokesperson, Wendy Morigi, also said he was “very concerned” about Morales’s expulsion of U.S. Ambassador Goldberg and that Morales was “attempting to lay blame on outsiders.” She also commented that Obama was “profoundly troubled by President Hugo Chávez’s unprovoked expulsion of U.S. Ambassador Patrick Duddy.”

But many people in Latin America are sick and tired of being so focused on Washington. As Ecuador’s President Correa said upon receiving the news of Obama’s victory: “The day will come when Latin America doesn’t have to worry about who is in the presidency of the United States, because it will be sovereign and autonomous enough to stand on its own two feet.”

Benjamin Dangl is the author of “The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia” (AK Press). He is the recipient of two Project Censored awards for his reporting from Latin America.

An Assessment of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution at Twelve Years

2011-03-11T14:33:00.000-08:00

Feb 2nd 2011 , by Gregory Wilpert - Venezuelanalysis.com

On the 12th anniversary of Chavez’s first oath of office as president of Venezuela on February 2, 1999, one can easily get the impression from the international mainstream media that Venezuela is trapped in a terminal spiral towards becoming a state socialist dictatorship. One reads about a failing economy, presidential authoritarianism, rampant crime and corruption, arbitrary nationalizations of companies, and persecution of the private media and of opposition leaders. If all of this is true, then why does President Chavez continue to enjoy widespread support within Venezuela, according to polls? True, recent electoral successes have been relatively narrow for Chavez, but he and his supporters continue to maintain the support of approximately half the country’s population.[1] [3] More importantly, opinion polls regularly show that Venezuelans say their political system is more democratic and their economy is functioning better than the polities and economies of most other countries in the region. Leaving aside the theoretical possibility that the opinion polls and electoral results are false, how can it be explained that Chavez and his government continue to enjoy this much support when Venezuela is supposedly a nightmare of crime, repression, and a failing economy?

I argue that Venezuela is far from being a failed leftist experiment. Rather, there is substantial evidence that just the opposite is the case. Venezuela has made significant progress in the past 12 years of Chavez’s presidency towards creating a more egalitarian, inclusive, and participatory society. Indeed, these advances explain the government’s ongoing popularity. At the same time, though, one must recognize that there are significant shortcomings that have either persisted throughout Chavez’s presidency or in some cases are new. This helps to explain why the Chavez government’s popularity seems to have peaked with Chavez’s 2006 reelection (winning 62.8% of the vote in December of that year) and has gradually declined since.

In order to explain the relatively high level of support after 12 years in office I will first present some of the most important advances of the Chavez government in the areas of polity, economy, society, and international relations. I will then also take a look at what some of the most important shortcomings are and what factors or obstacles might explain the persistence of these shortcomings. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but merely a summary of what I consider to be the most important advances, shortcomings, and obstacles.

Advances

In the political realm

Many of the political changes that have taken place in Venezuela in the past 12 years have involved an increase in political inclusion of previously excluded sectors of society. This has taken place in a wide variety of areas. For example, the percentage of the voting age population that is registered to vote rose from 79% in 1998 to 92% in 2010. Also, Voter participation in presidential elections increased from 65.5% in 1998 to 74.6% in 2006. The combination of increased participation rate and of increased registration means that the participation rate of the voting age population increased from 51% to 69% between 1998 and 2006.[2] [4] Since most Venezuelans are poor and previously tended not to vote, most of the new voters come from poor backgrounds. Compare this to the United States, where in one of the highest turnouts in recent decades only 57.4% of the voting age population voted in 2008.[3] [5]

Further bolstering Venezuela’s democratic credentials is the fact that as a result of the new 1999 constitution that was passed under Chavez, Venezuela instituted one of the most fraud-proof electoral systems in the world, with dual electronic and paper ballots – a system that has been praised by election observers from around the world.

In terms of including previously excluded sectors of the population, with the 1999 constitution the indigenous population now enjoys many new rights, such as the right to their own languages, cultures, and territories, as well as three guaranteed representatives in the National Assembly.

Also, women are now explicitly included in every aspect of the 1999 constitution and housework is supposed to be considered as wage-earning work for the purpose of calculating pension benefits (which, however, has so far not been implemented). More than that, women and indigenous peoples are given affirmative action opportunities for loans, land reform, and access to social programs such as public education and poverty alleviation.

Not only are more Venezuelans included in the political process, they also have more opportunities to participate than previously. These greater opportunities for participation take many forms, such as the right of citizens to initiate referenda to recall any elected official, to approve of laws, and to repeal laws.

Perhaps the most important new form of participation takes place in community self-organization, via citizen assemblies, which since 2006 have resulted in the creation of more than 30,000 communal councils and dozens of agglomerations of community councils, known as communes. Communal councils are formed when 150-400 families come together and decide to work on a wide variety of community improvement projects, for which they receive substantial funding from the government.

Another form of civil society participation takes place in the nomination of members to three independent branches of government (judiciary, prosecutorial, and electoral branches).

With regard to the media, ordinary Venezuelans now participate in the creation of hundreds of new and independent community radio and television stations across the country. Previous governments persecuted community media, but state institutions now actively support them - not with ongoing financing, but with training and start-up equipment.

The combination of greater inclusion and greater participation has led to a greater acceptance of Venezuela’s democratic political system, according to the annual Latinobarometro opinion polls, which allow for comparisons with other democracies in Latin America. That is, more Venezuelans believe in democracy than citizens of any other country in Latin America. Eighty-four percent of Venezuelans say, “democracy is preferable to any other system of government,” while the average for all of Latin America is 61%.[4] [6] Forty-nine percent of Venezuelans says that they are satisfied with their democracy, which is 5 points above the regional average of 44% and 14 points higher than it was in 1998.[5] [7] Also, more Venezuelans express an interest in politics than in any other Latin American country (35%, with the regional average at 26%).[6] [8] Finally, contrary to what one would believe by reading mainstream media, only 25% of Venezuelans say that the president controls the mass media, which is 4 points lower than the regional average of 29%.[7] [9]

In the economic realm

Just as the Chavez government has democratized Venezuela’s political system over the past 12 years; it has done the same with its economic system, both on a macro-economic level and on a micro-economic level.

On a macro-economic level this has been achieved by increasing state control over the economy and by dismantling neo-liberalism in Venezuela. The Chavez government has regained state control over the previously quasi-independent national oil industry. The government nationalized private sub-contractors of the oil industry and incorporated them into the state oil company, giving workers full benefits and better pay. It also partially nationalized transnational oil company operations so that they control no more than 40% of any given oil production site. Then, the government eliminated the practice of “service agreements,” whereby transnational oil companies enjoyed lucrative concessions for oil production. Perhaps most importantly, the government increased royalties from oil production from as low as 1% to a minimum of 33%.

In the non-oil sector the government nationalized key (previously privatized) industries, such as: steel production (Sidor), telecommunications (Cantv), electricity distribution (production was already in state hands), cement production (Cemex), banking (Banco de Venezuela), and food distribution (Éxito).

On a micro-economic level democratization has taken place by promoting workplace democracy. The government supported the creation of more than 100,000 cooperatives with low-interest loans and free training. This represents a more than 100-fold increase from pre-Chavez days. In cases where factories were idle the government has allowed former workers to take them over so that dozens of worker co-managed factories were created.

The democratization of the workplace has had its perhaps profoundest effect in the agricultural sector, where rural land reform has benefited more than a million Venezuelans, not just with tracts of land, but also with training, credits, technology, and access to markets.

The results of the Chavez government’s economic policies have been a 50% drop in the poverty rate, from 49% of the households in early 1998 to 24% in late 2009.[8] [10] Similarly, the extreme poverty rate dropped more than two-thirds, from 21% of households in 1998 to 6% in late 2009.[9] [11] While most of this drop in poverty is attributable to social policies that benefit the poor, much of it is also traceable to a dramatic drop in unemployment, which fell by nearly half, from 14.5% in early 1999 to around 7% in late 2010. Some countries that pursue neo-liberal economic policies have also achieved lower poverty rates, but usually at the expense of greater inequality. In Venezuela, though, inequality, as measured by the “Gini coefficient,” dropped from 0.49 in 1998 to 0.39 in 2010,[10] [12] one of the lowest levels in Latin America.

All of this has meant that more Venezuelans are satisfied with Venezuela’s economy—despite two years of recession (2009 and 2010)—than most Latin Americans are of their respective economies. That is, in 2010, 38% of Venezuelans said they are satisfied with their economy, while the Latin American average is 30%.[11] [13]

In the social realm

Greater participation, closer government attention to the poor population’s needs, and a more equal distribution of the country’s wealth have led to a wide variety of improvements in people’s lives. In the realm of social policies these improvements have been achieved via a wide variety of new social programs, known as “missions.” For example, in the area of education the government has almost tripled the rate of university attendance, from 28 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1999 to 78 per 1,000 inhabitants in 2007 (from 657,000 university students in 1999 to 2.1 million in 2007);[12] [14] it achieved a 50% increase in the enrollment rate in primary education from 40.6% in 1999 to 60.6% in 2008;[13] [15] and increased by 30% the percentage of GDP dedicated to education, from 4.87% of GDP in 1999 to 6.34% in 2008.[14] [16]

In the area of health the advances include: universal health coverage, via the Barrio Adentro Mission (community doctors in most neighborhoods); a drop in the infant mortality rate from 19.0 per 1,000 live births in 1999 to 13.9 per 1,000 in 2008; a 1.5 year increase in Venezuelans’ life expectancy, from 72.4 years in 2000 to 73.9 in 2009.[15] [17]

With regard to retirement and social security there has been a steady increase in the coverage and in the level of social security benefits for retired persons, which has led to a doubling of resources dedicated to social security, from 2.28% of GDP in 1999 to 4.75% in 2008.[16] [18] In terms of the population covered, this has increased from 20.3% of those over 60 years old in the year 2000, to 43.3% in 2009.[17] [19]

As a result of these policies, Venezuelans report to have an exceptionally high level of general well-being. According to Latinobarometro, 84% of Venezuelans say that they are satisfied with life, which is the second highest level in Latin America and well above the average of 71% for all of Latin America.[18] [20] Also, Venezuela’s Human Development Index (HDI), with which the UN Development Program tries to measure a variety of social indicators, increased from 0.78 in 1998 to 0.84 in 2008 (the world’s HDI hardly changed at all during this time).[19] [21]

In the realm of international relations

With regard to international relations the Chavez government has prioritized two primary objectives. First, it seeks to create a “multi-polar” world, in which there are no superpowers that would dominate global politics, as is currently the case. Such a multi-polar world would allow for a better balance of national and regional interests and would create a more level playing field in international affairs. Second, the Chavez government has focused on regional Latin American and Caribbean integration. Regional integration not only supports the effort to create a multi-polar world, but it is also based on the recognition that Third World countries will have a better chance for economic and political development if they join forces and integrate regionally instead of competing against each other or individually against countries of the North. Chavez has embedded these foreign policy objectives firmly within an anti-imperialist framework that tries to challenge U.S. hegemony at every turn, whether with regard to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. support for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, or efforts to impose neo-liberalism via the World Bank and IMF.

Moves in the direction of regional integration and the creation of a multi-polar world have advanced on several fronts. One example is the creation of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which brings together all of South America’s nations in a new political and economic project, with a view towards creating a South American currency, among other things. While this is a joint project of all South American nations, Venezuela has been one of its main promoters.

Venezuela, together with Cuba also launched a different kind of integration project, the Bolivarian Alliance for our Americas (ALBA), to which Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda belong. This regional alliance establishes new forms of trade relations that are based on solidarity and fair exchange instead of on free trade.

A similar project, but limited to the oil sector, has been the creation of PetroCaribe, through which Venezuela provides oil and technical support to Caribbean nations at generous financing rates, so that they are less exposed to the ups and downs of the world price of oil and less dependent on transnational oil companies.

Also, the Chavez government has emphasized people-to-people diplomacy based on solidarity, in the form of Miracle Mission, a program that offers free eye operations to the poor in all countries of the Americas (including the U.S.), with the help of Cuban doctors. Another project that supports this people-to-people diplomacy is the U.S. Heating Oil Program, which provides heavily discounted heating oil to poor communities and particularly to Native American communities throughout the U.S., via Venezuela’s U.S.-based oil company Citgo.

Although Venezuela remains a predominantly capitalistic country—despite President Chavez’s explicit aim to overcome capitalism and to create “21st century socialism” in Venezuela—the country has made significant advances in reversing and alleviating the negative effects of capitalism, via greater political inclusion and participation, greater social justice and economic democracy, and by promoting a foreign policy that emphasizes South-South cooperation and integration against U.S. hegemony.

Shortcomings

Despite these undeniable advances over the past 12 years, the Chavez government has not been able to address all problems that Venezuelans face. Again, looking at the political, economic, social, and international realms, the most important shortcomings include the following:

Political

In Venezuela the judiciary system continues to be a politicized institution, despite various efforts to reform it and the creation of an independent prosecutorial branch of government, which includes the Attorney General’s office, the Comptroller General’s office, and the Human Rights Ombudsperson’s office. This politicized judicial system has led to some questionable prosecutions of opposition spokespeople. It is this politicized judiciary, which is independent of the executive, but is strongly influenced by its pro-Chavez outlook, that has often led to accusations that Venezuela violates human rights. This pro-Chavez slant within the judiciary would almost definitely not have been as pronounced, though, had the opposition not boycotted the 2005 National Assembly elections, as they then might have had a chance to prevent the appointment of an almost entirely pro-Chavez Supreme Court.

Another key shortcoming in the political realm is the persistence of an inefficient public administration that tends to be extremely bureaucratic and has become more so over the past few years. This inefficiency gives rise to many opportunities for low-level corruption, where officials offer to solve bureaucratic problems for a bribe. More than that, the bureaucracy also stifles the government’s efforts to create a participatory democracy (more on that later).

Economic

Here the main shortcoming has been fairly recent, in that the government did not manage to avoid a two-year recession, unlike most other countries in the region. According to some analysts, the 2009 to 2010 recession in Venezuela was avoidable, had the government saved more revenues during the time of the oil price boom (2004-2008) and engaged in more deficit spending when the world recession hit.[20] [22] As a result of the pro-cyclical economic policy of the government, Venezuela was one of the few Latin American countries to remain in a recession in 2010.

A longer-term shortcoming in the economic realm is Venezuela’s continued extreme dependency on oil exports, despite the government’s many efforts to diversify the economy. Currently about 90% of Venezuela’s export earnings come from oil and the percentage of GDP that is linked to the oil sector has not changed during Chavez’s presidency. The main reason for the government’s inability to overcome this dependency has to do with the fact that the massive oil revenues tend to stifle domestic production because imports are generally cheaper (especially with Venezuela’s fixed exchange rate), even when the government tries to invest oil revenues in domestic non-oil industries.

Perhaps the most irrational shortcoming in the economic realm is Venezuela’s subsidized gasoline. Venezuela has the most heavily subsidized gasoline in the world, making it practically free and contributing to waste, pollution, and massive traffic congestion in the capital of Caracas. The cost of the fuel subsidy to the Venezuelan state is difficult to calculate, but some estimate it to be on the order of $6-10 billion per year, which is quite substantial compared to Venezuela’s $50 billion state budget for 2010.

Finally, in order to keep inflation down, the government has fixed the currency’s exchange rate, so as to keep imports artificially cheap and inflation lower than it otherwise might be. However, since the exchange rate does not keep up with inflation (which at 27% for 2010 was one of the highest in the world) the currency tends to be overvalued, making imports artificially cheap and making non-oil exports expensive, so that it is almost impossible for these to be sold on the international market.

Social

According the accounts of most ordinary Venezuelans, crime has surged in the past few years, making it the most serious problem Venezuelans face. Latinobarometro, for example, reports that 64% of Venezuelans say that crime is the country’s most serious problem. This is the region’s highest percentage of people who say that crime is the country’s main problem and more than double the Latin American average of 27%.[21] [23] Oddly, even though the perception of crime is extremely high in Venezuela, the incidence of crime appears to be lower than the Latin American average, with only 26% of Venezuelans reporting to have been a victim or have a family member who was a victim in the previous 12 months. This is 5 points lower than the Latin American average and is by far the greatest gap between incidence and perception.[22] [24]

The second most important social shortcoming in Venezuela is perhaps the persistent housing crisis. Venezuela’s housing shortage is reported to have doubled, increasing from 1 million to 2 million homes in the past 12 years. While the Chavez government has dedicated many resources to this problem, including nationalizing the cement industry and producing cheap PVC plastic housing materials to help resolve it, the state housing sector has not been able to alleviate this problem due its chronic inefficiency.

International

In its pursuit to create a multi-polar world and to support South-South cooperation against U.S. hegemony, the Chavez government has established extremely close relations with numerous authoritarian governments around the world. This, by itself, is generally legitimate if it serves Venezuela’s national interests. However, in the process of establishing exceptionally close ties with these countries, Chavez has given legitimacy and personal support to the authoritarian rulers of Iran, Belarus, China, Zimbabwe, and Syria, among others. Such strong personal ties not only affect Chavez’s personal credibility in the human rights arena, but also make the struggles of the oppressed in these countries more difficult.

While the Chavez government’s advances are far more significant than the shortcomings, both in terms of quantity and of quality, it is important to be aware of the shortcomings if one is to have a full understanding of what is happening in Venezuela today. An analysis of the reasons these shortcomings persist will further deepen this understanding.

Obstacles/Reasons for the persistence of problems

There seem to be four main obstacles within the Bolivarian movement that make internal criticism and course-correction very difficult for the government. The first obstacle is, paradoxically, the main reason the Bolivarian Revolution was able to get as far as it has: President Chavez himself. That is, the Bolivarian Revolution was possible to a large extent due to Chavez’s ability to unite a fragmented Venezuelan left and to mobilize a demoralized and disenfranchised mostly poor population.

However, Chavez’s tremendous leadership capacity has also created a tremendous dependency of the movement on him for the continued advancement of the revolution. This dependency, in turn, makes it very difficult for the movement’s supporters to criticize aspects of the revolution because all criticism reflects negatively on the one individual on whom the revolution depends. Internal debate therefore tends to be cut off before it ever gets going. In short, the Bolivarian Revolution is quite fragile due to its strong dependence on a single charismatic leader. The creation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) was supposed to overcome this weakness, but so far it has not been able to do so because of its insufficient institutionalization and its own dependence on Chavez for its every move.

Second, despite the very profound changes that have taken place in Venezuela over the past 12 years, its clientelistic (some in Venezuela call it “tribalistic”) political culture has not changed all that much. In such a political culture loyalty to an individual (such as to the President or to a sub-group, to a “tribe” or “clan”) is more important than to political ideals or principles. Such a clientelist political culture creates a breeding ground for corruption as one hand washes the other in the name of loyalty to each other. Criticism under such circumstances not only threatens unity, but also indicates disloyalty and can lead to not being promoted or even to losing one’s job.

Third, the demands for unity and loyalty merge with Chavez’s military management style, which is very hierarchical and top-down. While Chavez’s intention to create a participatory society in Venezuela has been demonstrated over and over again, in his inner circle and within the public administration as a whole, there is a profound culture of top-down hierarchical management that ultimately clashes with the efforts to create a participatory democracy. It would seem that Chavez himself and those around him have not realized that this management style is irreconcilable with the government’s overall aim of creating a more democratic society. As a result, Chavez supporters in the communities, who have been empowered by communal councils and worker-managed workplaces, end up in bitter conflicts with state functionaries who try to implement the top-down directives from their ministers, who get their directives from Chavez.

Fourth, despite the elaboration of a PSUV party program, there is still much uncertainty as to exactly where the Bolivarian Revolution intends to go from here. How far is it willing to take the impulse to democratize society? Into all state-owned enterprises, including the oil company? What about private enterprises? What is its intention with regard to the capitalist marketplace? Will it overcome the market through central state planning or through democratic planning or will it implement a socialist market economy?

There is a positive aspect to the lack of a detailed blueprint for the future: It opens up space for debate and for collective decision-making. However, when the conditions for internal debate are limited, as is currently the case due to the previously mentioned obstacles, then disorientation and opportunism prevails and the government’s shortcomings fail to be addressed.

The Bolivarian Revolution faces other obstacles that come from outside the Chavez camp. These obstacles include a Venezuelan opposition that in the past has often been willing to use unconstitutional means for opposing the government, a super-power—the United States—that uses all of its political and economic might to undermine the Chavez government at every turn, and a global capitalist economy that makes it practically impossible to create an alternative within the existing economic system.

Venezuelans, however, appear not to let themselves be influenced by these external obstacles when it comes to evaluating the government’s performance. Rather, it is the above-named shortcomings of the Chavez government and the internal obstacles it faces in overcoming them that have caused an erosion of support for the government and for Chavez since his reelection in 2006.

If the Bolivarian Movement finds ways to overcome its extreme dependency on Chavez (by organizing a more effective party or movement), its legacy of a clientelist political culture (by developing a more competency-based political culture), and its top-down management style (by adopting a more participatory approach to management in the public administration), then the movement will be in a better position to debate the issues of the day, to identify problems, to find solutions, and to develop a coherent vision of where it wants to go as it heads towards 21st century socialism.

[1] [25] In December of 2007 Chavez narrowly lost a constitutional reform referendum, by 49.3 percent to 50.7 percent. Then, in February 2009, Chavez won a constitutional amendment referendum to eliminate the two-term limit on electoral offices by 54.9 percent to 45.1 percent. And in 2010 Chavez’s parties won approximately 46.7% of the vote (for the Latin American parliament) to the opposition’s 45.0% (and 2.8% going to the at the time independent PPT).

[2] [26] Participation rate of voting age population is my calculation, based on statistics found on the website of the National Electoral Council (www.cne.gob.ve [27]) and the National Statistics Institute (www.ine.gov.ve [28]).

[3] [29] Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presiden... [30]

[4] [31] Latinobarometro 2010, p. 26 (www.latinobarometro.org [32])

[5] [33] Latinobarometro 2010, p. 47

[6] [34] Latinobarometro 2010, p. 60

[7] [35] Latinobarometro 2010, p. 34

[8] [36] Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas (INE) http://www.ine.gob.ve/pobreza/HogaresPobres_linea.asp [37]

[9] [38] ibid.

[10] [39] Ministerio del Poder Popular de Planificación y Finanzas (http://www.sisov.mpd.gob.ve/indicadores/IG0002400000000/ [40])

[11] [41] Latinobarometro 2010, p.41

[12] [42] Anuario Estadistico Integral, Ministerio del Poder Popular para las Relaciones Exteriores, p.180-181

[13] [43] Ministerio del Poder Popular de Planificación y Finanzas (http://www.sisov.mpd.gob.ve/indicadores/ED0106600000000/ [44])

[14] [45] Ministerio del Poder Popular de Planificación y Finanzas (http://www.sisov.mpd.gob.ve/indicadores/ED0401400000000/ [46])

[15] [47] Ministerio del Poder Popular de Planificación y Finanzas (http://www.sisov.mpd.gob.ve/indicadores/SA0100100000000/ [48])

[16] [49] Ministerio del Poder Popular de Planificación y Finanzas (http://www.sisov.mpd.gob.ve/indicadores/GA0500500000000/ [50])

[17] [51] Ministerio del Poder Popular de Planificación y Finanzas (http://www.sisov.mpd.gob.ve/indicadores/SS0100300000000/ [52])

[18] [53] Latinobarometro 2010, p.19

[19] [54] Anuario Estadistico Integral, Ministerio del Poder Popular para las Relaciones Exteriores, p.171

[20] [55] See: “Update on the Venezuelan Economy [56]” by Mark Weisbrot and Rebecca Ray (CEPR)

[21] [57] Latinobarometro 2010, p. 8.

[22] [58] Latinobarometro 2010, p. 15

See also:

06/02/2009: 10 Years of Progress in Venezuela [59]
06/02/2009: The Chávez Administration at 10 Years: The Economy and Social Indicators [60]

America Campaigns to Keep Aristide in South Africa

2011-03-11T00:03:00.000-08:00

March 10, 2011
Black Agenda Report

by Glen Ford

If diplomacy is a form of lying, then the United States’ efforts to delay indefinitely the return to Haiti of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is a triumph of the most foul diplomacy. Aristide has a passport, but no permission to land in Haiti and, it appears, no permission to take off from South Africa, where he has lived in exile since his overthrow in a U.S.-backed coup in 2004. The outgoing government of Aristide’s onetime ally, President Rene Préval, provided the passport.

A ‘distraction’
But the U.S. – which really runs the country in a troika with France and Canada – is unalterably opposed to an Aristide comeback. After last year’s devastating earthquake, the Americans said Aristide would be a distraction from the job of national reconstruction. Very little in the way of reconstruction has gotten done since then, but the Americans now claim that Aristide would distract from the runoff elections scheduled for March 20.

Three out of four Haitians were already distracted from taking part in the first round of elections in November, without Aristide’s presence. That was undoubtedly because Aristide’s party, Fanmi Lavalas, by far the most popular political grouping in the country, was prohibited from participating – also at the insistence of the Americans and the tiny Haitian elite with which they are allied.

Brazil silent
Brazil acts as rent-a-cop for the United Nations mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, but WikiLeaks documents show the United States has pressured Brazil to use its influence with South Africa to keep Aristide’s feet planted firmly on African soil.

Brazil dearly wants to get a seat on the United Nations Security Council, and feels it cannot afford to make the Yankees angry.

South Africa claims it’s under no pressure from anybody, but then claims it has an obligation to consult "all the role-players to work out the ideal conditions for him to go back." Clearly, those "role-players" are the Americans and their French and Canadian co-conspirators.

Aristide’s lawyer says he will not attempt to leave South Africa without permission. Of course, if South Africa gave its blessing to an Aristide flight to Haiti, the U.S. would be forced to abandon the charade and give Aristide a yes or a no, in its own voice – which would expose Washington as the occupying power in Haiti. Gone would be all pretensions that the Americans favor Haitian democracy.

In hopes of putting the U.S. on the spot, a group of social activists, including Rev. Jesse Jackson, Danny Glover, Randall Robinson, Dick Gregory, and 11 others sent a letter to South African President Jacob Zuma.

No obstacles
The letter expressed hope that President Zuma "can assist the Aristides in making their transition as soon as possible." It said, "All the last remaining obstacles to the Aristides’ return have been removed," and expectations have been raised among Haitians that Aristide will soon arrive. But even Aristide’s lawyer, Ira Kurzban – who was wildly optimistic only a few weeks ago – seems resigned that Aristide won’t be going home any time soon.

So all the Haitian people have to look forward to is this month’s elections that they didn’t want anyway, for candidates that were essentially forced on them by the United States – an exercise that nobody but Americans believes has anything to do with democracy.

Glen Ford is executive editor of BlackAgendaReport.com. E-mail him at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, "An Open Letter to Our Brother, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide"

2011-03-10T01:02:00.000-08:00

To Our Brother, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide:

We wish to extend to you our full support for your return to your beloved homeland, Haiti.

As people of faith, we know that the road to democracy and justice is not an easy one. These years of enforced exile have been painful -- not only for you and your family, but for the people of Haiti. We join the call from all over the world for this exile to end.

The poor of Haiti, those you have represented with such tenacity and dignity over all these years, continue to demand your presence. We hear their voices and we join their call.

In the strongest terms, we urge the United States government to cease its opposition to your return. There can be no democratic development while a democratically elected leader is banished. And there can be no true reconstruction without the participation of the majority of Haiti's people.

In the aftermath of the terrible earthquake of 2010, your return will provide hope and lift spirits. Please know that when you get to Haiti, we will be there with you.

You are in our hearts and in our prayers.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Archdiocese of Detroit

Rev. Phil Lawson, Interfaith Program Director, East Bay Housing Organizations

Rev. C.T. Vivian, Civil Rights Activist, Atlanta, GA

Rev. Sir John Alleyne, Church of England, UK

Dr. Amer Araim, Dar-ul-Islam Mosque, Concord CA

Father Roy Bourgeois, Founder, SOA Watch

Kathy Boylan, Catholic Worker, Washington, D.C.

Rev. Dr. Lorenzo Carlisle, Pastor, Faith Healing Prayer Deliverance Christian Center, Oakland, California

Rabbi David J. Cooper & Rabbi Burt Jacobson

Kehilla Community Synagogue*, Oakland California

Sister Maureen Duignan, OSF, Executive Director, East Bay Sanctuary Covenant

Father Renaud Francois, Montreal, Canada

Sister Stella Goodpasture, OP, Justice Promoter, Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose

Dr. Jacqueline Grant, Womanist and Director of Systematic Theology, Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta, GA

Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, Senior Pastor, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ, Washington, D.C. and National President, Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice of the United Church of Christ

Father Lawrence Lucas, Our Lady of Lourdes, R.C. Church, Harlem, NY

Rev. Dr. Carolyn McCrary, Womanist and Director of Pastoral Care, Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta, GA

Rev. Paul Nicolson, Chair, Zacchaeus 2000, UK

Dr. Itihari Ture, Director of Center for African Biblical Studies, DeKalb County, GA

Mama Zogbe, Chief Priestess, Mami Wata Healers Society of North America

Mamissii Makena Zannu, Priestess, Mami Wata Healers Society

Reverend Doctor Nozomi Ikuta, Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience Project

*for identification purposes only

Why Washington Won't Allow Democracy in Haiti

2011-02-24T00:39:00.000-08:00

Why Washington Won't Allow Democracy in Haiti
Written by Mark Weisbrot

Posted: 24 February 2011

One area of U.S. foreign policy that the WikiLeaks cables help illuminate, which the major media has predictably ignored, is the occupation of Haiti. In 2004, the country's democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown for the second time, through an effort led by the United States government. Officials in Haiti's constitutional government were jailed and thousands of its supporters were killed.

The Haitian coup, besides being a repeat of Aristide's overthrow in 1991, was also very similar to the attempted coup in Venezuela in 2002, which had Washington's fingerprints all over it. Some of the same people in Washington were even involved in both efforts. But the Venezuelan coup failed, partly because Latin American governments immediately and forcefully declared that they would not recognize the coup government.

In the case of Haiti, Washington learned from its mistakes in the Venezuelan coup and gathered support for an illegitimate government in advance. A UN resolution was passed just days after the coup and UN forces, headed by Brazil, were sent to the country. The mission, still headed by Brazil, has troops from a number of other Latin American governments that are left of center, including Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay. They are also joined by Chile, Peru, and Guatemala.

Would these governments have sent troops to occupy Venezuela if that coup had succeeded? Clearly, they would not have considered such a move, yet the occupation of Haiti is no more justifiable. South America's progressive governments have challenged U.S. foreign policy in the region and the world, with some of them regularly using words like imperialism and empire as synonyms for Washington. They have built new institutions such as UNASUR to prevent these kinds of abuses from the North. Bolivia even expelled the U.S. ambassador in September of 2008 for interfering in its own internal affairs.

The participation of these governments in the occupation of Haiti is a serious political contradiction for them and it is getting worse.

The WikiLeaks cables illustrate how important the control of Haiti is to the United States. A long memo from the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince to the U.S. Secretary of State answers detailed questions about current Haitian President Rene Preval's political, personal, and family life, including such vital national security questions as "How many drinks can Preval consume before he shows signs of inebriation?" It also expresses one of Washington's main concerns: "His reflexive nationalism and his disinterest in managing bilateral relations in a broad diplomatic sense, will lead to periodic frictions as we move forward our bilateral agenda. Case in point, we believe that in terms of foreign policy, Preval is most interested in gaining increased assistance from any available resource. He is likely to be tempted to frame his relationship with Venezuela and Chavez-allies in the hemisphere in a way that he hopes will create a competitive atmosphere as far as who can provide the most to Haiti."

This is why they got rid of Aristide, who was much to the left of Preval and why we won't let him back in the country. This is why Washington funded the recent "elections" that excluded Haiti's largest political party, the equivalent of shutting out the Democrats and Republicans in the United States. And this is why MINUSTAH (the UN-backed military mission) is still occupying the country, more than six years after the coup, without any apparent mission other than replacing the hated Haitian army, which Aristide abolished as a repressive force.

People who do not understand U.S. foreign policy think that control over Haiti does not matter to Washington because it is poor and has no strategic minerals or resources. But that is not how Washington operates, as the WikiLeaks cables illustrate.

For the State Department and its allies, it is all a ruthless chess game, and the pawns matter. Left governments will be removed or prevented from taking power where it is possible to do so. The poorest countries—like Honduras—present the most opportune targets. A democratically-elected government in Haiti, due to its history, would inevitably be a left government and one that will not line up with Washington's foreign policy priorities for the region. Hence, democracy is not allowed.

Thousands of Haitians have been protesting the sham December 2010 elections, as well as MINUSTAH's role in causing the cholera epidemic, which has taken more than 2,300 lives. Judging from the rapid spread of the disease, there may have been gross criminal negligence, i.e., large-scale dumping of fecal waste into the Artibonite River. This mission costs over $500 million a year, when the UN can't even raise a third of that to fight the epidemic that the mission caused or to provide clean water for Haitians. Now the UN is asking for an increase to over $850 million for MINUSTAH.

It is time that the progressive governments of Latin America quit this occupation. It goes against their principles and the will of the Haitian people.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis, writes a weekly column for the Guardian (UK), and has written numerous articles on economic and foreign policy.

February 2011

Mark Weisbrot's ZSpace Page

'Beautiful party' awaits Aristide

2011-02-17T09:25:00.000-08:00

'Beautiful party' awaits Aristide

Former president plans to return before Haiti's second-round election

By CLARENS RENOIS, AFPFebruary 16, 2011
Montreal Gazette

Supporters beat drums in the slums while workers spruced up his private villa as Haitians prepared yesterday for the possible return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide with feverish anticipation.

"Some people are cleaning the streets, others are getting the residence ready, and we are making preparations for a beautiful party," diehard follower Rene Civil told AFP.

"There is a real feeling of expectation among the people," Civil said, desperate to see his beloved "Titid" -or little Aristide -walk once again on Haitian soil.

Haiti has cleared the way for Aristide's return from exile in South Africa by issuing him with a new passport despite warnings from the United States that the move would only add to the quake-hit nation's political turmoil.

Aristide's lawyer said yesterday that the former president will return to Port-au-Prince before the second round of presidential elections on March 20.

"Yes, I believe it will happen before the election," lawyer Ira Kurzban told AFP.

The once firebrand man of the cloth, who rode his reputation as a champion of the poor to become Haiti's first democratically elected president, fled in 2004 aboard a U.S. plane, accused of massive corruption and rights abuses.

In his checkered political career, he served as president on three occasions, and was ousted from office twice, in a 1991 military coup and in a popular uprising in 2004.

As masonry workers repaired cracks in the walls of Aristide's once splendid villa, some residents dusted off their portraits of the diminutive, bespectacled former leader.

Door-to-door canvassing has been organized to recruit the biggest possible turnout whenever Aristide finally makes his return to Toussaint L'Ouverture airport.

Ancyto Felix, another tireless Aristide partisan, said there were plans to hold a massive rally in the Haitian capital on Friday.

Haiti, the poorest country in the region, is in dire circumstances following last year's earthquake, which killed more than 225,000 people.

Fervent Aristide supporters, who include many of the most desperate slum-dwellers, are convinced he is uniquely positioned lead the restoration of their battered country.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

In Defense of Aristide

2011-02-16T22:24:00.000-08:00

By IRA KURZBAN
ira@kkwt.law.com

The Haitian government has issued a diplomatic passport to former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This is long overdue; Aristide has wanted to return ever since he was forced into exile in 2004.

There is no justification for him not to; he is a Haitian citizen, charged with no crime; and the Haitian constitution explicitly prohibits compulsory political exile. Aristide, The New York Times noted during his first exile (1991-1994), “won Haiti’s first and only democratic election overwhelmingly,” followed by a “seven-month tenure [that] was marked by fewer human-rights violations and fewer boat people than any comparable period in modern Haitian history.”

He wants to return home, as a private citizen, and assist in Haiti’s relief effort. He has repeatedly said since 2004 that he wishes to return home to work in the field of education. His two Ph.D.s – one in psychology and the other in African languages – and his history, including seven years teaching in South Africa and the establishment of a medical school and university at the Aristide Foundation are testament to his long involvement in education.

The ball is now in South Africa’s court. Even though Aristide has every right to return under Haitian and international law, documents recently revealed by Wikileaks show that the U.S. and the Brazilian governments have pressured the South African government to keep Aristide there. The United States imposes its will, as the most powerful nation on Earth, to keep in distant exile the deposed president of one of the weakest. Former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, meanwhile, walks free, gives press conferences and makes ceremonial visits around Haiti.

The return of Duvalier – accompanied by former death squad leader Louis Jodel Chamblain as his security chief – to Haiti last month revealed the stark double standard in U.S.-Haitian relations, one that harkens back to a shameful era, when the U.S. government propped up the brutal Duvalier regimes for decades. The danger is not only from his impunity, but from the threat of a re-legitimization of Duvalierism. Haiti now stands on the verge of a precipice; an extreme right-wing political turn – one that openly favors the rich and despises the poor – lies below.

The U.S. government is not a neutral spectator to this situation – this is clear from Obama-administration statements more opposed to the idea of Aristide’s return than to Duvalier’s ongoing presence. Even worse, the United States has been pressuring the Haitian authorities into arbitrarily allowing kompa singer Michel Martelly (who is known to have supported Duvalier in the past, and who got the support of just 4.5 percent of registered voters) to proceed to an elections run-off against former first lady Mirlande Manigat (who received 6.4 percent support from registered voters).

Considering what is known of the right-wing proclivities of each, this could be akin to Haiti’s equivalent of a presidential race between an unpopular Republican and an unpopular tea tarty candidate, with no Democrat allowed to compete. Contrary to last week’s media reports, however, the electoral authorities have not yet made a final decision on the elections runoff. It has now emerged that only half of the Electoral Council members actually signed onto the statement announcing Martelly’s advancement; a majority is required.

Ultimately, it is the right of the Haitian people – a right enshrined in Haiti’s constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to decide their own political destiny. New first-round elections, including Fanmi Lavalas and all eligible parties this time, are the only democratic way forward. Aristide should also be allowed to return to Haiti. No foreign power – whether the U.S., South Africa, or others – has the right to impede his return. Contrary to what the State Department appears to suggest, by reversing a grave violation of constitutional order when Aristide was ousted, democracy will be strengthened when he comes back, not weakened.

Ira Kurzban was the former general counsel for the government of the Republic of Haiti from 1991 to 2004. He is currently representing former President Aristide.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/14/2066861/in-defense-of-aristide.html#ixzz1EC7C01lU

This time, the people of Haiti may win

2011-02-10T23:35:00.000-08:00

The US has overthrown Jean-Bertrand Aristide twice. But now it will encounter a new reality in the Americas

Mark Weisbrot
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 February 2011

US marines invaded Haiti in 1915, occupying the country until 1934. US officials rewrote the Haitian constitution, and when the Haitian national assembly refused to ratify it, they dissolved the assembly. They then held a "referendum" in which about 5% of the electorate voted and approved the new constitution – which conveniently changed Haitian law to allow foreigners to own land – with 99.9% voting for approval.

The situation today is remarkably similar. The country is occupied, and although the troops wear blue helmets, everyone knows that Washington calls the shots. On 28 November an election was held in which the country's most popular political party was excluded; but still the results of the first round of the election were not quite right. The Organisation of American States (OAS) – under direction from Washington – then changed the results to eliminate the government's candidate from the second round. To force the government to accept the OAS rewrite of the results, Haiti was threatened with a cut-off of aid flows – and, according to multiple sources, President René Préval was threatened with being forcibly flown out of the country, as happened to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

This week Aristide has been issued a diplomatic passport by the government, and is preparing to return from exile in South Africa. But Washington does not agree, as US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley made clear. He was also asked if his government had pressured either the Haitian or South African governments to prevent Aristide's return. He refused to answer: I take that as a "yes".

The US has been the prime cause of instability in Haiti, not only over the last two centuries, but the last two decades. Although Haiti is a small and poor country, Washington still cares very much about who is running it – and as leaked WikiLeaks cables recently demonstrated, they want a government that is in line with their foreign policy for the region.

In 1991, Aristide – Haiti's first democratically elected president – was overthrown after just seven months in office. The officers who carried out the coup and established the military government, killing thousands of innocent Haitians, were subsequently revealed to be in the pay of the US Central Intelligence Agency.

When Aristide was elected to a second term, in 2000, the US and its allies destroyed the economy through an economic aid boycott. Together with aid to the Haitian opposition and an armed insurrection, Washington's effort succeeded in overthrowing the government four years later.

Now that Aristide is returning, we can expect to see another massive smear campaign against him in the local media, with allegations of human rights abuses and comparisons with the Duvalier dictatorships. In his book, Damning the Flood, Professor Peter Hallward looks at the best available data for the number of political murders in Haiti: Duvalier dictatorships (1957-1986), 50,000; after the US-sponsored coup of 1991 (with US-funded death squads), 4,000; after the US-organised coup of 2004, 3,000; Aristide's tenure in office (2001-2004), between 10 and 30.

Aristide cut the political violence in Haiti by abolishing the army and the murderous "section chief" system, which were its main sources. For that, Washington will not forgive him. Can the US and its allies continue to deny Haiti's national sovereignty, which it won 207 years ago in the world's first successful slave revolt? Aristide is still a symbol of that sovereignty, and respect for the millions of poor Haitians. For Washington, that is inherently dangerous.

But the Americas have changed since the last time Aristide was overthrown. Washington met strong resistance from South America when it supported the coup government in Honduras in 2009; Honduras has still not been allowed back into the OAS. Governments that Washington does not want – for example in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela – have been elected and survived despite coup attempts and other destabilisation efforts. The left-of-centre governments that now preside over most of Latin America have dramatically and permanently changed hemispheric relations.

Last week Washington failed to gain support for its change of Haiti's election results in the 23-nation Rio Group. Rights can no longer be denied to Haitians, simply because they are poor and black. Nor can Aristide be denied the right to return to his country. As with Egypt, Washington will have to adapt to a new reality.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

Aristide to return `very soon` to Haiti: Lawyer

2011-02-09T21:18:00.000-08:00

Aristide to return `very soon` to Haiti: Lawyer

zeenews.com

Miami: Ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide will try to return to Haiti in the coming days, his lawyer said on Wednesday, even though Washington warned the move would only add to the turmoil in the Caribbean nation.

Haitian authorities cleared the way for Aristide to return last week by issuing a new passport to the 57-year-old former priest, who was Haiti`s first democratically elected leader and served two stints as president.

Aristide has lived in exile in South Africa since being ousted by a rebellion in 2004. He now says he wants to return to help his countrymen, who are set to choose a new leader in a crucial presidential run-off in March. "He`s going to try to return as soon as he can. It will happen very soon," Aristide`s lawyer Ira Kurzban said in Miami, confirming that he had the former president`s new passport.

Asked if Aristide could return in the coming days, the lawyer said: "That`s my hope."

Haitian Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime said on Tuesday that there was nothing now blocking Aristide`s return from an administrative standpoint.

Haiti, which was struck less than 13 months ago by a massive earthquake that killed more than 220,000 people, has been engulfed by political crisis since November when disputed election results led to deadly riots.

It is not yet clear how Aristide`s return would impact on the political scene, further rattled by the unexpected return of ousted dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier last month following 25 years in exile. A popular revolt, led in part by Aristide, forced Duvalier to flee the country in 1986, after a 15-year rule which he took on after the death of his notoriously repressive father Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier.

In the days after his return, Duvalier was charged with corruption, misappropriation of public funds and criminal association, and several complaints have been filed accusing the former "president for life" of crimes against humanity.

The United States on Wednesday repeated its concerns about the possible return of Aristide.

If Aristide returns before the March 20 presidential run-off election, "it would prove to be an unfortunate distraction”, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters in Washington.

Haiti`s fraud-tainted ruling party candidate crashed out of the presidential race last week, as the election commission bowed to weeks of US-led pressure and reversed earlier results. Ending months of deadlock since the disputed first round, the decision was met with calm on the streets of Port-au-Prince, the quake-hit capital that has endured decades of political upheaval, dictatorship and bloodshed.

Announcing definitive results, the commission said popular singer Michel Martelly -- and not the ruling party`s Jude Celestin -- would face off against former first lady Mirlande Manigat in the long-delayed run-off.

"The people of Haiti should be evaluating the two candidates that will participate in the runoff, and I think that should be their focus," Crowley said.

"If he (Aristide) returns sooner, it might disturb... the calm that is needed for an effective election process to conclude."

Aristide`s return would definitely add to the uncertainty in the impoverished nation, which is also still grappling with the devastation of the January 2010 earthquake and an ensuing cholera epidemic.

Earlier this week, about 200 people demonstrated in Port-au-Prince calling for President Rene Preval to step down.

Preval, who was at one time Aristide`s prime minister, had been due to leave office on Monday, but has now said he plans to stay in office until the next president and government is installed.

Meanwhile, presidential hopeful Martelly paid a surprise visit to the neighbouring Dominican Republic on Wednesday for private meetings.

"I am the third political force in Haiti, and I think it is very important to reconcile the people, as society is so divided we cannot achieve anything. It is time for the people to reunite to prosper," he told Dominican radio.

Bureau Report

Aristide says he will return to Haiti

2011-02-05T12:05:00.000-08:00

[Editor's Note: Genuinely great news for the people of Haiti. Seven years too late, but certainly better than never. And a note to the UPI reporter: Believing that Haitians should lead the reconstruction effort in Haiti is not "anti-American." To suggest as much is pure foolishness. - Paul B]

Aristide says he will return to Haiti
UPI.com, Feb. 5, 2011 at 11:48 AM

LONDON, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide says he is ending a seven-year exile and returning to Haiti.

Writing in London's Guardian newspaper Saturday, Aristide said, "I will return to Haiti."

Political insiders said Aristide's return could further impact the country's tenuous political climate. Aristide's announcement came just days after the ruling Haitian government agreed to grant him a passport.

Aristide was removed from office in 2004 with the help of the United States government and he has been in exile since. His return could delay next month's presidential election, the report said.

Aristide said he wants to return to advance education in the country, which was struck by an earthquake in January 2010 that killed up to 300,000 people.

He has criticized the "profit-driven, exclusionary" method in which Haiti has rebuilt since the earthquake. He said "non-Haitians," led the rebuilding, hinting at his anti-American leadership methods.

If Aristide returns to Haiti he would join former dictator and adversary Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who returned to Haiti last month after 25 years in exile.

© 2011 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/02/05/Aristide-says-he-will-return-to-Haiti/UPI-30901296924528/print/#ixzz1D7HBl8vB

Haiti's Burning

2010-12-20T10:59:00.000-08:00

Published on Friday, December 17, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
by Leisa Faulkner and Redginald Alvarez

Massive uprisings, shootings and fire blockades cut Haiti into isolated pieces.

Earthquake rubble spews onto the street while people struggle to find clean water and sanitation to protect them from the cholera epidemic. Now, political frustrations over a recent failed election have fanned the flames of frustration that have been burning in Haiti since the quake. Claims of racketeering including ballot destruction, closures of voting places and even murder run through the local media. Now there are literal flames.

We had to skirt fire blockades of burning tires on motorcycles while taking supplies to a local orphanage. Most aid workers fled Haiti with the increased cholera threat, just when they are needed. The death toll now has risen to over 2,000. Nearly 100,000 have been treated, and many more treatment centers, doctors and aid workers are needed.

All supplies are hard to come by. After days of store closures, Sunday was the first day some stores opened. No bread, no meat, lines two hours long at the banks and gas stations. All public transportation ceased.

We took advantage of the break in demonstrations to get a first hand look into St. Pierre tent city, where we heard reports of excessive force by some UN troops. Two children and an elderly woman died after 5 hours of tear gas assault. Nepalese UN troops have been identified as the carriers of the cholera strain introduced to Haiti. Now in the shadow of St. Pierre church it was other Nepalese troops who tried to block a protest march near the election headquarters. At the corner of what used to be a flower market, library and church, rocks were thrown at troops, one was badly injured. The retaliation was relentless.

We interviewed a half dozen residents and a community organizer with “Concern”, Joseph Alexandre for their report. “They were toying with us, shooting the gas and plastic bullets at us, pausing then starting up again. This went on for hours and hours. They surrounded the camp and shot without regard into the center, where the children were. It was like the tear gas was a toy for them.”

A new young mother named Jania invited me into her tent to see baby Jeffy -- born a month early the day after Nigerian UN troops were able to convince the Nepalese troops to halt the assault. Their efforts came too late for some. Baby Jeffy wasn’t supposed to see 2010. He was supposed to be spared this cruel existence until after the dawn of the new year.

At least his life was spared. Many children and babies had blood running from their noses…other children did not make it at all.

Charcoal marks and burn holes are reminders of the assault. Tents have burn holes, bullets and gas canisters mark their random landings.

All of the paintings that used to line the rock wall of the church plaza lay scorched and mangled in a muddied mass next to the generator that ignited when a red hot tear gas canister set it off. One charred painting peaked out at me, just the eyes remaining. How much more burning can Haiti take?

(photos: Leisa Faulkner)

Leisa Faulkner is a graduate student in Sociology at Sacramento State University and the Founder and Executive Director of Children's Hope. She has been bringing medical and school supplies to Haiti since 2004, and is a past contributor to Common Dreams. She's been to Haiti six times since the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010.

Reginald Alvarez is a college intern who works also works as a translator and media assistant in Port au Prince.

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/17-8

US will pay for Haitian vote fraud

2010-12-15T04:22:00.000-08:00

Demonstrators in Petionville, Haiti, clashed with UN police officers
last week during election protests. (St-Felix Evens/ Reuters)

By Brian Concannon Jr. and Jeena Shah

The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/
December 15, 2010

THE DECISION last Thursday to recount the votes in Haiti’s disputed elections is like rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. As this week’s continued protests demonstrate, it will not avoid the catastrophe. Resolving Haiti’s election woes requires the financial backers of the flawed election process — especially the United States — to reverse course and insist on new, inclusive elections run by a new, inclusive electoral council.

Haitian voters see the fraud and disorganization of the Nov. 28 election as part of a long campaign to reduce competition to President René Préval’s INITE party in both presidential and legislative elections. The Provisional Electoral Council, which ran the election, was hand-picked by Préval, and excluded 15 political parties from the legislative elections, including Haiti’s most popular, Fanmi Lavalas, whose leader, former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, remains in forced exile. The electoral council also excluded 15 candidates from the presidential race without issuing a comprehensive explanation. During the months preceding the elections, Haitians complained about the voter registration program. In the end, over 100,000 voters who had registered did not receive their voting cards. More than 75 percent of voters with cards stayed home on election day.

The current crisis was widely predicted. In October, 45 members of the US House of Representatives warned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that US support for flawed elections “will come back to haunt the international community’’ by generating unrest and threatening the implementation of earthquake reconstruction projects. According to a cable released by WikiLeaks, even the US ambassador to Haiti described Préval as “orchestrating’’ the election to choose his successor. The Obama administration, along with the United Nations and other allies, dismissed these warnings and the mounting evidence of unfairness, and invested their prestige, influence, and $30 million in the elections. As the WikiLeaks cable explained, US officials held their noses and supported Préval because they believed he was “indispensable’’ to Haiti and a good ally to the United States.

If the results from the election stand, the protests may be just the beginning. No matter who emerges victorious from the counting and negotiating, Haiti will be saddled with a president and Parliament chosen by a restricted group of voters from a restricted list of candidates.

The Haitian people will not accept such a government any more than the American people would. They will keep taking to the streets and confronting the government’s police and UN peacekeepers. Protests and suppression of protests may engender more violence, and render Haiti ungovernable for the five-year presidential term.

US support for Haiti’s flawed elections was also a bad decision for US taxpayers. Our government has sent hundreds of millions to Haiti to respond to the earthquake and has promised billions more. But this money may be wasted without a legitimate, respected government in place.

The “realists’’ say that the first round of Haiti’s elections, no matter how flawed, are done and that there is no money for a do-over. The $30 million election pricetag is a lot of money in poor Haiti, but a small price to pay to avoid wasting the $11 billion promised for earthquake reconstruction.

The Obama administration can avoid an expensive, five-year-long disaster in Haiti, but only if it takes forceful action that addresses the roots of the current crisis. The administration should first announce that it will not provide any further financial support to the current Electoral Council or to any government resulting from this council’s elections. It should then offer to support new elections under a new, credible electoral council, as long as all qualified parties are allowed to participate and all political exiles are allowed to return to Haiti. Haitian voters have suffered enough the past year and deserve nothing less.

Brian Concannon Jr. directs the South Boston-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. Jeena Shah monitored the election as a Lawyers Earthquake Response Network Law fellow in Port-au-Prince.

December, 2010 -- Leisa's Haiti Journal #1: Haiti Burning

2010-12-13T13:09:00.000-08:00

Baby Jeffy born early because of tear gas.

Joseph Alexandre with tear gas canister.

One of the lost paintings.

St. Pierre Church and tent city

Dear Friends,

As you probably know by now, massive uprisings, shootings and fire blockades have left me unable to either leave Haiti or communicate with you since landing here over a week ago. Building on the destruction of the earthquake and continued threat of the UN carried cholera, the political frustrations over the recent presidential election racketeering including ballot destruction, closures of voting places and even murder only served to spark the flames of frustration that have been burning in Haiti since the first of the year. Now there are literal flames.

It landed in the street. We had to skirt fire blockades of burning tires on motorcycles when we finally were able to get supplies up to the Mabo orphanage. Coming down was even harder. Though threatened, we managed to get back safely without surrendering our own gasoline for the fires.

Sadly, most aid workers fled Haiti with the increased cholera threat, just when they are needed. The death toll now has risen to over 2,000. Nearly 100,000 have been treated, and many more need medical care in places where not enough treatment centers or aid workers exist.

All supplies are hard to come by. After days of store closures, yesterday was the first day some stores opened. No bread, no meat, lines two hours long at the banks and gas stations.

We took advantage of the break in demonstrations to get a first hand look into St. Pierre tent city, where we heard reports of excessive force by some UN troops. Two children and an elderly woman died after 5 hours of tear gas assault. Nepalese UN troops have been identified as the carriers of the cholera strain introduced to Haiti Now in the shadow of St. Pierre church it was other Nepalese troops who tried to block a protest march near the election headquarters. At the corner of what used to be a flower market, library and church, rocks were thrown at troops, one was badly injured. The retaliation was relentless.

A new young mother named Jania invited me into her tent to see baby Jeffy - born a month early the day after Nigerian UN troops were able to convince the Nepalese troops to halt the assault. Their efforts came too late for some. Baby Jeffy wasn’t supposed to see 2010. He was supposed to be spared this cruel existence until after the dawn of the new year.

At least his life was spared. Many children and babies had blood running from their noses…other children did not make it at all.

Charcoal marks and burn holes are reminders of the assault. Tents have burn holes, bullets and gas canisters mark their random landings.

All of the paintings that used to line the rock wall of the church plaza lay scorched and mangled in a muddied mass next to the generator that had ignited when a red hot tear gas canister set it off. One charred painting peaked out at me, just the eyes remaining.

How much more burning can Haiti take?

From Haiti, peace, Leisa

Leisa Faulkner, Executive Director
Children's Hope

3025 A Cambridge Road

Cameron Park, CA 95682

Text me @ 916.801.4184 916.801.4184

Email: childrenshope@live.com

Blog: http://coalitionfordemocracyinhaiti.blogspot.com/

Haiti orders recount of disputed presidential election

2010-12-10T20:33:00.000-08:00

More than half of the 19 candidates
have called for the result to be annulled

[Finally some good news from Haiti. The popular protests against fraud in the recent Presidential election have forced the government to announce a complete recount. As Dr. King once said, "The riot is the language of the unheard." Wouldn't it be nice if regular folks didn't have to set tires on fire to be heard by the power elite? - Paul B]

Election officials in Haiti say they will review the disputed result of last month's presidential election.

BBC News, December 10, 2010

There will be an immediate vote recount in the presence of the top three candidates - Mirlande Manigat, Jude Celestin and Michel Martelly - and international observers.

The announcement follows violent demonstrations by supporters of Mr Martelly, the third-placed candidate.

He alleges the count was rigged to deny him a second-round run-off place.

The Provisional Election Council said it had "decided to immediately launch a rapid and exceptional process to verify at the counting centre the tally sheets linked to the 2010 presidential elections".

Since the polls on 28 November, more than half of the 19 candidates have called for the result to be annulled.

Meanwhile, a second medical study has traced the outbreak of cholera in Haiti - which has killed 2,000 people since October - to UN peacekeepers from South Asia.

The research published in the New England Journal of Medicine supports the link, which was reported last month by the US Centers for Disease Control. The UN has denied the claim.

Burning barricades

Election results announced on Tuesday night gave 31% to the former first lady, Ms Manigat, with the governing party candidate, Mr Celestin, in second place with 22%.

Mr Martelly came third with 21%, about 6,800 votes short of Mr Celestin.

The strongest protests have come from supporters of pop star Mr Martelly, known to his supporters as "Sweet Micky," who was widely expected to go through to the second round.

Violence erupted almost immediately after the results were made public.

Thousands of supporters of Mr Martelly took to the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, setting up burning barricades and clashing with UN peacekeepers.

On Wednesday, the headquarters of the governing party in Port-au-Prince was set on fire and the international airport was closed because of the unrest.

There was also violence in several other cities.

Canada on Thursday said it was closing its embassy in Port-au-Prince, due to the protests in the country's capital.

Mr Martelly urged his supporters to hold only non-violent protests.

He accused the election commission of "plunging the country into crisis with its incorrect results".

The outgoing president Rene Preval appealed for calm and defended the result.

Mr Celestin is widely seen as Mr Preval's hand-picked successor.

Most observers said the first round of voting was grossly mismanaged, with widespread irregularities.

The US embassy said on Tuesday it was concerned the results were "inconsistent" with vote counts around the country.

The run-off is due to take place on 16 January.

A successful election is seen as crucial to establishing an effective government in Haiti after years of instability.

Whoever becomes president will face the task of rebuilding the country after the devastating earthquake that killed around 230,000 people last January, as well as battling a cholera epidemic.

Separately, former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin is due to visit the country this weekend with the relief organisation Samaritan's Purse, aides of the former vice-president nominee said.

Leisa's Photos From the Political Unrest in Haiti this Week

2010-12-10T19:21:00.000-08:00

Aid Worker from Cameron Park Undeterred

2010-12-10T13:18:00.000-08:00

Sacramento Bee: Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010 | Page 6A
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/09/3244091/aid-worker-from.html

Rioting didn't stop Leisa Faulkner from her mission of delivering antibiotics to a Port-au-Prince orphanage Wednesday.

It simply took longer and required detours around angry mobs and burning barricades of tires and rubble – and the help of a card emblazoned with a red cross.

"We never fail, like the Pony Express," said an exhausted Faulkner by phone from Port-au-Prince.

Faulkner, 56, of Cameron Park arrived in Haiti Monday to spend the week delivering medical supplies and cholera-fighting medications to free clinics and children's homes.

She was planning to leave Saturday until the country erupted in violence over its turbulent presidential elections. "Is the airport open? I don't know when I'll be able to leave," she said.

Faulkner made her first trip to Haiti in 2004 to serve as a human shield for supporters of then-overthrown President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

This is her 16th trip to the country, now working with Children's Hope – an organization she founded to lead teams of volunteers to Haiti with medical supplies.

"What's left from the earthquake and cholera is burning," she said. "What's left of Haiti is burning."

Thousands of Haitians riot in capital over election results

2010-12-10T13:08:00.001-08:00

A former first lady and government protege will face off in January. Many observers question 'inconsistencies' in the Haiti election results.

Haitians run on a street shouting slogans against the

government during a protest following

presidential elections in Port-au-Prince on Dec. 8.

(Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer

posted December 8, 2010
The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Thousands of Haitians outraged over what they claim was a rigged election are rioting in the streets of the capital and have set fire to the party offices of one of two presidential candidates that made it to a runoff.

The results of the Nov. 28 presidential election, announced Tuesday, saw popular candidate Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly fall less than 1 percentage point behind Jude Célestin, the government-endorsed candidate.

Mr. Célestin is now tentatively scheduled to face off Jan. 16 against first-place finisher Mirlande Manigat, a former first lady, while Mr. Martelly is out of the running.

The international airport in Port-au-Prince was shut down and schools and businesses were shuttered today as Mr. Martelly's supporters erected burning barricades in the streets and set fire to government offices in the capital and other cities. The Associated Press reports that the Unity party headquarters, the center of Celestin's campaign, was ablaze for an hour today.

Riot police prevented protesters from attacking the office of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), which delivered the election results Tuesday night. Ms. Manigat garnered 31.37 percent of the vote in the first round, Célestin took 22.48 percent, and Martelly took 21.84.

Manigat was expected to take the most votes. But in a surprise, Célestin surged into second place despite a weak showing in exit polls.

Supporters of Mr. Martelly, who was widely predicted to make it into the final race, quickly took to the streets in protest last night, reportedly setting up burning barricades. Other protests and gunfire were reported Tuesday night in various parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and rioting continued into Wednesday.

International electoral observers had said that they found no evidence of widespread fraud in the days following the poll, but the US embassy in Port-au-Prince issued a statement Tuesday that it was concerned about electoral results that were “inconsistent.”

“The United States, together with Haiti's international community partners, stands ready to support efforts to thoroughly review irregularities in support of electoral results that are consistent with the will of the Haitian people expressed in their votes,” the statement read.

The Nov. 28 vote was marred by accusations of fraud, including that many voters were turned away at the polls. Twelve of 19 candidates on the ballot declared fraud, including Martelly and Manigat, saying that the administration of President René Préval was rigging the ballot in favor of Célestin, the former head of the government reconstruction agency and the president's handpicked successor. The CEP itself has also come under scrutiny in recent months for its close ties to Mr. Préval.

Préval took to the radio today to call for calm. "This is not how the country is supposed to work," he said. "People are suffering because of all this damage."

He also criticized the United States for interfering with the poll, saying "the American Embassy is not the CEP."

Candidates have 72 hours to file appeals against the results, which could lead to uncertainty in the days ahead in this troubled country, still reeling from the Jan. 12 earthquake and now an outbreak of cholera.

The Organization of American States/Caribbean Community mission had endorsed the election despite protestations of massive fraud immediately after the Nov. 28 poll, but the US embassy statement and increased protests could lead to more scrutiny.

The United Nations has also raised recent concerns, with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday saying, "The irregularities now seem more serious than initially thought." In a new statement today, Mr. Ban again expressed concern over the allegations of fraud but appealed for calm.

"The elections were deeply flawed from the beginning," says Brian Concannon, executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti in Boston. No results last night, he says, would have reflected the "people's will."

"Haiti is set up for a government that does not have popular support. In the next five years [the government] will have to make a lot of hard decisions, they will have to induce the population to make many sacrifices, and the only way you can do that is to have popular trust or to use force," says Mr. Concannon.

Some have criticized Haiti for moving forward with the vote, despite all the troubles it faces. But many in the international community said that holding elections as planned was essential to bringing normalcy back to the country as soon as possible.

"If you delayed the vote by three or six months, what would have guaranteed you would have a better outcome? It was important that Haiti proceeded with this,” Haitian political scientist Jean-Germain Gros at the University of Missouri, St. Louis told the Monitor.

Furious protests greet Haiti election results

2010-12-09T12:38:00.000-08:00

Guillermo Arias / AP Photo Haiti's presidential candidate
Michel Martelly speaks during a press conference in
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Dec. 6, 2010.

Associated Press
Published Monday, Dec. 06, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Furious supporters of eliminated candidates set fires and put up barricades in the streets of Haiti's capital after officials announced that government protege Jude Celestin and former first lady Mirlande Manigat would advance to a second-round runoff in presidential elections.

The results announced late Tuesday were immediately questioned at home and abroad, threatening more unrest for a country wracked by a cholera epidemic and still recovering from a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.

Popular carnival singer Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly trailed Celestin by about 6,800 votes - less than 1 percent, according to the results released by Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council.

Martelly supporters set up flaming barricades near the Petionville restaurant where the tallies were announced and threw rocks at people passing nearby. Gunshots rang out and an Associated Press journalist was robbed.

"If they don't give us Martelly and Manigat (in the second round), Haiti will be on fire," said a protester, Erick Jean. "We're still living under tents and Celestin wastes money on election posters."

Radio Kiskeya reported protests outside Port-au-Prince in the Haitian cities of Cap-Haitien and Les Cayes.

Much of the concern centered around conflicts between the announced results and those reported recently by a local election monitoring group financed by the European Union - the National Observation Council - which said that Celestin, who is backed by outgoing President Rene Preval, would be eliminated.

"The Government of the United States is concerned by the Provisional Electoral Council's announcement of preliminary results ... that are inconsistent with the published results of the National Election Observation Council" as well as U.S. observers and vote counts monitored by domestic and international observers, the U.S. Embassy said in an e-mailed statement.

The Nov. 28 election was plagued by allegations of fraud. Thousands of voters were disenfranchised by confusion on the rolls and there were many reported incidents of ballot-stuffing, violence and intimidation confirmed by international observers.

Officials acknowledged the rolls were both "bloated" and "incomplete," with hundreds of thousands of earthquake dead still registered and many living voters waiting for ID cards. In the last days of counting, tabulators had to sort out clearly fraudulent tally sheets.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the problems were worse than originally reported. But the U.N. peacekeepers and the joint Organization of American States-Caribbean Community observer mission said the problems did not invalidate the vote.

The head of the OAS-Caricom mission, Colin Granderson, told The Associated Press before the results were announced that officials could consider putting a third candidate in the runoff if the vote is nearly tied.

Martelly had said that he would not accept a spot in a run-off in which Celestin is present. His campaign called a late Tuesday night press conference but later canceled it for security reasons.

An appeals period runs through Dec. 10, with final results expected to be announced around Dec. 20. The run-off is scheduled for Jan. 16.

Merchants and residents had braced for rioting by supporters of the losing candidates before the results were announced, covering market stalls and jamming streets to rush home.

The protests began as soon as news of the results hit the streets. Orange fires burned on the hills above the capital, white smoke rising into the dim electric light. Rocks were thrown at the few passing cars and guns were fired in the air. The shouts of people - drunken, reveling, angry and scared - rang across barricaded streets.

Manigat, a 70-year-old law professor, is the wife of former Haitian president Leslie Manigat who served briefly in the late 1980s after a much-criticized election before being deposed by a coup. Her supporters include a powerful senator who organized violent protests in his home department ahead of the first round of voting.

Celestin, a virtual unknown before the election, is the candidate of Preval's Unity party. He is the head of the state-run construction company whose trucks carted bodies and limited amounts of rubble out of the city after the Jan. 12 quake.

His campaign was the best-funded of the group but Preval's inability to jump-start a moribund economy or push forward reconstruction after the massive earthquake drained his support. Many voters said they would accept "anyone but Celestin," whom they equate with the unpopular Preval.

Twelve of the 19 candidates on the ballot joined on Nov. 28 to allege that fraud was used to ensure a Celestin victory and call for the cancellation of the vote. Manigat and Martelly were among them but later reversed position when officials remarked they had a chance to win.

Martelly, a popular carnival singer, was a dark horse who gained widespread credibility in the days before the vote. Thousands of his supporters took to the streets of Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien while polls were still open, many believing he had won the race.

The much-anticipated results were released by council president Gaillot Dorsainvil and the clear winner in the bid for senate seats was Preval's Inite, or Unity party, which advanced to a run-off in nine races and won a tenth. An independent candidate won the 11th.

Turnout in the Nov. 28 presidential election was low: Just over a million people cast accepted ballots out of some 4.7 million registered voters.

Photos from Port au Prince by Leisa Faulkner

2010-12-08T17:32:00.000-08:00

This photos was just received from Leisa's phone. More as it takes place.

More on Haitian Unrest

2010-12-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

Leisa is still in Port au Price but is safe and in control of her own movement. Some of the details of the text messages are both enthralling and hair-raising. I look forward to her saying more once she is safely out of there.

Leisa has been interviewed by the Sacramento BEE by phone and also should be in the Huffington Post shortly.

BBC seems to have the best coverage, followed by Reuters and New Co Australia. CNN seems to have nothing.

This struggling nation deserves the chance to decide it's own government, a chance once again missed with this election. It is time for the world community to allow a fully democratic Haiti. This land has been through enough.

BBC Coverage here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11954881

Haiti fears violence in election wake

2010-12-07T23:29:00.000-08:00

As the country waits for election results, many earthquake victims still

living in camps are preoccupied with trying to live under difficult conditions.

Photograph by: Phil Carpenter, The Gazette

By René Bruemmer and Sue Montgomery, Montreal Gazette
December 8, 2010 2:02 AM

As the country waits for election results, many earthquake victims still living in camps are preoccupied with trying to live under difficult conditions.
Photograph by: Phil Carpenter, The GazettePORT-AU-PRINCE – Protests and sporadic gunfire erupted in Haiti’s capital Tuesday night after electoral authorities announced the country’s inconclusive presidential election would go to a runoff vote.

Gunshots echoed in some parts of Port-au-Prince following the announcement that former first lady Mirlande Manigat and government technocrat Jude Célestin would face a deciding second round Jan. 16 following a turbulent Nov. 28 vote.

In Haiti, election days, and the subsequent dates on which election results are released, are more a cause for fear than a catalyst for hope of a better future. Haitians, jaded by two decades of democratically elected governments that have produced meagre progress for the impoverished nation, hold little stock in the abilities of future leaders to “rebuild Haiti.” They’ve heard it too many times before.

But one thing they are relatively sure of is that violence, sporadic and with the unseeing injustice of a ramped-up mob, may strike anywhere. They’ve seen it many times before. This time the state is especially volatile in the wake of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake and in the midst of a cholera epidemic that has killed 2,120 to date.

In announcing the preliminary official results of the Nov. 28 election, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council called for the runoff because no candidate gained the more than the 50 per cent required to win in the first round.

Manigat garnered 31.37 per cent of the first-round votes, ahead of Célestin with 22.48.

The U.S. embassy in Haiti issued a statement raising questions about the announced results, suggesting they might not be consistent with “the will of the Haitian people.”

Haitians interviewed before the results were released said they were worried that violence could erupt if Célestin finished in the top two.

Now Haitians – under a 6 p.m. curfew called yesterday, – wait to see if there will be an eruption. Already yesterday afternoon, there were radio reports of mobs burning tires in the Port-au-Prince district of Pétionville. Within half an hour of the release of the election results, stories of mobs burning tires in the streets in the north of the country and the south were already being reported. Gunshots were reported in the Delmas district.

Yesterday, the normally traffic-jammed streets were slowed to glacial speeds as Haitians rushed to get home before the 6 p.m. curfew, the time at which results were supposed to be announced. Cars, trucks, tap-tap mini-buses and motorcycle-taxis jockeyed for space with pedestrians and rubble as day faded into night. People hunkered around their radios and waited for the sounds of violence in the streets.

Along busy Delmas St., the large Delimart grocery store shut its doors at 5 p.m., instead of the usual 9. Night classes were cancelled at universities.

But as the 6 p.m. deadline came and went with no announcement, radio stations filled the time with comedians, perhaps to lighten the tense mood in the capitol.

Célestin is running for the party of current president René Préval, who is widely disliked by the majority of Haitians because they feel he accomplished little despite modest achievements, and worse, was practically invisible in the days following the earthquake that killed at least 250,000, when the nation needed a leader most. They call him “the zombie,” and any victory for his chosen successor will be seen as electoral tampering.

Manigat, a Sorbonne-educated PhD who is wife to a former president, is running largely on her academic prowess – she’s vice-dean of one of the largest universities here – and her grandmotherly image. The other major candidate was popular singer Michel Martelly, whose comic antics mask a sharp mind. He is hugely popular with the younger generation, fed up with the old guard, and has campaigned strongly, with rallies resembling rock concerts.

“We need something different,” said teacher and computer technician Carl Henry Jean Baptiste. “If he does well, I’ll be happy. And if he doesn’t, I won’t be disappointed because he’s not really a politician.”

Too many politicians in suits have failed before, Jean Baptiste said. It’s time to try something new.

Jean Enock Joseph, a pastor and human rights activist in the Cité Soleil slum on the edge of the capital, predicted a dire outcome, no matter what the results.

“Chaos,” he said bluntly. “A country in flames.”

In some polls, he said, Célestin got more votes than people registered. The United Nations, he declared, is just a lobbyist for the government. And the international community is rebuilding Haiti according to its own agenda, not that of Haitians.

It’s time, said Joseph, for Haitians to shake themselves out of their “zombie state,” feelings of resignation, and demand their rights for housing, clean water, education and health.

“We have a lot of individuals in Haiti but not citizens,” he said. “People are there for their loved ones, but not for Haiti.”

To that end, his organization, the Centre for Development and Respect for Human Rights, began a year-long program in October called Towards an Engaged Citizenry, organizing training and debates to raise awareness.

“These elections will make things go from bad to worse,” he said. “No matter what happens, it will be contested.”

Election fears hamper all aspects of everyday life. Vendors scurried home early, closing up their street-side stalls that wallpaper the avenues of the capital city. Red Cross officials were told to stay off the streets for fear of violence. At Digicel, the nation’s largest cellphone provider, executives were bundled home early in armoured cars driven by bodyguards, sitting behind the tinted bullet-proof glass of their SUVs. Children were picked up early from school. (A Haitian friend questioned the decision of a cousin to put their child in a school far from home – “It’s not good to have a long trip to pick up your child because you might have to run from demonstrations, from stones and gunfire.”) The owner of a business school with 300 adult students said attendance is way down during election weeks, making it harder to make ends meet.

Everybody prays that the “right result will come out,” he said. That Manigat and Martelly will be the top two.

rbruemmer@montrealgazette.com

smontgomery@montrealgazette.com

Reuters contributed to this report

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Violence and Unrest in Haiti after electon results.

2010-12-07T22:10:00.000-08:00

Violence and unrest had erupted in Haiti this evening after a second election run-off was declared between the top two Presidential Candidates while denying a runoff spot to a popular third candidate whose vote results effectively tied with the second place finisher.

Children's Hope Executive Director, Leisa Faulkner is in Port au Prince this evening, near the site of the unrest. Things were very dicey for the last two hours but in a text just now, Leisa reports things have quieted down a bit. She has been in touch with us via text message as electricity is off in the city. Some of her reports have been unnerving, to say the least and we've been quite worried for her at different times this afternoon and evening.

Haiti is under lockdown tonight with no movement allowed anywhere in Port au Prince and some say the enire country.

Please keep your thoughts with Leisa tonight, that she stays safe and gets to a safer location tomorrow. I'm sure once electricity comes back you will hear more from her directly.

Protests Erupt as Haiti Election Goes to Run-off

2010-12-07T22:07:00.000-08:00

12:13am EST
By Joseph Guyler Delva and Allyn Gaestel

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Protests and sporadic gunfire erupted in Haiti's capital late on Tuesday after electoral authorities announced the country's inconclusive presidential election would go to a run-off vote.

Gunshots echoed in some parts of the sprawling capital of Port-au-Prince following the announcement that former first lady Mirlande Manigat and government technocrat Jude Celestin would face a deciding second round in January following a turbulent November 28 vote.

The U.S. Embassy in Haiti issued a statement raising questions about the announced results, suggesting they might not be consistent with "the will of the Haitian people."

Protesting supporters of a third-placed candidate, popular musician Michel Martelly, lit burning barricades in the Petionville district, and in a crowded earthquake survivors' camp near the presidential palace, witnesses said.

The protesters yelled slogans backing Martelly and against outgoing President Rene Preval, and hurled bottles and stones.

Heavily armed police patrolled the streets of the capital, most of which was in darkness without electricity. They forced some of the protesters at gunpoint to dismantle the barricades.

Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council announced the preliminary official results nine days after the presidential and legislative elections were held amid protests, fraud charges and sporadic violence in the poor Caribbean country, which is also suffering a cholera epidemic.

Martelly finished less than 1 percentage point behind Celestin, a protege of Preval. Martelly has already accused Preval and Celestin and trying to rig the elections.

U.S. BACKS REVIEW OF VOTE

In a statement late on Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy said it was concerned the results were "inconsistent with" vote counts observed around the country by "numerous domestic and international observers." It did not explain this in detail.

"The United States, together with Haiti's international community partners, stands ready to support efforts to thoroughly review irregularities in support of electoral results that are consistent with the will of the Haitian people expressed in their votes," the statement said.

Media reports before the results announcement had cited unofficial returns showing Manigat facing Martelly in a run-off, rather than Celestin.

The run-off was announced between the top two vote winners after no candidate gained the more than the 50 percent required to win in the first round.

Manigat garnered 31.37 percent of the first round votes ahead of Celestin with 22.48 percent, according to the results read to reporters by Provisional Electoral Council spokesman Richard Dumel Thibault.

The electoral council announced the preliminary results on the basis of just over a million votes counted, out of a total of 4.7 million registered potential voters.

The second round has been provisionally set for January 16, but the date has to be confirmed by electoral authorities.

The international community has been hoping the elections, would produce a stable, legitimate new leadership to steer Haiti's recovery from a devastating January 12 earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people.

U.N. peacekeepers and international election observers have been grappling with repeated allegations of "massive fraud" by more than half of the 18 presidential candidates. There have also been recurrent street protests and fears that there may be worse violence still to come.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, which has more than 12,000 troops and police deployed in support of Haitian police, has appealed to candidates and their supporters to remain calm, respect the law and avoid violence.

OBSERVERS HAVE ENDORSED VOTE

Candidates can file appeals against the preliminary results within 72 hours of the results.

While acknowledging "the irregularities, the disorganization and the incidents of vandalism and violence which had marred Election Day," a joint Organization of American States/Caribbean Community election observer mission has cautiously endorsed the polls so far as generally valid.

The OAS/Caricom team declined to immediately comment on the announcement of the results.

The group of presidential candidates alleging fraud and calling for a cancellation of the vote sent several thousand noisy protesters onto the streets over the last week and pledged more unrest if the elections continued.

Celestin's well-funded campaign -- his green and yellow campaign posters dominated in the rubble-strewn streets of Port-au-Prince -- was nevertheless undermined by popular discontent over Preval's performance in responding to the earthquake and the cholera crises.

Preval's ruling Inite coalition has accused Martelly, Manigat and the group of candidates who are repudiating the polls of trying to orchestrate "an electoral coup d'etat."

Analysts said an extension of the elections into a second round would increase the chances for violence and unrest.

"So Haiti will be in that potentially explosive post-election limbo in all likelihood until January," said Markus Shultze-Kraft, who leads the governance team at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.

The U.N. has warned unrest will hinder the fight against the cholera epidemic, which has already killed more than 2,000 people.

(Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Tom Brown and Bill Trott)

Politics in a Time of Cholera, Marked by Chaos and Anger

2010-11-27T13:39:00.000-08:00

A girl with symptoms of cholera is
taken to hospital. (Getty images)

Published on Saturday, November 27, 2010 by The Independent/UK by Kim Sengupta in Port-au-Prince

It is a broken country: the poorest in the western hemisphere, its people traumatised by the shattering earthquake which destroyed so many lives, and prey to a devastating cholera epidemic and continuing violence.

A girl with symptoms of cholera is taken to hospital. (Getty images) Tomorrow Haiti will go to the polls to try once more to put itself back together.

But it does so against as daunting a backdrop as any election to be held anywhere in recent times. The journey to the vote in Port-au-Prince, the first since the "day of catastrophe" last January which left more than 230,000 dead and 1.3 million people homeless, has been suffused with accusations and recriminations and a sense of foreboding.

In Champs de Mars, the central plaza which has become a vast tented village of the dispossessed, a Creole slogan painted in blue on the single remaining wall of what was once an office block tells the story. It reads: "The dead shall be heard." But if that phrase carries the strange sense that Haiti's victims remain a reproachful presence in this election, there is also a powerful fear in the capital that their voices will not be heeded, but misunderstood.

With little documentation of those killed and missing, identity cards are said to be changing hands for about $5 so they can be used for fraud. In a contest in which each candidate is spending millions, that is small change.

Public scepticism about the election is palpable. "Of course they will steal votes from those who have gone," said Etienne Gilbert, 46, a casual labourer, as he watched a political rally in the capital. He lost his wife and 15-year-old son when their house disappeared into a gaping hole. "Those who are living are selling their votes, but the votes of the dead are cheaper."

Mr Gilbert shook his head. "We suffer, we continue to suffer," he said. "Human beings should not have to endure such things. No one cares that so many people are gone. I do not know who I will vote for. But if there is no change soon then I shall fight and so will many others."

But any hopes that the election will have a galvanising effect are slim. Nobody expects politics in a time of cholera to provide a clear way forward. The results will be disputed with the possibility of disturbances, and those charged with maintaining security, the UN force, are blamed by the populace for bringing a disease into the country which has killed 1,000 so far. Clashes between rival supporters have led to some deaths and injuries. In the coastal town of Jérémie, a gun attack on a convoy carrying Jude Celestin, the outgoing President René Préval's preferred successor, led to three people being killed. Senator Joseph Lambert, the campaign manager, claimed it was an attempt to assassinate Mr Celestin.

A previous attack in the same area on a meeting of a rival, Charles Henri Baker, had resulted in two deaths and a gathering of his followers in the capital, Port-au-Prince, was broken up by men on motorcycles firing pistols into the air.

There was a grim and surreal undercurrent to the last round of campaigning in the capital. The fear of cholera has meant the candidates do not go in much for handshaking, even though the disease is not actually spread by human contact. They do hold rallies, though. Etienne Gilbert was one of the onlookers at one for Michel Martelly, a former kompa singer also known as "Sweet Mickey", where brightly painted trucks belted out party songs to a Caribbean beat beside piles of rubble that have buried bodies of the earthquake's victims.

Many of those watching from the potholed roads were on crutches - collapsing buildings and emergency surgery under horrendous conditions leaving a generation of amputees to join the 800,000 already disabled before the shattering tremors.

Whatever resentment those looking on feel towards the country's political classes, though, pales in comparison to their anger at the foreign forces that are supposed to be keeping the peace. Nepalese UN troops are blamed for introducing cholera by washing waste into a river, the Artibonite. There have been riots, with two people shot dead when the soldiers fired and many others were injured.

When a helicopter flew low overhead at the rally, Johnny Freleng, a 23-year-old graduate who is, like a vast number of his generation, unemployed, looked at it in anger. "I would have shot at it if I had a gun," he said, standing next to Mr Gilbert. "We are living in shit and the UN does not do anything except give us cholera. Where is the aid America and everyone promised ? But our politicians are no better; they are just a bunch of thieves. This election does not matter."

The aid, billions of dollars of it, and who gets their hands on it is very much a part of the equation. The international community is waiting to see what happens at the election before releasing the vast sums. Mark L Schneider, of International Crisis Group, said: "Whoever wins is going to have an enormous opportunity with significant resources to reconstruct the government and rebuild infrastructure."

The election will also, however, present enormous scope for graft, held Mario Joseph of the civic society pressure group Bureau des Avocats Internationaux. The problem, he said, is an "immoral system which is not functioning and an election process which can be manipulated for fraud. People are disillusioned by what they see."

This disillusionment has led some to take a rose-tinted view of a time which made Haiti notorious, the reigns of Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier. The menace of the secret police, the Tonton Macoutes, is a faded memory. "The older people look back on the Duvalier years when things were better," said Gerald Murray, an anthropologist with an interest in the country for more than 30 years. "They didn't like the Tonton Macoutes, but there wasn't the chaos and violence there is now."

That chaos is in some ways emblematised by the number of candidates running for the presidency - 19 hopefuls in all. Yet not even they deny the scale of the problem. "Right now we are lost as a people," said Michel Martelly. "We have lost our dignity, our pride. The members of the establishment in Haiti are corrupt; they have destroyed this country. You watch, I will win the vote but lose because of the fraud - that is the way they will do it."

Mr Martelly, 49, is a more exuberant figure than most politicians: his act involved him appearing on stage in drag and dropping his trousers in the finale. He is the second musician to stand after the US-based Wyclef Jean campaigned for a while before being banned by the Electoral Council. The hip-hop artist's slogan was "Jen kore jen" - "Youth helping youth". Now Mr Martelly wants to help himself to some of these disaffected votes.

"I want the young people to organise against the élite," he said. "We must make sure that they are the ones who get to benefit from a future Haiti, not the élite."

Charles Henri Baker, an industrialist and another of the candidates, took a different view. "Yes, I am part of the élite," he said. "But I am also someone who creates jobs and this is what this country needs. We have to be a modern country, and if enough wealth is created it will be shared."

Haitians seemingly accept that there will be widespread malpractice. The head of the electoral registry, Philippe Augustin, said in a matter-of-fact fashion "I think there will be fraud everywhere. The result will get hijacked."

Almost every candidate has been accused of offering money for votes and Mr Henri Baker is no exception. He could bank on backing in Pétionville, the home of the affluent, but it is more surprising to see people wearing T-shirts with his name at Cité Soleil, a ghetto of desperate poverty.

Mr Henri Baker is accused of paying neighbourhood toughs to pressurise people to promote his cause. But the candidate himself says the calumny comes from the team of Jude Celestine, the President's favourite. "They are trying all kind of tactics - telling fabrications, intimidation," he said.

The reputation of President Préval, who cannot run for a third term under the constitution, plummeted after what was seen as his inaction following the earthquake. But he is effectively in control of the Election Council which debarred Wyclef Jean for not being a Haitian resident for the last five years, and also rejected members of the Lavalas Party of the ousted ruler Jean-Bertrand Aristide for the ostensible reason that he had not personally filed the election paper. The former president happens to be in exile in South Africa without a passport.

Mirlande Manigat, another candidate again, is a 70-year-old Sorbonne-trained academic. The wife of the former president Leslie Manigat, she is doing well at the polls. At her last public speech before the vote, she maintained she is staying above it all, talking instead about the need for solidarity among the people and for a cleaner, more conscientious leadership.

Listening in the crowd, Alan Suarez, a 68-year-old retired engineer, smiled sceptically. "I will vote for her because she is old like me, but really no one standing fills me with confidence," he said. "The thing now is to get the election over without too much trouble."

The Four Front-Runners

Michel "Sweet Mickey" Martelly

The kompa jazz singer hopes to pick up the youth vote gathered by US-based hip-hop star Wycliffe Jean, who was disqualified from running because he has not been a resident of Haiti for the last five years.

Mr Martelly says he is leading a "peasants' revolt" against the moneyed elite of Haiti, but his cross-dressing stage act, in which he dropped his trousers in the finale, has led to disapproval from some of the older people among the electorate.

Jude Celestin

The successor picked by outgoing President Rene Preval who cannot run for a third term under the constitution.

Mr Celestin was a little-known technocrat before being picked and is perceived by critics to be a puppet of Mr Preval. His campaign theme of "continuity" does not appear to fit the mood in the country but millions of dollars has been spent on his campaign and he has a powerful party machine behind him.

In the last stage of the campaign he has been projecting himself as "the quiet man".

Mirlande Manigat

The septuagenarian Sorbonne-educated academic, and wife of a former president overthrown in a military coup more than two decades ago, presents herself as a calming older influence in a volatile political scene.

"Mom", as she is known to her followers, has run an unexpectedly successful campaign and is in the lead in several opinion polls but a relative lack of vote-buying capability may count against her chances. Mrs Manigat, an avid reader of Agatha Christie thrillers, has promised a "surprise ending" in the election results.

Charles Henri Baker

A wealthy industrialist who has the backing of the entrepreneurs and promises to create jobs for the masses. His opponents accuse him of massive vote buying in the slums of Haiti and he has been involved in acrimonious exchanges with Mr Celestin. Mr Henri Baker also has to cope with unpopularity from his actions in the past when he was involved in bitter pay disputes with his workforce. The candidate says he has changed his hardline stance on industrial relations and will promote good employer-employee relations if elected.

2010 November Haiti Journal #1 - Cholera and Kids

2010-11-16T18:58:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

I'm packing up again. Children's Hope heads to Haiti this Sunday. This trip will be like no other. While cholera grips the camps, we go to bring in rehydration and antibiotic treatments. 12 thousand are hospitalized, nearly a thousand dead...and cholera's grip is predicted to haunt Haiti for years...sanitation supplies and clean water are nearly impossible for most folks to find. A pall grips the hungry camps, babies rarely even cry, as food distribution to their mothers has been stopped in the camps. Cholera is creeping into the city. 1,000 new beds are being set up in the Port au Prince area as I write. Malnourished children need vitamins and cholera patients need treatment...your donations this trip will go 100% to this relief.

On a personal level...I will also be carrying papers to work on adopting two little boys. They are Teves and Dro. 6 and 8 years old. They were found living on the street nearly four years ago...Please keep good thoughts for us...as we hope to bring the boys home early next year.

Now, I know that many of you have helped Haiti so much this year, following the earthquake. I am sorry I have not been able to personally send out thanks and photos as I usually do...it seems we barely get home and we are going back again. This is our 6th service mission this year. I wish I could say that things are getting better, but with the recent hurricane and now cholera, it seems we can't catch our breath.

Please consider if you can help us spread the word about this humanitarian trip. Since I am the only member of our team going this trip, space is limited. I am carrying in only children's vitamins, antibiotics, and funds to purchase clean water and food. Funds are the most versatile.

I have heard from friends there that electricity is worse than usual, but I will send updates as I can.

You can text me in Haiti at 916.801.4184...or write me at ChildrensHope@live.com.

Please think of the children this Thanksgiving. Go to our blog http://coalitionfordemocracyinhaiti.blogspot.com/ , or simply send a check to the address below.Thank you.

peace always and all ways,
leisa

Leisa Faulkner, Executive Director
Children's Hope
3025 A Cambridge Road
Cameron Park, CA 95682

Text me @ 916.801.4184 916.801.4184
Email: childrenshope@live.com
Blog: http://coalitionfordemocracyinhaiti.blogspot.com/

“If you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, your life will be safe, expedient and thin."
Katharine Butler Hathaway

Haiti election campaign opens amid anger over candidate exclusions

2010-09-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

27 September 2010

By Hannah Armstrong, Christian Science Monitor

The exclusion of populist party Fanmi Lavalas and other contenders heightens concerns that the Haiti election will fail to introduce leaders closer to voters’ core concerns.

In Camp Immaculate, a tent-city for many of the 1.5 million Haitians made homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake, hundreds of protesters gather regularly to tap out rhythms with bits of debris and chant in the noon-day heat: “No voting under tents!” and “Down with Préval!”

Central to their anger is the belief that elections scheduled for Nov. 28 have been rigged in advance. These partisans of the popular leftist party Fanmi Lavalas (FL) blame an electoral commission appointed by President Rene Garcia Préval for banning the party from contesting the upcoming poll.

As the campaign season officially began today, the anger and disillusionment on display in places like Camp Immaculate was evidence of how few Haitians believe the process will deliver a fair outcome.
On top of banning the FL, the party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide that has won every election it has contested, the Provisional Electoral Committee (CEP) disqualified a number of candidates, among them the hip-hop star Wyclef Jean and former ambassador Raymond Joseph.

Maintaining the status quo?
Signs that this will not be a clean election have been in evidence for months. The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations warned in a July report (pdf) that the exclusion of FL and the failure to reform the CEP could compromise the elections’ legitimacy.

But US support for the election appears assured. “Peaceful and credible elections and the transfer of power to a new government will be key milestones of Haiti’s progress,” Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations, wrote in an editorial on Friday that was released amid growing alarm that the election is being stitched up for Mr. Préval’s allies.

The international community, which is providing most of the election’s $29 million price tag, “would rather work with Préval because he’s the only one they know right now,” says Marleine Bastien, a leader of the Haitian-American community in South Florida. Préval, who cannot run for another term, has endorsed former government construction agency director general Jude Celestin. Observers say almost all presidential candidates represent the ruling elite surrounding Préval.

“We in the US have not put pressure on the CEP to do the right thing and uphold democratic values in Haiti – which means allowing Lavalas to partake in elections,” says Ms. Bastien, who is not an FL partisan but says all viable parties must be allowed to participate.

Mario Joseph, Haiti’s most prominent international human rights lawyer, holds the UN responsible for tolerating practices that compromise the fairness of the country’s elections. “They have supported this election selection, they have supported the exclusion of political parties, they have supported Mr. Préval in the choice of an electoral council without meeting with political parties,” he says.

Préval builds ties with international community
Préval came to power in 2006 in the first vote following the ouster of Mr. Aristide, whose increasingly violent rule was marked by nationalization and wealth redistribution measures that alienated Haitian elites and international partners. Préval curried favor with international partners by privatizing state-owned companies and extending the mandate for the UN peacekeeping mission even as he lost domestic support.
Tensions boiled over in 2008, as food prices soared and riots broke out. Demonstrators stormed the presidential palace demanding the resignation of Préval and the departure of UN troops. The official turnout figure for April 2009 senatorial elections was just 11 percent, stark evidence of the lack of confidence in the system.

‘Rebellion brewing’
Those elections were the first to exclude FL. Despite formally objecting, the international community continued to support the government which “gave the CEP a green light to keep excluding the government’s political rivals,” the Institute on Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) wrote in a report.
IJDH director Brian Concannon says UN and US support for the November elections is “a short-term expedient that’s going to come back and haunt them in the long-term.”
“The exclusion [of FL] will hurt not only Haiti and its people but it will also hurt all partners,” adds Bastien. “I feel a lot of rebellion brewing under the surface.”

http://ijdh.org/archives/14784

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2010/0927/Haiti-election-campaign-opens-amid-anger-over-candidate-exclusions

France Asked to Return Money ‘Extorted’ From Haiti

2010-08-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

New York Times -- The Lede
August 16, 2010, 10:57

France Asked to Return Money ‘Extorted’ From Haiti
By ROBERT MACKEY

In an open letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, published on Monday in the Paris newspaper Libération, an international group of scholars and activists called on France to repay Haiti, its former colony, more than $20 billion that had been “extorted” in the 19th century.

As Isabel Macdonald, a Canadian scholar who helped draft the letter, explains in The Toronto Star:

Prior to independence, St. Dominique — the country that is now Haiti — was France’s most profitable colony, thanks in no small part to its particularly brutal system of slavery. In 1791, the slaves revolted, and in 1804, after defeating Napoleon’s armies, founded the world’s first black republic.

Following Haiti’s independence, former French slave owners submitted detailed tabulations of their losses to the French government, with line items for each of “their” slaves that had been “lost” with Haitian independence. In 1825, King Charles X demanded that Haiti pay France an “independence debt” to compensate former colonists for the slaves who won their freedom in the Haitian revolution. With warships stationed along the Haitian coast backing up the French demand, France insisted that Haiti pay its former colonizer 150 million gold francs — 10 times the new nation’s total annual revenues.

Under threat of a French military invasion that aimed at the re-enslavement of the population, the Haitian government had little choice but to agree to pay. Haiti’s government was also forced to finance the debt through loans from a single French bank, which capitalized on its monopoly by gouging Haiti with exorbitant interest rates and fees. The original sum of the indemnity was subsequently reduced, but Haiti still disbursed 90 million gold francs to France.

The money Haiti paid to France from 1825 until 1947 was estimated by the Haitian government in 2003 to be the equivalent of nearly $22 billion today.

Last month, a group calling itself the Committee for the Reimbursement of the Indemnity Money Extorted From Haiti — or, C.R.I.M.E. — drew attention to Haiti’s independence debt with an elaborate hoax, in which an actor impersonating a French Foreign Ministry official announced that France would repay the money.

As The Lede reported, video and text of the mock statement were posted on a near-replica of the French Foreign Ministry’s Web site.

Monday’s letter on the issue also appears on the fake Foreign Ministry site, above the names of dozens of well-known activists, including: Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Noam Chomsky, Ariel Dorfman, Naomi Klein, José Bové, Eduardo Galeano, Cornel West and the founders of the group that seems to have inspired the hoax announcement, the Yes Men.

The letter ends by linking threats of legal action against the pranksters with the fate of the former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who asked France to repay the debt for Haiti’s bicentennial in 2004:

In 2003, when the Haitian government demanded repayment of the money France had extorted from Haiti, the French government responded by helping to overthrow that government. Today, the French government responds to the same demand by C.R.I.M.E. by threatening legal action. These are inappropriate responses to a demand that is morally, economically and legally unassailable. In light of the urgent financial need in the country in the wake of the devastating earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010, we urge you to pay Haiti, the world’s first black republic, the restitution it is due.

In March, international donors pledged to provide Haiti with just over $5 billion to help in its reconstruction. Earlier this month, Bill Clinton, who is helping to coordinate aid to Haiti, told The Associated Press that so far just five countries had made good on their promises and that less than 10 percent of that money had been delivered.

Sean Penn on Wyclef's Presidential Campaign

2010-08-27T15:34:00.000-07:00

[Editor's Note: Sean Penn's analysis of Wyclef's Presidential aspirations is right on target. However, both Wyclef and Sean Penn are ignoring the most crucial fact regarding the upcoming Presidential and parliamentary elections in Haiti -- the largest and most popular party, Fanmi Lavalas, has been excluded by the Haitian electoral council (CEP). Unless this decision is reversed, then the results from the November 28 elections will be fundamentally undemocratic. As American citizens, we have a responsibility to put pressure on our government to support the democratic aspirations of the Haitian people, rather than continuing our more traditional role of undermining and violently repressing those aspirations -- Paul B]

Third Person Once Removed

The Huffington Post
Sean Penn, August 25, 2010

As Wyclef Jean announces his regrettable turn-about to contest Haiti's electoral rule of law (a law he has no previous record of dissension toward), his PR team is mobilizing. See Ms. Marian Salzman's recent blog on the Huffington Post (August 23, 2010). In it, Ms. Salzman, hired to frame perception of Mr. Jean, claims that I "lambasted" Mr. Jean's candidacy on CNN. Furthermore, she reduced the political dialogue that took place that day by calling the discussion a "celebrity feud". In fact, a sensationalized celebrity feud, is and was, as far from my mind as the alleged "lambasting." Though he and his camp came back with many disparaging comments in my direction, I felt that ignoring my initial impulse to react and respond allowed the attention to refocus on the real issues facing Haitians.

One can YouTube the segment of the August 8 Larry King Live in question. In the clip, Wolf Blitzer interviews Wyclef Jean upon his announcing his candidacy. The viewer will also see a response from someone (myself) who runs an NGO in Haiti, someone who has spent most of the last six months following the devastating earthquake, side by side in that country, with so many others, doing whatever we could to lend a hand. I have never met Wyclef Jean, and all I really know of him on any personal level has come through the fond comments of a few mutual friends. Hence, nothing I might say, was in ANY way personal, or intended to be lambasting to anyone. My comments were critical observations of a political candidate and a leader of an organization in Haiti.

Ms. Salzman also works to make the case that Wyclef Jean gave indispensable world attention to Haiti's incredible misfortune. I was there for those 6 months after the earthquake and so many of us on the ground wondered where he was when that kind of attention was so necessary and absent, and why he was NOT helping to keep this desperate situation in the news. None among us felt or expressed anger toward it, but rather a universal sadness for his silence, as he is America's most admired cultural link to Haiti. As the six-month Anniversary approached, it triggered the return of the world media, and of Wyclef Jean to Haiti. He'd referred to himself as "His Excellency Wyclef Jean" and "The most famous man in Haiti" on a self-generated flier in the lead up to his troubling announcement.

On the Larry King Show, I was an invited guest answering questions and expressing concerns about Wyclef Jean's place in Haiti's election. In particular, I voiced the responsibility of Americans and the American media to ask critical questions before jumping to support a candidate simply because they are familiar with him. I asked specifically for those Americans, or American companies, to dig deeper in assessing their own agendas, who might contribute any financial support to a candidate running for office in a country not our own. It's clear that Mr. Jean can have an important place in drawing attention to Haiti's needs. However, when New York press agents circle wagons of ignorance and sell as deep insight the advertisement of that which charms them about a client, the lives and needs of the Haitian people are sidelined. The very notion of a celebrity feud is one driven by a culture un-Haitian. And, in this reckless self-interest, Ms. Salzman's is an obscene input. This said, it is neither my place nor Ms. Salzman's to cast a vote. My support is with the Haitian people, and whomever they lawfully select as their next President. It is, it seems, folly for we Americans to assume "our Haitian" is their answer, simply because we enjoy the sense of identification we may feel, or are paid to espouse.

It should be said that laws that put limitation on the contribution by Haitians returning to their own country following an education abroad are worthy of review. And it would have been a valuable contribution had Wyclef Jean drawn attention to it in another moment, or in a less divisive ambition. However, the only attention that Haiti seems to be getting today is on a presidential campaign of personality that threatens to create a new swell of social unrest in a plagued country. I would caution Mr. Jean against research, or prospective policy, by sound bite.

When he chose to attempt to discredit me, claiming on the Gayle King Show on August 9 that my time in Haiti had been restricted to "one particular area", that area he was referring to is the 55,000 person IDP Camp that I and my organization were tasked to manage by the International Office of Migration. Indeed it is at that camp where we are based, but in fact, I and those I work with have operated 24-7 throughout the city of Port Au Prince and the country at large for all these months, distributing thousands of water filters, food, medicine, medical supplies and volunteers throughout the days and nights from the back of pick-up trucks and helicopters. We have directly been responsible for hiring and supervising rubble removal crews, heavy equipment, and coordinating multiple NGO actions from Cash for Work and food/water distribution.

On Gayle King's program Jean said the following: "I would like to tell Sean Penn I do not react on emotions when it comes to the Haitian people. I do not have to sacrifice my life and live inside of a tent to prove that I am for the Haitian people." No, he doesn't have to live in a tent. But it would be nice if he visited once and awhile. On the same program he said, that "had it not been for him," my organization would never have been able to enter Haiti due to historic security problems, (referring to his self-proclaimed one man peacemaking position) he must have missed the fact that, unlike him, I travel without the benefit of a security corps. I have traveled alone in the Iraqi war zone, and security had not ever been a deciding factor in any such humanitarian or journalistic action for me.

Lastly, I would like, again, to invite the reader to view CNN's Larry King segment in full (below). Watch carefully for Mr. Jean's responses to two questions. First, the one about his consecutive residential status where he states, "I have residency for over five years in Haiti." Then see his response regarding his fluency in either French or Creole. I'll let the reader decide if his answers are as forthcoming as his uninformed disparagement of one who was simply there to help.

So, yes, we still must ask questions. Yes I still support those Haitians who believe in him. But, I recommend that Mr. Jean and his advisers keep their future musings on more important topics than discrediting someone involved with a really good NGO. The real and devastating human issues in Haiti must be handled and led by a qualified president's deft hand. These elections are crucial, and I have no part in them. Neither should Mr. Jean.

The Assault on Haitian Democracy

2010-08-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

Pro-Lavalas demonstrators march in Port au Prince to honor
the birthday of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, July 2010.
Photo credit: Haiti Action Committee

by Kevin Edmonds

North American Congress on Latin America

https://nacla.org/ August 23, 2010

While the presidential candidacy of rapper/entertainer Wyclef Jean in Haiti’s upcoming presidential and legislative elections has garnered much international attention, underneath the glare of this hype are the continued assaults on the country’s democratic process. Much is at stake in this key election, scheduled for November 28. The winner will be responsible for the colossal task of rebuilding the nation’s shattered infrastructure and psyche after the January 12 earthquake. Jean’s glitz and glamour have stolen international headlines (despite Haiti’s August 20 ruling denying him the candidacy), however, the real story is that the country’s strongest and most popular political force will again be excluded from these elections.

The United States and the principal international power brokers have stated over and over again that the promotion of a stable and democratic political process is a primary goal in Haiti. However, international elites continue to support and fund an election that openly excludes the political party Famni Lavalas, the party founded by former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide. Not only has Lavalas been excluded from Haiti’s political process by the country’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), its supporters are continually intimidated and violently suppressed by a United Nations army that continues to be in Haiti six years after the 2004 coup that ousted Aristide from the presidency. The CEP and the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) continue to work in coordination with each other to make sure only the Haitian and international economic elite have their say in the country.

Though its stated mission is peacekeeping, MINUSTAH has also taken a political stance in the country. Since the UN army has been in Haiti it has worked with international elites to actively oppose the kinds of policies that Lavalas was promoting before its violent ouster. Lavalas, for example, attempted to halt the privatization of public utilities, raise the country’s abysmally low minimum wage, and pursue demands that France begin to pay the historic $21 billion debt owed to its former colony.

Since the coup, MINUSTAH and Haitian police have continually referred to Lavalas supporters as “bandits," which they have used to justify illegal arrests and extrajudicial killings. MINUSTAH has killed civilians in Port-Au-Prince’s slums, specifically in the Lavalas strongholds of Bel Air and Cité Soleil, silencing the demands of self determination and socio-economic justice of the people in these neighborhoods. MINUSTAH’s shoot-first tactics have been well documented, and Haiti scholar Peter Hallward has compiled a lengthy list of human rights abuses and outright massacres by MINUSTAH in his book Damming the Flood (pp. 275-310). The terror and intimidation of Lavalas supporters has continued throughout President René Préval’s term in office, especially during the six months following the earthquake.

Though Préval, an Aristide protégé, originally ran on a progressive ticket, he has since refused to support a bill that would have increased Haiti’s paltry minimum wage and has not allowed Aristide to come out of exile. Now his administration faces social unrest due to the slow progress of post-earthquake recovery. The unrest, in large part, has taken the form of public demonstrations organized by supporters of Lavalas, still considered to be the main political vehicle for Haiti’s poor, who make up 90% of the population. MINUSTAH has responded to these popular demonstrations with repression, and has upheld Haiti’s internal process that has excluded Lavalas from the elections.

As the principal official electoral institution in the country, the CEP has banned the participation of Lavalas and 14 other political parties in the upcoming November elections. While under Haitian law the Préval-picked CEP does not have the legal authority to exclude any legally recognized political party, it has continued to ignore both internal and international pressure to reverse its decision. Indeed, it seems to have made a habit of undermining Lavalas’s efforts to take part in the democratic process.

In the run-up to the 2006 elections, for example, the Haitian government imprisoned a popular Lavalas presidential candidate, Father Gerard Jean Juste, on a bogus murder charge in an effort to block him from taking part in the election. While in prison Jean Juste was unable to fulfill the CEP’s demand of registering in person, and was banned from participating in the election.

This was just the beginning. In the 2009 Senate elections, in which 12 seats were contested, every Lavalas candidate was banned by the CEP on procedural grounds. Despite Lavalas’s punctual submission of a list of its candidates, the final list was rejected by the CEP because it did not have the original signature of Aristide, who was the leader of the party despite his forced exile in South Africa. The spontaneous creation of this new requirement seemed to be a blatant effort to block Lavalas’s participation and led the party to call for a boycott of the election. The voter turnout for the election was a measly 3-5% of the population – a clear signal that Haitians rejected the election, and another indication of Lavalas’s immense popular support.

In November 2009, after the CEP announced the dates for the 2010 elections, Famni Lavalas complied with all of the known legal requirements and preparations to participate. Aristide sent the CEP the necessary documents with his original signature and an accompanying certificate from a Haitian notary, which authorized Lavalas representative Dr. Maryse Narcisse to formally register the party for the elections. Aristide appeared on the local radio station Radio Solidarity to confirm that the party had followed all necessary requirements. Once again the CEP disqualified Lavalas due to its failure to submit the proper documents for the 2009 Senate elections, not the 2010 election. Street marches and spontaneous protests ensued.

On August 20, the CEP ruled against the candidacy of Wyclef Jean, as he did not meet the residency requirements to participate in the election. Jean previously viewed himself as Haiti’s Bob Marley, but in a recent interview with Time magazine, he likened himself to another entertainer-turned statesman, Ronald Reagan, a frightening comparison for Haitians, given Reagan’s fervent support for the Duvalier dictatorship in the 1980s and the advent of economic neoliberalism during his term in office — with his enthusiastic support. In one of Jean’s songs he sings “If I was president… instead of spending billions on the war, we can use some of that money, in the ghetto.” But given Jean’s stated dedication to neoliberal policies, “if he was president,” he would be much more likely to carry out the wishes of the domestic and international business community, than those of the desperately poor majority that he claims to represent. With all the media coverage on Haiti’s election fading away with Jean’s departure, it is unclear which remaining candidate he will endorse, but the candidate certainly won't be from Lavalas.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kevin Edmonds is a NACLA Research Associate

The Race for Haiti's presidency

2010-08-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

Yvon Neptune, former Haitian Prime
Minister and now Presidential candidate.

BBCCaribbean.com, August 23, 2010

US-based Haitian singer-songwriter Wyclef Jean was the best known of Haiti's presidential hopefuls.

But he and 14 others have now been disqualified from November's election, leaving 19 candidates in the race.

Among those approved to run for the presidency were:

•Jacques Edouard Alexis, a two-time prime minister

•Leslie Voltaire, an urban planner and former minister

•Yvon Neptune, a former prime minister who served under ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide

•Mirlande Manigat, a well-known opposition leader and former first lady

•Jude Celestin, the former head of the government's construction programme

•Yves Cristallin, who served as social affairs minister

•Michel Martelly, a popular Haitian singer known as "Sweet Mickey"

Under Haiti's constitution, candidates must meet seven constitutional requirements.

Main contenders

They must be a native of Haiti, be at least 35 years old, have never renounced their citizenship, have never been sentenced for a crime, own property and a "habitual residence" in Haiti, not currently be handling public funds and have resided in the country for at least five consecutive years before election day.

Mr Jean's candidacy was believed to have been rejected on the grounds that he was not resident in Haiti in the past five years.

Now that the hip hop star is out of the race, the main contenders are likely to be Mr Alexis, Mr Neptune and Mr Celestin.

Mr Alexis twice served as Prime Minister under President Rene Preval, who is barred from seeking re-election.

He was ousted in 2008 as senators blamed him for widespread riots over rising food prices.

Family ties

He was expected to receive the backing of Mr Preval's Unity party, but it chose Mr Celestin instead.

"I know Haiti's problems very well," Mr Alexis said after registering for another party, the Mobilization for Haitian Progress.

"I also know the solutions to solve these problems."

Mr Neptune was the last prime minister under ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

His Ayisen pou Ayiti party is counting on sympathizers and members of Mr Aristide's Lavalas party.

Mr Neptune was accused by the interim government that succeeded Mr Aristide of orchestrating the killings of at least 25 people some two weeks before the president went into exile following an armed rebellion.

Reconstruction

He was imprisoned for more than two years without trial, fuelling allegations of political persecution.

He was released in 2006 after a hunger strike that left him emaciated and unable to stand.

He has recently been active in helping to coordinate reconstruction efforts after January's earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless.

Mr Celestin was head of the the government's road-building outfit, the Centre National des Equipments.

The company is contracted to cart away millions of cubic feet of rubble.

The presidential and legislative elections are scheduled for 28 November.

The next president is slated to oversee the spending of nearly $10 billion in reconstruction aid promised at a UN donors conference last March.

A fraction of the funding has actually been delivered.

Wyclef Can't Appeal Haiti Poll Exclusion: Council

2010-08-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

By Joseph Guyler

Reuters

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Auguest 24, 2010

A ruling by Haiti's electoral council that disqualified hip-hop star Wyclef Jean from running for the presidency is final and cannot be appealed, a council lawyer said on Tuesday.

The Haitian-born and U.S.-based singer-songwriter said on Sunday he would appeal against the provisional electoral council's decision on Friday which rejected his candidacy for the November 28 election in the poorest state in the Americas.

Council officials said Jean, who left his homeland with his family at the age of 9 to live in the United States, did not meet residency requirements.

The 40-year-old musical celebrity has an enthusiastic youth following in Haiti and the dispute over his candidacy has raised some fears of tensions that could disrupt the country's rebuilding after a devastating earthquake in January.

But apart from some small pro-Jean protests, the capital Port-au-Prince has remained largely calm and quiet.

Jean initially accepted the ruling and asked supporters to do the same. He has since launched a barrage of accusations via Twitter, Facebook and statements to U.S. media against the council, calling it corrupt and politically motivated.

Samuel Pierre of the council's legal department told Reuters that, under article 191 of Haiti's electoral law, rulings by the election authority's disputes tribunal are definitive and cannot be appealed.

"Therefore there is absolutely no possibility for Wyclef Jean to be added to the list of candidates approved to run in the next presidential elections," Pierre said. "So it's over."

Jean was one of 15 candidates disqualified from running to succeed President Rene Preval, who cannot stand again after serving two terms. A total of 19 candidates -- including two former prime ministers, a former minister and a former first lady -- were approved to run in the presidential election.

Electoral officials said Jean failed to meet a requirement that presidential candidates maintain five consecutive years of residency in Haiti prior to running.

The singer insists he presented documents to electoral authorities that demonstrate his five years of residency.

"I have spent half my life in Haiti going back and forth," he told MSNBC in an interview on Tuesday.

"The electoral council is very corrupted," he added, saying potential political rivals feared his presidential bid.

"WASTE OF TIME"

Jean has said some of the approved candidates failed to meet the residency requirement but were accepted nevertheless.

Pierre said the electoral council was aware some rejected candidates believed they could appeal against the rulings.

"This is a waste of time because, when it comes to electoral matters, the electoral council is the Supreme Court, meaning there is nowhere else to go," he said.

Pierre said the council had not received any formal appeal from Jean or his lawyers, although they may have gone to another legal body.

Jean says his celebrity status would make him an ideal "global president" who could attract aid and investment to Haiti after the earthquake, which killed up to 300,000 people and crippled the underdeveloped Caribbean state's economy.

United Nations and Haitian police have stepped up joint patrols in the rubble-strewn streets of the capital, where more than 1.5 million people are still living in fragile tent and tarpaulin cities at the peak of the 2010 hurricane season.

The U.N. mission in Haiti has appealed to candidates and political parties to respect the country's electoral laws and promote peaceful campaigning by supporters.

Despite his popularity among Haiti's youth, Jean has faced questions about whether a celebrity with no political experience is the best person to lead a chronically poor and corrupt nation that is coming out of a huge natural disaster.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

Copyright 2010 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2010 ABC News Internet Ventures

Leisa's Haiti Journal #10: Sweatshops at 200g a Day ($5 U.S.)

2010-08-10T03:21:00.000-07:00

Sweat Shops at 200g a day ($5US)
July 28, 2010

Job Offer In Haiti: Must be a highly motivated woman to assemble electronic components, able to read and write, and pass a logic/math test. You will arrive at 6:45am check in with fingerprint ID. You will work 8 hours and clock out for lunch. You will be handed a food coupon that is good on only the day of issue (value is 8g or four cents US). You may use the coupon toward your purchase of lunch at the company lunch counter. However the cheapest meal there is 23g, without any meat of course…that would be extra.

The cheapest form of public transportation will take you at least one hour to get to work, and two hours going home. That will cost you 5g to 7g depending on the price of gas (each way).

The net result is that you will be at work 9 hours (with no talking) and spend three hours in transportation. Since you are a woman, after being gone those 12 hours, you will shop each day (no electricity for refrigeration) and cook breakfast and dinner for your family over an open charcoal stove. You will do all the family laundry, kill, pluck and dress the chicken, haul water and purify it, while making sure your children are freshly scrubbed twice a day.

For this work you will bring home 1000g salary each week, less the 50g for the taptap (an overcrowded bed of an open truck), then deduct 75g for lunch. This means you will bring home 875g a week, or a little less than $90US a month.

Since you will also have to buy food, work clothes, laundry soap and charcoal as well as the $100US for your four room unfurnished house…you must also sell small candies on the street after dark and take in the neighbor’s wash.

Then, since you will still don’t have enough money for utilities, you send your oldest son out to climb the telephone pole and cut into the high voltage wire.

Since you also don’t have money for medicine, school uniforms and tuition, when your baby gets sick, you consider selling your oldest daughter to the wealthier landlord to be a servant, but, lucky for you, since she is only eight years old, restavek owners are required by law to send her to school. When they move away, you hope that they will not sell her to some unsavory to use as a sex slave, or worse yet…to some foreigner for body parts.

But, say, that's the cost of cheap "US" electronics, right?

Peace, leisa

p.s. This journal is based on real interviews and my tour of a Port au Prince electronics factory that sells components to over 100 U.S electronics companies.

(We will be returning to Haiti on August 9, 2010)

Leisa Faulkner, Executive Director
Children's Hope

3025 A Cambridge Road
Cameron Park, CA 95682

Text me @ 916.801.4184 916.801.4184 Haiti phone: 011.509.38.32.36.08
Email: childrenshope@live.com