[News] Haiti's election circus

[Anti-Imperialist News]

<http://sfbayview.com/2010/haiti’s-election-circus-continues-and-wyclef-jean-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer/>http://sfbayview.com/2010/haiti’s-election-circus-continues-and-wyclef-jean-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer/

Haiti’s Election Circus Continues, and Wyclef Jean Won’t Take No for an Answer

by Charlie Hinton, Haiti Action Committee

On Friday, August 20, Haiti’s Electoral Council 
ruled that only 19 of the 34 declared candidates 
could run for president, eliminating the other 
15, including rap artist Wyclef Jean, supposedly 
because he didn’t meet Haiti’s constitutional 5 
year residency requirement, but more likely 
because worldwide reporting of Mr. Jean’s lack of 
qualifications and financial hanky panky, as well 
as internal Haitian political wrangling, made him 
too toxic. However he soon announced that he will 
sue to get on the ballot, providing the next 
episode for Haiti’s ongoing presidential election soap opera.

And the election does go on. Even though Haiti 
lives under military occupation with more than 
11,500 uniformed UN personnel on the ground 
(military and police); even though the earthquake 
destroyed most election registration records; 
even though more than a million people remain 
living in squalid tent and tarp encampments in 
Port-au-Prince and points south, and would 
miraculously have to be re-registered in 90 days; 
even though the money that will be spent on this 
election could feed and house thousands of these 
Haitians in extreme need; even though the 
president’s term has been extended on an 
emergency basis, despite widespread protest; even 
though the largest and most popular party, Fanmi 
Lavalas has been excluded from running 
candidates, and its leader, twice overthrown 
president Jean-Bertrand Aristide continues to be 
banished from returning  to Haiti;  even though 
the “international community” has supported 
dictators and tyrants throughout Haiti’s history, 
including the murderous Duvalier family, these 
elections go on. Why? There’s a term for it. 
Instead of holding a free and fair election, 
where all parties, candidates, and voters openly 
participate, this is a “demonstration election.”

As defined by Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead in 
their book, Demonstration Elections, the purpose 
of a demonstration election is to substitute the 
form of democracy for its substance, in order to 
prevent real grassroots democracy. Yes, the 
purpose of a demonstration election is to prevent grassroots democracy.

In the case of Haiti, Fanmi Lavalas and the 
Lavalas movement have overwhelmingly demonstrated 
their popularity and influence in every election 
since 1990, when Aristide was elected with 67% of 
the vote.  The Haitian majority loves President 
Aristide. He said he wanted to raise Haitians 
from a state of misery to “poverty with dignity,” 
and he practiced what he preached, building 
schools, parks, housing, hospitals and clinics, 
and a medical school, despite having his 
government starved of funds and loans, because he 
put the needs of poor Haitians ahead of the 
demands of international bankers. (see 
<http://haitisolidarity.net/downloads/We_Will_Not_Forget_2010.pdf>http://haitisolidarity.net/downloads/We_Will_Not_Forget_2010.pdf)

With the Electoral Council banning candidates 
from Fanmi Lavalas, we are presented with an 
election, in the name of “democracy,” where the 
most popular party in the country is prevented 
from participating - providing the illusion of 
electoral "democracy" as a front for a military 
occupation, whose goal is to repress the forces 
calling for the democratic sharing of power and 
wealth in the first place – the precise 
definition of a “demonstration election.”

After the United States conquered Cuba, Puerto 
Rico, and the Philippines in 1898, the powers 
that be decided to create an “informal empire” as 
a means of control, rather than the kind of 
direct colonial occupation that the European 
powers had used in their conquests of Africa, 
Asia, and the Middle East. The U.S. would use 
elections during an occupation to legitimate its 
preferred candidate, then use economics and other 
means of coercion to maintain a loosely knit 
system of neo-colonial dependency. In 
Demonstration Elections Herman and Brodhead 
explain the template that has been developed for 
these sham elections, analyzing the elections in 
the Dominican Republic in 1966, Viet Nam in 1967, 
and El Salvador in 1982. We can see this template 
at work for recent elections in Iraq, 
Afghanistan, Honduras, and now Haiti, where the 
boycotted senatorial elections of 2009 and the 
upcoming presidential elections fit this pattern perfectly.

A demonstration election is a media event above 
all else. The media sell the election to 
taxpayers at home to show "progress" and justify 
spending the money for the occupation. They 
feature the election as BIG NEWS, when it’s 
really propaganda, a smokescreen for the harsh 
realities on the ground. That is why the 
candidacy of Wyclef Jean is so important – it 
makes this Haitian election a media “event” and 
gives it the illusion of credibility, when it’s 
real goal is to suppress the Lavalas movement, 
put a democratic front on a brutal military 
occupation, install a friendly face who will obey 
the will of the “international community” 
investor class, and continue the neo-liberal 
economic direction of the current Haitian 
government, all the while presenting the face of 
"democracy" to the outside world.

So now we have 19, possibly 20, candidates lined 
up, most of them with a tiny or no constituency, 
and all willing to play ball with the forces of 
occupation, while Lavalas supporters demonstrate 
to denounce the elections as a fraud, and UN 
troops shoot up the neighborhoods where they 
live. But the media will never report on this. 
They have “on-agenda” items – basically anything 
about Wyclef, and “off-agenda” items – basically 
everything else, but especially any analysis of 
the background, context and Real Purpose of the 
election, and in the case of Haiti, that the 
Lavalas movement even exists. But it does. Stay tuned.



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