[News] Congresswoman Waters opposes plot to control Haiti/democracy in the balance
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Jan 19 11:24:45 EST 2011
2 articles follow
Congresswoman Waters opposes plot to control Haiti
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/MW/1_18_11/1_18_11.html
Urges prosecution of Duvalier for human rights violations
and new elections that respect the will of the Haitian People
Washington D.C. Congresswoman Maxine Waters
(D-CA) issued the following statement today, upon
learning that Haiti's former dictator,
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, returned to
Haiti after 25 years of exile in France:
The plot to control Haiti has gone from the
absurd to the ridiculous. The return of
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier to Haiti in the
midst of a flawed election is truly
shocking. The Duvalier dictatorship was
absolutely brutal, and there is extensive
documentation of the human rights violations
suffered by the Haitian people during his
reign. I was pleased to hear that the
authorities had taken him into custody, and I
urge that he be tried for his
crimes. Nevertheless, Duvalier's return raises
serious questions about who in Haiti facilitated
his return and what his supporters expect to gain by bringing him back.
Duvalier's return comes in the midst of a
desperate attempt by President Rene Préval to
maintain control of Haiti by ensuring the
election of Jude Celestin, his chosen
successor. President Préval did this by
appointing a Provisional Electoral Council (CEP)
that was biased in his favor, which refused to
allow candidates from over a dozen political
parties to participate in the elections. Among
those excluded was Lavalas, Haiti's largest
political party and the party most popular among
Haiti's poor. The result was a deeply flawed
election that generated widespread and sometimes
violent protests among the Haitian people.
Had the elections truly been inclusive, the most
likely result would have been the election of a
President who represented the impoverished
majority of the Haitian people. This would have
been contrary to the interests of the rich and
powerful business elites of Haiti, whose main
goal has always been the exploitation of the
Haitian people as cheap labor. It is these
wealthy Haitian elites who benefited under the
reign of the Duvalier regime and who would no
doubt benefit if he were to return to power.
Additional confusion was created by the
Organization of American States (OAS), which
attempted to salvage these flawed elections by
issuing a report based on flawed
methodology. The OAS did not conduct a full
recount, but instead examined a sample of only
919 of the 11,181 tally sheets from voting booths
across Haiti, threw out 234 of these tally
sheets, and then concluded that Michel "Sweet
Micky" Martelly should advance to a runoff, along
with Mirlande Manigat, in place of Jude
Celestin. The OAS report concluded that Martelly
defeated Celestin by a margin of only 0.3 percent
of the votes reported on those tally sheets that
the OAS chose to count. This would mean Préval's
candidate, the candidate who is most likely to be
trusted by the elites, would be eliminated.
However, according to an analysis by the Center
for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), tally
sheets were either missing or were discounted for
irregularities at 1,326 voting booths or 11.9
percent of the total. The proportion of
discounted votes and other irregularities is more
than sufficient to cast doubt upon the entire
process, especially when the difference between
the number of votes counted for Celestin and
Martelly is so small. The recommendation of the
OAS to change the names of the candidates
included in the runoff election is an ill-advised
and sloppy attempt to fix an election that should be scrapped entirely.
In any case, it is now clear that no runoff can
be held this month as previously planned, and no
successor will be elected prior to February 7th,
the last day of President Préval's term in office
under the constitution. Consequently, there is
the possibility that Haiti could find itself with
no President, thus creating a void and the opportunity for a dictator.
I was shocked to learn that OAS officials
discussed forcing President Préval to leave the
country on board a plane – much the way that
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was
forced to leave the country in a coup d'état in
2004. Ricardo Seitanfus, the former OAS Special
Representative to Haiti, recently revealed that
at a meeting of United Nations, OAS and donor
country officials, some representatives suggested
that President Préval should leave the country
and an airplane should be provided for that purpose.
The OAS and other international agencies have no
right to dictate the outcome of the election and
no right to plot the exile of the current
President of Haiti. Despite President Préval's
role in these failed and fraudulent elections,
the OAS cannot be a part of a plan to try to
determine the outcome of the elections.
It is absurd and outrageous that anyone would
even think to take advantage of this situation to
facilitate Baby Doc Duvalier's return to
Haiti. Unfortunately, he has returned, and it is
important to ask why. Who assisted Duvalier in
his return? Where did he get the money to pay
for his return? Were any officials of the U.S.
Government aware of his plans to return? Was the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) aware? If so,
was any action taken to stop him from returning
or to ensure that he would be arrested and
prosecuted for his crimes and not allowed to usurp power if he did return?
I am deeply concerned that the wealthy elites of
Haiti who supported the Duvalier regime in the
past, along with the assistance of international
agencies, may have encouraged Duvalier to return
in the hope that the flawed elections will create
a power vacuum that could allow him to take power
once again. I am even more concerned that OAS
officials may be wittingly or unwittingly helping
to create precisely the type of power vacuum that would enable him to do so.
It is important that we determine what role U.S.
officials played, if any, in facilitating
Duvalier's return. It is even more important
that we determine what role the U.S. Government will play moving forward.
The U.S. Government promised to help Haiti
recover from last year's earthquake and develop
its economy. I introduced legislation to forgive
Haiti its foreign debt, and allow the country to
secure additional aid in the form of grants so
that it wouldn't incur further debt. I was very
pleased that Congress passed the legislation in a
bipartisan manner, and that President Obama
signed it into law just three months after the
earthquake. President Obama also requested and
Congress appropriated almost $3 billion in funds
for humanitarian assistance and long-term
reconstruction and development for
Haiti. Meanwhile, donor countries committed more
than $9 billion in aid for Haiti's reconstruction
at an international donors' conference last March.
Haiti's next government will be called upon to
make difficult decisions regarding the allocation
of these resources. If these decisions are not
made by a credible and legitimately-elected
government, billions in U.S. taxpayer funds could
be wasted and many donors may refuse to
distribute the funds that were
promised. Meanwhile, Haiti's recovery could be
delayed for decades and the Haitian people will continue to suffer.
I believe the only recourse is for Haiti to
organize new elections that will be free and
fair, inclusive of all eligible political parties
and candidates, and open to participation by all
Haitian voters. The U.S. Government should
demand a clear statement to that effect by both
the OAS and President Préval, and the U.S. should
stand ready to assist Haiti in organizing new elections.
Only through free, fair and inclusive elections
will the people of Haiti be empowered to create a
better future for themselves and their children.
###
To view more of the Congresswoman's work on
Haiti, <http://waters.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=5163>click here.
Sean Bartlett
Press Secretary
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-35)
2344 Rayburn HOB / Washington, DC 20515
(o) 202.225.2201
(f) 202.225.7854
www.waters.house.gov
***************************************
Haiti's democracy in the balance
----------
By <http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/markweisbrot>Mark Weisbrot
Source:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/18/haiti-usa>The
Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
As the infamous dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc”
Duvalier returns to Haiti after 25 years in exile
in the south of France, the U.S. State Department
and the French Foreign Ministry have been
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=UkntpDWtGVV1fDBUbXpu9QdN6VBjKQ%2F7>ratcheting
up the pressure on the impoverished,
earthquake-destroyed, and cholera stricken country of Haiti.
The pressure is not to prosecute the dictator for
his atrocities, as human rights groups such as
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=GpqKARQgOKAzSV3ZFxsMKAdN6VBjKQ%2F7>Amnesty
International and
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=h8SRci0NbBHVd8TtWirvlAdN6VBjKQ%2F7>Human
Rights Watch have recommended. The pressure is to
force the government of Haiti to accept the
decision of the United States and France as to
who should be allowed to compete in the second
round of Haiti’s presidential election.
It is worth looking at the details of this
international subversion of the democratic
process in Haiti just to see just how outrageous it is.
The first thing to notice is how unusual it is
for any electoral authority to change the results
of an election without a full recount of the
vote. Imagine that happening in Florida in 2000,
or Mexico in 2006, or in any close, disputed
election with irregularities. It just wouldn’t
happen. There could be a recount and a new
result; the original result can stand; or the
election can be redone. But the electoral
authorities don’t just change the result without a recount.
Now add into the mix that the electoral body
seeking to change the result of the election is
the Organization of American States (OAS). More
accurately, it is Washington, which controls the
bureaucracy of the OAS in these situations
(unless there is a lot of pushback from South
America, as happened after the Honduran coup in 2009).
In fact,
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=MV30r3Px%2B729xHZPYP7ZyQdN6VBjKQ%2F7>six
of the seven members of the OAS “Expert
Verification Mission” are from the United States,
Canada, and France. France! Not a member of the
OAS but the former slave-holding colonial power
that was still forcing Haiti to pay for its loss
of property (i.e. the slaves who liberated
themselves) until the 1940s. Apparently the OAS
couldn’t find any experts in all of Latin America
(they got one from Jamaica) to review Haiti’s election.
This is not a matter of political correctness;
rather it indicates how much Washington wanted to
control the result of this OAS Mission. These are
the three governments that
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=MgsYSXkZZ62TaSe7PHtP4wdN6VBjKQ%2F7>led
the effort to topple Haiti’s democratically
elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide in
2004.
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=j75mpcpMy2dWSZjeMPWqxgdN6VBjKQ%2F7>Wikileaks
cables released this week show that the United
States also pressured Brazil to help keep
Aristide out of Haiti after the coup. Since
Aristide was, and remains to this day, the most
popular politician in the country, the Wikileaks
cables show that Washington and its allies also
worked to keep him from having any influence on
the country from his forced exile in South Africa.
As it turns out, the OAS “experts” did a
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=SYKDXAPEBh4XGQejhVz91AdN6VBjKQ%2F7>very
poor job on their election analysis. They threw
out 234 tally sheets, thus changing the election
result. According to the OAS, the government
candidate, Jude Celestin, was pushed into third
place and therefore out of the run-off election.
This leaves two right-wing candidates – former
first lady Mirlande Manigat, and popular musician
Michel Martelly – to compete in the runoff. The
OAS has Martelly taking second place by just
3,200 votes, or 0.3 percent of the vote.
The first problem with the OAS Mission’s report
is that there were more than 1,300 tally sheets
representing about 156,000 votes that went
missing or were quarantined. This is about six
times as many ballot sheets as the ones that the
Mission eliminated. Since these areas were more
pro-Celestin than the rest of the country, he
would very likely have come in
second<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=il05kEBTNjQmT4jQHtY0JAdN6VBjKQ%2F7>
if the missing tally sheets had been included.
The Mission did not address this problem in its report.
The second problem is that the Mission examined
only 919 of the 11,181 tally sheets to find the
234 that they threw out. This would not be so
strange if they had used statistical inference,
as is commonly done in polling, to say something
about the other 92 percent of ballot sheets that
they did not examine. However this is not included in the leaked report.
Lacking the force of logic, the U.S. and French
governments are turning to the logic of force to
get the result that they want. Journalism
professor and author
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=WNuO8dkuGYlputOGgByBBgdN6VBjKQ%2F7>Amy
Wilentz wrote this weekend in the L.A. Times:
According to many sources, including the
president himself, the international community
has threatened Preval with immediate exile if he
does not bow to their interpretation of election results.
These are not empty threats. Preval’s
predecessor, Aristide, was whisked out of the
country on a U.S. plane in 2004. And now the U.S.
Ambassador to Haiti is making it clear, in
Godfather-mafia-style, that this is offer he can’t refuse:
U.S. ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said in
an interview that the U.S. government supports
the OAS report and its conclusions. ‘The
international community is entirely unified on
this point. There is nothing to negotiate in the
report,’
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=MrhuDYSkZ0TWjQVDThUljAdN6VBjKQ%2F7>Merten
said.
The French weighed in on Friday;
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Fq52qz8mtKUAyxRxHcwv8wdN6VBjKQ%2F7>AFP
reports:
France warned Haiti's government on Friday to
respect a report by OAS poll monitors that is
thought to call for President Rene Preval's
preferred successor to drop out of the election race . . . .
So far, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council
(CEP) hasn’t caved. But the pressure and threats
are very intense. Some of it appears to come from
hard-right Republicans, whose influence on
foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere has
remained strong under the Obama administration
and has increased with their takeover of the
House of Representatives. Right-wing activists
such as Roger Noriega, who was involved in the
2004 Haitian coup as President Bush’s Assistant
Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere,
are among those fighting to control the runoff
election in Haiti. It is quite possible that the
hard right was responsible for the leaking of the draft OAS Mission Report.
On Monday OAS Secretary of State Jose Miguel
Insulza – embarrassed and angered by the leak and
probably also by Washington and France’s gross
disregard for Haiti’s sovereignty and democratic
rights–
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=15lg3XiV1bRIF%2BTVPu%2FHIS9TSysWvOKn>sought
to downplay the Mission’s Report:
The report, Insulza said, is based on
"calculations" and not results. "It's not in our
power to give results," he told The Miami Herald.
"We are not publishing any kind of results."
Of course the obvious solution would be to re-run
the election,
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=cGjp%2FWWkDa590NZf3AyZeAdN6VBjKQ%2F7>since
nearly three-quarters of registered voters didn’t
vote in the first round, reflecting the fact that
the country’s largest political party – not
coincidentally, the party of Aristide -- was
arbitrarily excluded. But Washington and its
allies don’t want to take any chances that they
could end up with a free and fair election in
Haiti, which hasn’t led to their preferred
outcome in the very few times that it has been allowed.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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