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Why they had to crush Aristide<br><br>
Haiti's elected leader was regarded as a threat by France and the
US<br><br>
Peter Hallward<br><br>
Tuesday March 2, 2004<br><br>
The Guardian
<<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/" eudora="autourl">http://www.guardian.co.uk</a>><br><br>
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was re-elected president of Haiti in November
2000<br>
with more than 90% of the vote. He was elected by people who approved
his<br>
courageous dissolution, in 1995, of the armed forces that had long<br>
terrorised Haiti and had overthrown his first administration. He was
elected<br>
by people who supported his tentative efforts, made with virtually
no<br>
resources or revenue, to invest in education and health. He was elected
by<br>
people who shared his determination, in the face of crippling US
opposition,<br>
to improve the conditions of the most poorly paid workers in the
western<br>
hemisphere.<br><br>
Aristide was forced from office on Sunday by people who have little
in<br>
common except their opposition to his progressive policies and their
refusal<br>
of the democratic process. With the enthusiastic backing of Haiti's
former<br>
colonial master, a leader elected with overwhelming popular support has
been<br>
driven from office by a loose association of convicted human rights
abusers,<br>
seditious former army officers and pro-American business
leaders.<br><br>
It's obvious that Aristide's expulsion offered Jacques Chirac a
long-awaited<br>
chance to restore relations with an American administration he dared
to<br>
oppose over the attack on Iraq. It's even more obvious that the<br>
characterisation of Aristide as yet another crazed idealist corrupted
by<br>
absolute power sits perfectly with the political vision championed by
George<br>
Bush, and that the Haitian leader's downfall should open the door to a
yet<br>
more ruthless exploitation of Latin American labour.<br><br>
If you've been reading the mainstream press over the past few weeks,
you'll<br>
know that this peculiar version of events has been carefully prepared
by<br>
repeated accusations that Aristide rigged fraudulent elections in
2000;<br>
unleashed violent militias against his political opponents; and
brought<br>
Haiti's economy to the point of collapse and its people to the brink
of<br>
humanitarian catastrophe.<br><br>
But look a little harder at those elections. An exhaustive and
convincing<br>
report by the International Coalition of Independent Observers
concluded<br>
that "fair and peaceful elections were held" in<br>
2000, and by the standard of the presidential elections held in the US
that<br>
same year they were positively exemplary.<br><br>
Why then were they characterised as "flawed" by the
Organisation of American<br>
States (OAS)? It was because, after Aristide's Lavalas party had won 16
out<br>
of 17 senate seats, the OAS contested the methodology used to calculate
the<br>
voting percentages. Curiously, neither the US nor the OAS judged
this<br>
methodology problematic in the run-up to the elections.<br><br>
However, in the wake of the Lavalas victories, it was suddenly
important<br>
enough to justify driving the country towards economic collapse.
Bill<br>
Clinton invoked the OAS accusation to justify the crippling economic
embargo<br>
against Haiti that persists to this day, and which effectively blocks
the<br>
payment of about $500m in international aid.<br><br>
But what about the gangs of Aristide supporters running riot in<br>
Port-au-Prince? No doubt Aristide bears some responsibility for the
dozen<br>
reported deaths over the last 48 hours. But given that his supporters
have<br>
no army to protect them, and given that the police force serving the
entire<br>
country is just a tenth of the force that patrols New York city, it's
worth<br>
remembering that this figure is a small fraction of the number killed by
the<br>
rebels in recent weeks.<br><br>
One of the reasons why Aristide has been consistently vilified in the
press<br>
is that the Reuters and AP wire services, on which most coverage
depends,<br>
rely on local media, which are all owned by Aristide's opponents.
Another,<br>
more important, reason for the vilification is that Aristide never
learned<br>
to pander unreservedly to foreign commercial interests. He
reluctantly<br>
accepted a series of severe IMF structural adjustment plans, to the
dismay<br>
of the working poor, but he refused to acquiesce in the
indiscriminate<br>
privatisation of state resources, and stuck to his guns over wages,<br>
education and health.<br><br>
What happened in Haiti is not that a leader who was once reasonable went
mad<br>
with power; the truth is that a broadly consistent Aristide was never
quite<br>
prepared to abandon all his principles.<br><br>
Worst of all, he remained indelibly associated with what's left of a
genuine<br>
popular movement for political and economic empowerment. For this
reason<br>
alone, it was essential that he not only be forced from office but
utterly<br>
discredited in the eyes of his people and the world. As Noam Chomsky
has<br>
said, the "threat of a good example" solicits measures of
retaliation that<br>
bear no relation to the strategic or economic importance of the country
in<br>
question. This is why the leaders of the world have joined together to
crush<br>
a democracy in the name of democracy.<br><br>
· Peter Hallward teaches French at King's College London and is the
author<br>
of Absolutely Postcolonial<br><br>
peter.hallward@kcl.ac.uk<br><br>
<br><br>
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