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<font size=4><b>Martelly: Haiti's second great disaster <br>
</b></font><font size=3>Haiti's new president is a friend of
coup-plotters, fascists, and armed right-wing groups in his country and
abroad.<br><br>
<a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/profile/greg-grandin.html">
Greg Grandin</a> Last Modified: 04 May 2011 19:14 <br>
<a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/20115413435816393.html" eudora="autourl">
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/20115413435816393.html<br>
<br>
</a>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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.
<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Support and campaign<br><br>
</b>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".<br><br>
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.<br><br>
It was Merlo, along with right wing Spanish PR group <i>Ostos &
Sola</i> 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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Obama's push<br><br>
</b>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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Martelly and the army<br><br>
</b>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". <br><br>
"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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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 <i>Front for the Advancement of the Haitian People</i> 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.<br><br>
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".<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
<b><i>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.
<br><br>
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.</i></b> <br><br>
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