<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div id="container" class="container font-size5">
<div style="display: block;" id="reader-header" class="header"> <b><small><small><small><a
href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/1/for-us-in-haiti-black-votes-dont-matter.html"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/1/for-us-in-haiti-black-votes-dont-matter.html">http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/1/for-us-in-haiti-black-votes-dont-matter.html</a></a></small></small></small></b>
<h1 id="reader-title">OPINION: For US in Haiti, black votes
don’t matter</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Mark Weisbrot January
29, 2016<br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="content">
<div style="display: block;" id="moz-reader-content">
<div
xml:base="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/1/for-us-in-haiti-black-votes-dont-matter.html"
id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div class="text section">
<p>Journalists are taught in school to avoid euphemisms.
When someone dies, they write that she “died” instead of
“passed away.” But one euphemism that has become a
fixture in U.S. news reporting is “the international
community.” This is generally a substitute for the U.S.
government, with or without some input from some of its
allies.</p>
<p>Perhaps this is nowhere more true than in Haiti, where
Washington has long exercised a veto over the country’s
most important decisions. But last week the
“international community” suffered a rare defeat when
Haitians <a
href="https://medium.com/@JakobJohnston/with-haiti-elections-cancelled-negotiations-begin-for-what-comes-next-a8f0f63a923a#.vr85a9wze">rejected</a>
Washington’s plans for a deeply flawed presidential
runoff election to take place on Sunday, Jan. 24.</p>
<p>How did this happen? Basically, Haitians managed to put
Washington in the situation of having to maintain that a
runoff election with only one candidate, businessman
Jovenel Moïse, would be legitimate, or postpone the
election. As late as last Thursday, just three days
before the election, U.S. officials were insisting that
they would go forward even if the second candidate,
engineer Jude Célestin, refused to participate. But he
stuck to his boycott, and they backed down.</p>
<p>Célestin was also the candidate who finished second in
the first round of Haiti’s 2010 presidential elections.
But the “international community” had a different
choice, and brought in an “expert” mission under the
auspices of the Organization of American States to
examine the results. Without a recount or even a
statistical test of a ballot sample, it <a
href="http://cepr.net/publications/reports/oas-in-haiti">reversed</a>
the first-round results, eliminating Célestin and
putting musician and businessman Michel Martelly into
the runoff. Martelly went on to win the election and
become president. Approaching the end of his five-year
term, he is supporting Moïse as his replacement.</p>
<p>In last week’s events, it was not just the work of one
person that forced Washington to back down. There were
serious street demonstrations, condemnations from human
rights organizations, religious leaders, business groups
and the refusal of seven other presidential candidates
from the first round to accept another episode of
illegitimate elections. They had plenty of arguments and
evidence on their side. In the first round of the
presidential election, held on Oct. 25, local observers
found massive irregularities and evidence of fraud. More
than 900,000 observer credentials <a
href="http://cepr.net/blogs/haiti-relief-and-reconstruction-watch/presidential-elections-in-haiti-the-most-votes-money-can-buy">were</a>
distributed to political party representatives —
effectively allowing them to vote multiple times.
International reporters witnessed these passes being
sold on the black market. In an election where only
about 1.6 million people (26 percent of the electorate)
voted, the legitimacy of the vote became doubtful.</p>
</div>
<div class="text section">
<p>It was even tougher to accept the election results
after a commission appointed by Martelly <a
href="https://medium.com/@JakobJohnston/haitielection2015.blogspot.com/2016/01/evaluation-commissions-ambiguous-report.html">found</a>
that only 8 percent of tally sheets that they examined
were free from irregularities. The opposition did not
all have the same demands but they wanted a new
electoral council to lead the process and some reforms
to make sure that the second round would be credible.
Many observers have also demanded a serious examination
of the first-round ballots to see if there was any basis
for accepting the results.</p>
<p>No date for new elections has yet been set, and it <a
href="https://medium.com/@JakobJohnston/with-haiti-elections-cancelled-negotiations-begin-for-what-comes-next-a8f0f63a923a#.ckodpas7y">remains</a>
to be seen what will happen when Martelly’s term expires
on Feb. 7.</p>
<p>The current fight for legitimate elections in Haiti is
another episode of a long struggle for democracy that
goes back to the U.S.-backed dictatorships of François
and Jean-Claude Duvalier (1957-1986) and the overthrow
of the country’s first democratically elected president,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in 1991 and again in 2004 (with
decisive <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/13/america-subversion-haiti-democracy">support</a>
from Washington). And even further back, it is rooted in
Haiti’s many conflicts with “the international
community” since the country’s founding in 1804 from a
slave rebellion, including its occupation by U.S.
Marines from 1915 to 1934.</p>
<p>Today’s electoral turmoil shows how much continuity
there is with this awful history. In a sense, the
country remains occupied today by United Nations troops
who were brought in not to help with reconstruction
after the 2010 earthquake — as many people mistakenly
believe — but six years earlier, to “keep order” after
the constitutional government was overthrown, its
officials jailed or forced into exile, and <a
href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2806%2969211-8/abstract">thousands</a>
of supporters killed.</p>
<p>It would be remiss not to mention the institutional
racism that allows for such continuity. This is most
painfully obvious in the response of “the international
community” to a problem that they themselves created
just five years ago: the cholera epidemic that has
killed nearly 10,000 Haitians and infected hundreds of
thousands more. Cholera had not been present in Haiti
until some UN troops — not “aid workers” as some <a
href="http://www.newser.com/story/143127/how-the-un-infected-haiti-with-cholera-and-failed-to-fix-it.html">people</a>
<a
href="http://www.gvsu.edu/haitiwater/cholera-epidemic-18.htm">alleged</a>
— <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/12/united-nations-haiti-cholera-epidemic">dumped</a>
their human feces into the country’s water supply in
2010. Yet they refuse to come up with the money that
would be necessary to provide clean water and resolve
the problem, even though they have spent much more than
this on maintaining their military presence in the
country.</p>
<p>It is hard to see such twisted priorities as other than
a statement that “Black lives don’t matter.” As with the
elections, and USAID reconstruction funds of which <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-haiti-aid-idUSKCN0UY28U">only
1.6 percent</a> went to Haitian organizations and
companies, it seems that even in dealing with a deadly
disease caused by these foreign governments’ own gross
negligence, power and control over the country are the
first priorities.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>