Dessalines' Children

WikiLeaks Haiti Cables Paint Stark Picture of U.S. Priorities

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:09:00 -0400

In 1,918 new cables released by WikiLeaks, the United States’ relationship to Haiti is laid bare—the maneuvering, the pressure, and the arrogance. The Nationis partnering with the Haitian weekly newspaper Haïti Liberté to produce several reports based on these cables, illuminating some of the many facets of this complex geopolitical struggle.

In the two pieces published today, journalists dig into Big Oil’s losing fight in Haiti and the U.S. state department’s support for sweatshop wages in the Haitian textile factories.

Despite acknowledgement of Haiti’s “desperate” situation, the U.S. government, along with oil companies ExxonMobil and Texaco/Chevron, tried to sabotage a deal for Haiti to join Venezuela’s oil alliance, PetroCaribe, and receive Venezuelan oil at lowered prices. The deal would’ve laid groundwork for Haitian energy independence—something the U.S. didn’t want.

Meanwhile, contractors for companies like Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s fought aggressively against a raise to 62 cents an hour—or $5 a day—for factory workers. And they had the backing of the State Department, which argued for intervention by President Rene Preval in favor of the factory owners’ preferred wage, just $3 a day.

Greg Mitchell notes that WikiLeaks’ new strategy of partnering with disparate media outlets around the globe has made headline news in many countries but seen those same stories ignored here at home. The Nation hopes to bring some focus to the Haiti story with these reports, which will keep coming over the next few weeks.

By Sarah Jaffe | Sourced from AlterNet

Posted at June 1, 2011, 2:01 pm

U.N. Role Is Found in #Haiti Cholera

Wed, 04 May 2011 22:26:42 -0400

By JOE LAURIA
UNITED NATIONS—Fecal matter from United Nations peacekeepers that was improperly disposed of by a firm contracted by the U.N., along with a poor sanitation system for drinking water, was the cause of the cholera outbreak in Haiti last year that killed more than 4,500 people, a report by a U.N.-appointed panel said on Wednesday.

Another 300,000 people were made ill in an outbreak that is still sickening people and occurred because of a confluence of events, the report by the four-person panel of American, Indian and Bangladeshi experts.

The panel said that the cholera bacteria originated outside Haiti, which suffered its first cholera case in a century last October, and matched strains from Nepal in 2009.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, known as Minustah, has a camp in Mirebalais near the Meye River, a tributary of the Artibonite River, where Nepalese blue helmets are stationed.

“The sanitation conditions at the Mirebalais Minustah camp were not sufficient to prevent contamination of the Meye Tributary System with human fecal waste,” the report said.

U.N. officials previously dismissed as speculation that the outbreak originated at the camp. To get to the bottom of the allegations, U.N. Secretary General Bank Ki-moon appointed the panel at the end of last year.

The report plays down as a “hypothesis that soldiers deployed from a cholera-endemic country to the Mirebalais Minustah camp were the source of the cholera” which it said was “a commonly held belief in Haiti.”

But the report then describes in detail how the outbreak occurred because of contamination of the Artibonite River from the peacekeeping camp.

“The sanitation conditions at the Mirebalais Minustah camp were not sufficient to prevent fecal contamination of the Meye Tributary System of the Artibonite River,” the report said.

The contaminated river was the “likely route of the spread of Vibrio cholerae from the mountains of Mirabalais to the coastal areas around the Artibonite River Delta,” the report says, leading to an “explosive cholera outbreak eventually throughout Haiti.”

While the report says that the outbreak “was caused by bacteria introduced into Haiti as a result of human activity,” it said there were several reasons for its deadly outcome.

Among the reasons for the rapid spread of the disease, is the lack of immunity among the population after a century of living cholera-free; the salinity of the river delta; infected medical workers and patients who brought the disease home and the poor water and sanitation system in Haiti, the report said.

“The Independent Panel concludes that the Haiti cholera outbreak was caused by a confluence of circumstances … and was not the fault of, or deliberate action of a group or individual,” the report says.

Clifford Baron, who said he was owner of Sanco Enterprises of Port-au-Prince, the company contracted by U.N. to dispose of waste at the Mirebalais camp, said he was unable to comment.

In a statement, Mr. Ban said he would “convene a task force” within the U.N. system to “study the findings and recommendations” of the report.

Calls to Haiti’s mission to the U.N. in New York and its embassy in Washington went unanswered.

Write to Joe Lauria at newseditor@wsj.com

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Martelly: #Haiti 's second great disaster - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Wed, 04 May 2011 22:08:01 -0400

via english.aljazeera.net

Many of Haiti’s poorest citizens were not dissuaded by former singer Michel ‘Sweet Micky’ Martelly’s near-total lack of political experience [GALLO/GETTY]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Support and campaign

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”.

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.

It was Merlo, along with right wing Spanish PR group Ostos & Sola 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.

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.”

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.

Obama’s push

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Martelly and the army

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”.

“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.”

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.

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.

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 Front for the Advancement of the Haitian People 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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

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UN, U.S. and International Community Now Angry Because #Haiti Sham Election Didn't Result in a Parliament They Wanted

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 18:51:59 -0400

UN, others voice concerns on Haiti vote fraud

By Clement Sabourin (AFP) – 2 hours ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE — The United Nations and Haiti’s major donor nations, including the United States, voiced concern Friday over allegations of fraud in final results of the country’s legislative elections.
Reversals in 18 legislative races raised doubts about the legitimacy of the voting process, according to Haiti’s main benefactors.
A statement issued in Port-au-Prince congratulated president-elect Michel Martelly on his victory but noted concerns over the final tally in legislative elections, which overturned 17 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and one in the Senate.
“The final results have therefore raised serious concern about the transparency and legitimacy of the process,” said the statement released by the United Nations on behalf of the United States, Brazil, Canada, Spain, France, the European Union and other major donors.
The statement said the United Nations and donor nations “continue to stand with the people of Haiti” and urged all Haitians “to remain calm and work through peaceful means to address this issue.”
Martelly called Thursday for an independent probe into alleged fraud by outgoing President Rene Preval’s ruling party in the legislative vote.
The United States voiced concern over alleged fraud in the legislative elections and said authorities must explain how some of the final results came to be reversed.
“We have found no explanation for the reversals of 18 legislative races in the final results, which in all except two cases benefited the incumbent party,” the State Department said in a statement, adding it had reviewed official data from the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), the United Nations and observers.
“The United States calls upon the government of Haiti and the (CEP) to provide a thorough, public explanation for the reversals in these 18 races” following the second-round legislative elections on March 20, it added.
Without a public explanation and a review by outside observers, “the legitimacy of seating these candidates is in question.”
While Martelly won the presidency with a resounding 67.5 percent of the vote, the Unity Party expanded its presence in the Chamber of Deputies, taking 46 of the 99 positions, and gained an absolute majority in the upper Senate with 17 of the 30 seats, according to final results announced Thursday.
Martelly’s fledgling Reypons Peysan party won only three parliamentary seats, and to enact the reforms, Haiti needs he will have to forge deals with Unity.
According to the State Department, the discrepancies included a Unity Party candidate who placed third in the preliminary results finishing first according to the final results.
Total votes in that race increased by 55,000 votes, from 90,000 votes in the preliminary results to 145,000 in the final results, the State Department said.
The latest fraud allegations followed similar concerns after the first round of voting that initially saw Martelly excluded from the run-off, placing third.
Only after international pressure and street protests were those results modified, allowing Martelly to qualify in place of ruling party candidate Jude Celestin.
Washington called on a joint electoral observation mission by the Organization of American States and Caribbean Community CARICOM to witness the documentation of the final results in the interest of transparency and fairness.
“The Haitian people, who have participated with great patience in the two rounds of elections, deserve nothing less,” the US statement said.
Martelly faces the daunting task of rebuilding a Caribbean nation still trying to recover from a January 2010 earthquake that killed more than 225,000 people, displaced 1.5 million and left the capital in ruins.
He has vowed his first six months as president will focus on moving hundreds of thousands of quake survivors out of squalid tent cities, tackling a resilient cholera epidemic and boosting agricultural production.

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

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The Hypocrisy of the Obama administration and the international community in Haiti is endless.

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HAITI : Seeding Reconstruction or Destruction? - IPS ipsnews.net

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:43:03 -0400

Seeding Reconstruction or Destruction?
By Correspondents*

Ambroise Pierre shows a reporter how strong and tall his corn, grown from his own seed, stands.
Credit:Courtesy of Haiti Grassroots Watch

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Apr 1, 2011 (IPS/Haiti Grassroots Watch) - Last year, tens of thousands of tonnes of tools, seeds and plant cuttings were distributed to almost 400,000 Haitian farming families, perhaps one-third to one-half of the country’s farming population.
The 20-million-dollar programme – spearheaded by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and carried out by the FAO and large international non-governmental organisations or “INGOs” like Oxfam, USAID, Catholic Relief Services, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture – was kicked into action in the weeks following the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake.
Warning of a looming “food crisis”, the FAO and large INGOs urged funders to help them buy seed and tools to help the families hosting the over 500,000 refugees who had streamed out of the capital and other destroyed cities.
“The logic behind [the distribution] is that in the zones directly affected by the earthquake and in the zones that received a great number of displaced people, the peasants were decapitalised,” according to the FAO’s Francesco Del Re. “It wasn’t a general distribution. It was a well- targeted distribution, for the most vulnerable.”
Agribusiness behemoth Monsanto also offered 475 tonnes of hybrid maize and vegetable seeds to be distributed mostly by USAID’s flagship agriculture programme, WINNER (Watershed Initiative for National Environmental Resources).
(Despite repeated requests to WINNER, Haiti Grassroots Watch was denied an interview. It is unclear whether the entire 475 tonnes made it into Haiti, nor is it clear which communities received the seeds).
Most actors agree that in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the emergency distributions had some beneficial aspects, but Haiti Grassroots Watch decided to take a closer look.
During its three-month investigation, the Haiti Grassroots Watch partnership of community radio journalists and reporters from the Society for the Animation of Social Communications (SAKS) and the online news agency AlterPresse discovered environmental and health risks, failed harvests, the threat of dependency and other controversial aspects.
The findings were released in a nine-part series on Mar. 30. They are available in full at http://www.haitigrassrootswatch.org.
Independent study faults distribution strategy
Contrary to the cries of alarm over “farmers eating their seed”, a multi-agency seed security study shepherded by researcher Louise Sperling of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) determined that “[u]nlike nearly everywhere else in the world, ‘eating and selling one’s seed’ are not distress signals in Haiti: They are normal practices.”
The study said there was “no seed emergency” in Haiti and recommended, in June 2010, against distributions, saying that instead host families should have been given cash to buy local seed and take care of other urgent needs.
Even though the seed study also warned that “one should never introduce varieties in an emergency context which have not been tested in the given agro-ecological site and under farmers’ management conditions” - and in direct contradiction with Haitian law and international conventions which aim to protect the gene pool and the ecosystem in general - the Ministry of Agriculture approved Monsanto’s donation of 475 tonnes of hybrid seed varieties.
Although USAID/WINNER attempted to conceal its work behind contractual gag rules imposed on all staff, Haiti Grassroots Watch found out that at least 60 tonnes of Monsanto, Pioneer and other hybrid maize and vegetable seed varieties were distributed and were actively promoted.
In an internal report leaked to the investigating team, USAID/WINNER staff wrote: “Despite a whole media campaign against hybrids under the cover of GMO/Agent Orange/Round Up, the seeds were used almost everywhere, the true message got through, although not at the level hoped for,” and “[W]e are in the process of working as quickly as possible with farmers to increase as much as possible the use of hybrid seeds.”
Hooked on hybrids?
At least some of the peasant farmer groups receiving Monsanto and other hybrid maize and other cereal seeds have little understanding of the implications of getting “hooked” on hybrid seeds, since most Haitian farmers select seeds from their own harvests.
One of the USAID/WINNER trained extension agents told Haiti Grassroots Watch that in his region, farmers won’t need to save seeds anymore: “They don’t have to kill themselves like before. They can plant, harvest, sell or eat. They don’t have to save seeds anymore because they know they will get seeds from the [WINNER-subsidised] store.”
When it was pointed out that WINNER’s subsidies end when the project ends in four years, he had no logical response.
At least some of the farmer groups interviewed also don’t appear to understand the health and environmental risks involved with the fungicide- and herbicide-coated hybrids. In at least one location, farmers were planting seed without the use of recommended gloves, masks and other protections, and – until Haiti Grassroots Watch intervened – they were planning to grind up the toxic seed to use as chicken feed.
Fostering dependency
Even though most of the internally displaced people - 66 percent - had returned to cities by mid-June, seed distributions continued throughout 2010 and into 2011.
When CIAT researcher Sperling learned of this, she told Haiti Grassroots Watch, “Direct seed aid – when not needed , and given repetitively – does real harm. It undermines local systems, creates dependencies and stifles real commercial sector development.”
She added that some humanitarian actors “seem to see delivering seed aid as easy and they welcome the overhead (money) – even if their actions may hurt poor farmers.”
In at least several places around the country, donated seeds produced no or little yield.
“What I would like to tell the NGOs it that, just because we are the poorest country doesn’t mean they should give us whatever, whenever,” disgruntled Bainet farmer Jean Robert Cadichon told Haiti Grassroots Watch.
While projects attempting to improve Haiti’s seed system have been ongoing for at least the last few years, to date the Ministry of Agriculture’s National Seed Service (SNS) consists of only two staffers.
Most seed improvement projects, and the repeated seed distributions - which started after Haiti’s hurricane disasters in 2008 - are funded principally through, and carried out by, the FAO and INGOs rather than the Ministry of Agriculture.
SNS Director Emmanuel Prophete told Haiti Grassroots Watch that when peasants get improved seed varieties, production rises, but it also creates dependency.
“The system is based on a subsidy,” Prophete said. “You have to ask yourself about the sustainability because if the policy changes one day, where will peasants get seeds?… We’ll get to a point where, one day, we have a lot of seeds, and then suddenly, when all the NGOs are gone, we won’t have any.”
*To read the multi-article series in English and French, to watch an accompanying video or listen to the audio programme in Haitian Creole, visit http://www.haitigrassrootswatch.org.
The Haiti Grassroots Watch (Ayiti Kale Je) is a partnership of community radio journalists and reporters from the Society for the Animation of Social Communications (SAKS) and the AlterPresse online news agency.

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Obama's Election charade in Haiti shows he continues the war on Haitian Peoples' Freedom

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:31:24 -0400

In the South American nation of Chile, last week President Obama delivered a fantasyland narrative on America’s benign intentions towards its southern neighbors, including an obscene claim that the recent elections in Haiti are proof of a U.S. commitment to democracy in the region.

The truth, of course, is that the United States snuffed out democracy in Haiti in 2004, when it deposed, kidnapped and exiled democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Over U.S. objections

Aristide returned to Haiti only days ago over the most strenuous objections of the United States. These sham elections, in which only 22 percent of eligible voters participated in the first round in November, were stage-managed by the United States to provide the form, but absolutely none of the substance, of democracy.

The elections excluded Haiti’s most popular political party: Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas. The result was the exact opposite of democracy: the two U.S.-approved presidential candidates are both closely connected to former dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who returned to Haiti in January with the obvious blessing of the United States.

Obama’s version of democracy has produced the most grotesque spectacle imaginable: The most popular person in Haiti, Aristide, and his supporters are treated as political outlaws, while the presidency is guaranteed to go to an associate of the most hated man in Haiti, “Baby Doc” Duvalier. No democratic system could possibly result in such a travesty.

Barack Obama has no right to put the words Haiti and “democracy” in the same sentence. His fairytale of U.S. beneficence in the America’s or anywhere else in the world is an insult to humanity’s intelligence and fools no one outside an ignorant and self-possessed audience in the United States.

It is as if he were taunting the Haitian people, whose rightfully elected president was stolen from them by force of arms by George W. Bush. Barack Obama has made himself a full accomplice in the crime.

Crime against peace

But, what is the nature of the crime? It is far more than simply rigging an election. It is a crime against peace, the most serious violation of international law – the crime for which most of the Nazis executed after World War II were convicted.

The criminality of the U.S. in Haiti is ongoing in nature – a crime in progress that began with the armed invasion, and now includes the imposition of sham elections.

And yet, who in the United States speaks of Washington’s illegal war against Haiti? Certainly not the U.S. anti-war movement, which tends to recognize as wars only those U.S. conflicts in which American troops are endangered by armed resistance.

The rape of Haiti’s people’s right to self-determination, her humiliation under foreign occupation, the terrorizing of her citizens by thugs installed at the point of American bayonets, and the latest elections atrocity – none of this is considered war by much of the American public, including some who call themselves progressives.

U.S. imperialism wages the full spectrum of wars all across the globe. We need to call these wars by their true name and bring the perpetrators to justice. Anything less is to disrespect the humanity of America’s victims, including Barack Obama’s victims in Haiti.

Glen Ford is executive editor of BlackAgendaReport.com. E-mail him at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .

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Is Obama following the Bush Playbook in Haiti ?

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:04:33 -0400

The arrogance of Washington’s renewed efforts to thwart former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s return to Haiti from a seven-year exile in South Africa is mind-boggling.

During the 29 February 2004 coup d’état, in the middle of the night, a US Navy Seal team, under the direction of American deputy ambassador Luis Moreno, kidnapped President Aristide and his wife Mildred from their home in Tabarre and flew them, under guard in an unmarked US jet, into a first stint of exile in the Central African Republic. Since then, tens of thousands from all over Haiti have taken to the streets several times each year to demand his return.

During the US-appointed post-coup de facto government of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue (2004-2006), Haitian police and United Nations occupation troops regularly gunned down the demonstrators and carried out murderous assaults on Aristide strongholds in popular neighborhoods like Cité Soleil and Belair, killing dozens of residents, including women and children. When in late March 2004, US Congresswoman Maxine Waters and a team of other VIPs rescued the Aristides from virtual house arrest in CAR and flew them in a private jet to Jamaica, the Bush administration was livid. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice spent an hour on the phone threatening then Prime Minister PJ Patterson to get Aristide out of there.

“We think it’s a bad idea,” she later told the press, while Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that “the hope is that he will not come back into the hemisphere and complicate [the] situation.” Three months later, Aristide was flown to South Africa.

Now, once again, the Obama administration is taking the same positions and using the same language as its predecessor, which candidate Obama once vowed never to do.

Last month, Aristide finally received his long-denied passport. Later this week, the South African government is planning to fly him back to Haiti in a government jet. But now we have the US state department’s new spokesperson, Mark Toner, sanctimoniously telling Aristide “to delay his return until after the electoral process has concluded, to permit the Haitian people to cast their ballots in a peaceful atmosphere”, and that his “return prior to the election may potentially be destabilising to the political process.”

And what “political process” is this?

A runoff between two neo-Duvalierist candidates: former First Lady Mirlande Manigat and former konpa musician Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly. The problem? The election is illegal. Only four of the eight-member Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) have voted to proceed with the second round, one short of the five necessary. Furthermore, the first round results have not been published in the journal of record, Le Moniteur, and President René Préval has not officially convoked Haitians to vote – both constitutional requirements.

“In this election, it is the United Nations and Organisation of American States [OAS], both acting on Washington’s behalf, who are convoking the people to vote for the candidates whom they have designated,” a grassroots organiser told Haïti Liberté. (Last month, the OAS forced the CEP – constitutionally, the “final arbiter” of Haitian elections – to replace Jude Célestin, the candidate of Préval’s party, with Martelly in the runoff.)

Why might Aristide be anxious to return to Haiti before 20 March? First, President Préval has already exceeded his mandate, which ended on 7 February. This makes his position weak and contested. Add to this the reality that, in Haiti, a president-elect becomes the de facto power even before his inauguration. Therefore, after 20 March, it might be impossible for Aristide to safely return to Haiti.

Aristide first came to power 20 years ago as the champion of the people’s uprising against the Duvalier dictatorship and the neo-Duvalierist juntas that followed its 7 February 1986 fall. Seven months after his inauguration, President Aristide was overthrown by a US-backed neo-Duvalierist military putsch on 30 September 1991. “Sweet Micky” was one of the principal cheerleaders of this three-year coup, which claimed some 5,000 lives, according to Amnesty International.

In the years following Aristide’s restoration to power in 1994, Martelly became obsessed with hatred for the man. In a video from not too long ago, which can be seen on YouTube, the candidate threatens a patron in a bar where he has performed. “All those shits were Aristide’s faggots,” he says. “I would kill Aristide to stick a dick up your ass.”

Martelly is close to Col Michel François, perhaps the 1991 coup’s principal mastermind and executioner. François led soldiers who machine-gunned hundreds of demonstrators in front of the National Palace on 30 September, as a fact-finding delegation led by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark learned three months after the coup.

Manigat is not much better. She is the wife, and many say the proxy, of former Haitian President Leslie Manigat. He was a perennial rightwing candidate who came to power in a 1988 election that was run and rigged by a neo-Duvalierist military junta. The rest of Haiti boycotted that election because the junta and its death squads had shot and macheted would-be voters in an aborted contest two months earlier. But Manigat and his wife had no scruples about climbing over the corpses of the November 1987 election massacre to go take up residence in the national palace. Four months later, the junta evicted them when he got too big for his britches. Mirlande Manigat has also declared her opposition to Aristide’s return “before the election”.

Let’s imagine that the US succeeds in ramming this bogus election (Haitians call it a “selection”) down the people’s throats and that Aristide tries to return after 20 March. He would likely be met by policemen upon landing in Port-au-Prince. But the cops would not escort him to a luxury hotel, as they did former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier when he returned, without a squeak of US or French protest, from 25 years of exile on 16 January. Instead, Martelly’s or Manigat’s police would likely take Aristide directly to jail, or worse.

As his lawyer, Ira Kurzban, said, Aristide “is genuinely concerned that a change in the Haitian government may result in his remaining in South Africa”. But if Aristide does arrive as planned, later this week, before the election, his mere presence in the country will eclipse the contrived hoopla of the Manigat/Martelly contest. Although they may not be able to stop the US/OAS gambit, the Haitian people may be able to mount a successful boycott, as Haitian voters did in the April and June 2009 elections, where turnout was less than 5%.

Many grassroots groups are calling for another massive boycott now to discredit the “mascarade”, as they refer to it. Already, only 23% of the Haitian electorate took part in the first round (the lowest turnout for a presidential election in Haiti, or anywhere in Latin America, in the past 60 years) – in large part because Aristide’s party, the Lavalas Family, was arbitrarily and unjustly excluded.

“The department of state has previously said that [Aristide’s return] is a decision for the Haitian government,” Kurzban said. “They should leave that decision to the democratically elected government instead of seeking to dictate the terms under which a Haitian citizen may return to his country.”

Aristide’s return this week is essential – because he wants it, the Haitian people want it, and, perhaps most importantly, Washington and the Duvalierists do not.

via guardian.co.uk

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U.S. urges Aristide to delay return to Haiti

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:13:16 -0400

Washington (CNN) — The United States warned Monday that the return of exiled former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide could disrupt Sunday’s election.

“Mr. Aristide has chosen to remain outside of Haiti for seven years,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. “To return this week can only be seen as a conscious choice to impact Haiti’s elections. … Return prior to the election may potentially be destabilizing to the political process.”

Aristide’s attorney said Saturday that he would return to the island nation within a week.

“He is headed back to Haiti,” said Ira Kurzban, Aristide’s longtime attorney. “We don’t know when yet, but it will be before the elections.”

Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, received a new Haitian passport in February.

Toner said that the Haitian constitution gives Aristide the right to return and that the decision to allow that is up to the Haitian government.

“We would urge former President Aristide to delay his return until after the electoral process has concluded to permit the Haitian people to cast their ballots in a peaceful atmosphere,” Toner said at a briefing at the State Department unrelated to Haiti, on U.S. aid to refugees fleeing unrest in Libya.

And Toner asked South Africa, where Aristide and his family have lived since he left Haiti voluntarily in 2004, to also make the case against his return.

“We encourage the South African government as a committed partner to Haiti’s stability to urge former president Aristide to delay his return until after the elections,” Toner said.

via cnn.com

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Former "Fugees" Member Pras Michel Says Haiti Will Burn if Martelly Doesn't Win Election (Creole)

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 09:44:16 -0500

via youtube.com

If this does not illustrate the low point of Haitian political history, I don’t know what does.

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Combined Haitian Press Responds and Warns of Threats by Michel Martelly During Presidential Debate

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:20:00 -0500

Friday, March 11, 2011

Press note from the AJH

Submitted to AlterPresse March 11, 2011

The Association of Haitian Journalists (AJH) condemns the aggressive and threatening Michael Joseph Martelly against journalists participating in a televised debate, Wednesday, March 9, 2011. The terms used by the presidential candidate recalled that in a time not too long ago, a president of the republic had shown such aggressiveness to a question from a journalist at the National Palace.

These grow about AJH remember the number of journalists and media who have been victims of violence during the movements, on behalf of Joseph Michel Martelly, after the publication of preliminary results of the first round of legislative and presidential , December 7, 2010.

Faced with these acts, the Association of Haitian Journalists expresses its concerns regarding the respect for freedom of the press in the event of a presidency of Joseph Michel Martelly.

The AJH, calling for restraint, also reminds all journalists and all media to the absolute obligation upon them to treatment and for responsible reporting of information in this particular context of life National.

The AJH believes in democracy and the establishment of a state law guaranteeing the free and responsible exercise of the information profession.

Jacques Desrosiers
Secretary General

Friday, March 11, 2011

Group statement Médialternatif, dated March 11, 2011

Group Médialternatif (GM) takes very seriously the threats to the editor and journalist of his online agency AlterPresse, Gotson Peter, and by extension the entire corporate journalism, the presidential candidate Joseph Michel Martelly during the televised debate Wednesday, March 9, 2011.

Asked about his management capacity in reference to a public folder on its debts to American banks and its ability to assume its responsibilities, Martelly a tantrum and announced, “the Kite vini / yo Se Voye Voye l / M ap tann li “(Let’s ask inappropriate questions / It is a mission sponsored / I’m ready to face).

Martelly has explicitly referred to possible reprisals from “the street”.

Are we to believe that Martelly has a list of reporters he does not condone or he believes act against him?

The serious candidate statements can be viewed, rightly, as threats to freedom of the press and expression, which are acquired on 7 February 1986, when the fall of the bloody dictatorship of Duvalier.

GM salutes the vigilance of the national and international press, which noted these discrepancies, and invites all of the corporation and the whole society to take effect of the position of aggression against media and journalists, posted by Martelly , who is seeking the presidential seat of the republic.

Médialternatif Group reserves the right to take appropriate measures against the resurgence of institutional threats to the free exercise of journalism, guaranteed by the Constitution of March 29, 1987.

For the Management Council GM

Ronald Colbert

Articles above come from these links:

http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article10734

And: http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article10737

Haiti

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:11:33 -0500

Haiti

Haiti Protesters Call for Preval to Quit

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:14:00 -0500

From this link

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Around 200 protesters demanding that Haiti’s outgoing President Rene Preval leave office immediately set up burning barricades on Monday and threw stones at police and U.N. peacekeepers in the capital, witnesses said.

Haitian riot police fired some shots in the air to try to disperse the demonstrators, who shouted “Preval must go” and set tires and piles of garbage ablaze in a central square in Port-au-Prince.

A deciding second round of Haiti’s presidential election is scheduled to be held on March 20 to choose a successor to Preval, whose five-year mandate formally ends today February 7 in the poor, earthquake-battered Caribbean nation.

Preval, who could not stand for another consecutive term, has parliament approval to stay on if necessary until May 14 so he can hand over to an elected successor, but some opponents want him to step down in favor of a provisional government.

“Today at noon, Preval’s mandate expires. He will no longer be the constitutional president. We are going to block the whole country to make him go,” said Michel Frederick, 40, one of the protesters.

Under heavy international pressure, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council announced on Thursday that former first lady Mirlande Manigat and popular musician Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly were the two top finishers in chaotic elections held on November 28, and that they would contest the March run-off.

The Haitian electoral authority’s announcement was in line with a recommendation by Organization of American States (OAS) experts revising preliminary results from the vote, which had originally put government technocrat and Preval protege Jude Celestin in the run-off with Manigat. The OAS electoral experts cited significant irregularities in first round vote tallies.

The latest political protest in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest state, which is struggling to recover from a devastating 2010 earthquake, came amid reports that ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was

Haiti's Growing Momentum Towards Democracy

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:01:26 -0500

Haiti Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive (centre) and Jose Miguel Insulza (left), Secretary General of the Organisation of American States, look on during a press conference on the election crisis in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The OAS’s attempt to rubberstamp the flawed December presidential election has run into trouble. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images
It didn’t get much attention in the media, but US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did something quite surprising on Sunday. After taping interviews on five big Sunday talkshows about Egypt, she then boarded a plane to Haiti. Yes, Haiti. The most impoverished country in the hemisphere, not exactly a “strategic ally” or a global player on the world’s political stage.

Inquiring minds might want to know why the United States’ top foreign policy official would have to go to Haiti in the midst of the worst diplomatic crisis she has faced. The answer is that there is also a crisis in Haiti. And it is a crisis that – unlike the humanitarian crisis that Haiti has suffered since the earthquake last year – Washington really cares about.

Like the Egyptians, Haitians are calling for free and fair elections. But in this case, Washington will not support free and fair elections, even nominally. Quite the opposite, in fact. For weeks now, the US government has been threatening the government of Haiti with various punishments if it refuses to reverse the results of the first round of its presidential elections. Washington wants Haiti to eliminate the government’s candidate and leave only two, rightwing candidates to compete in the second round.

Just three weeks ago, this looked like a done deal. The Organisation of American States (OAS) expert verification mission compiled a report on Haiti’s 28 November presidential elections, and on 10 January it was leaked to the press. The report recommended moving the government’s candidate, Jude Celestin, into third place by just 0.3% of the vote; leaving rightwing candidates Mirlande Manigat, a former first lady, and Michel Martelly, a popular musician, in first and second place, respectively. This was followed with various statements and threats from US and French officials that Haiti must accept this change of result. US officials strongly implied that aid to Haiti would be cut if the government didn’t do as told. It looked as if desperately poor Haiti would have to give in.

But then, there was pushback. President Préval noted that six of the seven “experts” from the OAS mission were from the US, Canada and France – the three countries that led the effort to overthrow Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in 2004.

Then, the OAS report was found to be so deeply flawed as to be worthless in determining which candidates should proceed to a second round. The report, for instance, ignored the problem of more than 150,000 missing votes that – given the voting patterns in the areas affected – would have shifted the result to Celestin. It also examined only a sample of the tally sheets, and did not use any statistical inference to estimate how the 92% of the tally sheets that it did not examine might have affected the result.

The call for new elections began to grow. It was joined from the start by 12 presidential candidates who had competed in the deeply-flawed first round, in which only about a quarter of Haitians voted. This was down from 59.3% in the previous presidential election, partly because the country’s most popular political party – Fanmi Lavalas, which supports Aristide – was excluded from participating in the election.

Préval himself has been reported in the press to support new elections.

Then, on Tuesday 1 February, the congressional black caucus leaders, in their first break with the foreign policy of the Obama administration, issued a statement that they called a “response to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s support of the OAS report”:

“The CBC urges the United States and the international community to uphold the ideals of fairness and support a new Haiti election process that is free and fair, respecting the rights of the Haitian people.”

But it is the rights of the Haitian people that Washington does not want to respect. Another reason that very likely contributed to Hillary Clinton’s sudden trip to Haiti on Sunday was that the Haitian government decided it is willing to issue a diplomatic passport to former President Aristide, who has been kept in exile in South Africa since the US-organised coup ousted him. Recent WikiLeaks cables show that the United States has pressed hard to keep him out of Haiti, and to prevent him from exerting any influence from abroad. And his party, Famni Lavalas, was banned from participating in the November elections, as in other elections since he was removed from the country on a US plane in 2004. Aristide issued a statement on 19 January that he was ready to come home.

It may seem strange that US officials care so much about controlling a government as poor and without influence as Haiti, but they clearly do. They not only helped organise the 2004 coup, but had also contributed to the death squads who terrorised the populace after Aristide was overthrown the first time in 1991.

The amazing thing about the last two months is that US officials are meeting such resistance from within Haiti, and from the Congressional Black Caucus – which forced then President Bill Clinton to restore Aristide to the presidency in 1994. Signs of further international support for democracy in Haiti were shown on 26 January, when the OAS resolution on Haiti failed to endorse the recommendations of its own mission’s report – due to resistance from left governments in Latin America. And the Rio Group, which includes 23 nations encompassing almost all of Latin America and the Caribbean, was also blocked by left governments from passing a resolution on Haiti.

The government of Haiti is scheduled to announce its decision on the elections on Wednesday, and it may well fold under the enormous pressure from Washington. But with Aristide’s return imminent, the battle is far from over.

It is not only Egyptians who want free and fair elections, and not only the Arab world that is resisting US-backed tyranny.

via guardian.co.uk

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Haiti's President Preval's Chosen Successor May Pull Out of #Haiti Election

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:11:00 -0500

Haiti presidential candidate ‘may pull out’
(AFP) – 36 minutes ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haitian President Rene Preval’s ruling party candidate Jude Celestin is considering withdrawing from the presidential race, Senator Joseph Lambert, a senior party official, said Tuesday.

Celestin could “withdraw his candidature in the next hours,” said Lambert, a senior official with the INITE (Unity in Creole) party, speaking on Radio Metropole.

In preliminary results of the November 28 presidential election made public by Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), Celestin would face off against former first lady Mirlande Manigat in a second round of voting.

However a monitoring team from the Organization of American States (OAS) regional bloc advised the CEP to revise its initial results because of widespread fraud.

If the CEP follows the advice of the OAS team, popular singer Michel Martelly would face Manigat in the second round run-off instead of Celestin.

Opposition candidates accuse Preval and the CEP of orchestrating massive fraud in favor of Celestin to ensure he made it through to the second round, which has now been delayed.

The United Nations has said it hopes the run-off will be held in mid-February.

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

via google.com

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OAS Decision on the #Haiti Election Fraud Denies Haitians a Fair Election

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 10:59:00 -0500

From this link:

A year after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, an estimated 1 million people are still living in accommodation intended as temporary shelter, while millions of dollars were spent on an election that was effectively boycotted by the majority of Haitians. Photograph: Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images What is it about Haiti that makes the “international community” think they have the right to decide the country’s fate without the consent of the governed? Yes, Haiti is a poor country, but Haitians have fought very hard, and lost many lives, for the right to vote and elect a government.

Yet, on 28 November, nearly three quarters of Haitians did not vote in the presidential and parliamentary elections. That is what we at the CEPR found when we went through 11,181 tally sheets from the election. This is a ridiculously low turnout for a presidential election.

Now, according to an AP report, the Organisation of American States has decided that the election should go to a runoff, finding that the top two finishers were former first lady Mirlande Manigat and the popular singer Michel Martelly. The OAS is proposing a runoff between presidential candidates who received about 6% and 4%, respectively, of the electorate’s votes in the first round.

One reason that most Haitians did not vote is that the most popular political party in the country, Fanmi Lavalas, was arbitrarily excluded from the ballot. This was also done in April 2009, in parliamentary elections, and more than 90% of voters did not vote. By contrast, in the 2006 presidential elections, participation was 59.3%. And it has been higher in the past, even for the parliamentary (non-presidential) election in 2000.

Haitians have taken great risks to vote when there was political violence, and have been pragmatic about voting even when their first choice was not on the ballot (as in 1996 and 2006). But the majority won’t vote when they are denied their right to choose. This is the big story of the election that most of the major media have missed entirely.

Our recount of the vote also showed that even among the votes cast, there was a sizable proportion of votes – about 12.7% – that were never received by the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) or were quarantined by it. This quantity is much higher than was previously reported by either the CEP or the OAS.

A statistical analysis of the vote totals found that some 8.4% of tally sheets had vote totals that were irregular (that is, with irregularities that could be expected to occur by chance less that one in a hundred times). Another 5.4% of tally sheets had obvious clerical errors – for example, total votes cast exceeding the number of registered voters at a voting booth. We did not include these errors among the irregular vote totals, because they did not necessarily affect the outcome. But the high percentage of clerical errors on the tally sheets further undermines confidence in the overall results.

Our analysis confirmed what many observers saw on the ground, including ballot box stuffing, fraud and people unable to vote because they did not appear in the registry. People in the areas hardest hit by the earthquake had much lower participation rates.

This election was the first round of an election that was supposed to proceed to a runoff election, which has now been postponed until February. The top three finishers were Manigat, Martelly and the government’s candidate, Jude Celestin. But since second and third place were separated by just 0.6 percentage points, there is no way – given the massive irregularities – to tell which two candidates would proceed to the second round.

Clearly, an election that was so severely flawed and plagued by irregularities cannot be considered legitimate. But even less excusable is the exclusion of the country’s most popular political party – the equivalent of banning the Democrats or Republicans in the United States. This “exclusion will undermine both Haitians’ right to vote and the resulting government’s ability to govern,” wrote 45 Democratic members of Congress to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on 7 October 2010. They asked her not to provide “funding for elections that do not meet these minimum, basic democratic requirements”. These pleas were ignored.

Haiti’s first and last democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown (for the second time) in a coup that Washington helped to bring about in 2004. According to his account, he was kidnapped and put on a US plane to Africa, where he remains in exile, in violation of the Haitian constitution and international law.

Three weeks ago, Ricardo Seitenfus, the OAS’s special representative to Haiti, was removed from his post for publicly criticising the role of the UN mission and the international community in Haiti. Last week, he revealed something even more damning:

“At the meeting of Core Group (donor countries, UN and OAS), something that seemed just creepy [was discussed]. Some representatives suggested that President Rene Preval should leave the country and we should think of an airplane for that. I heard it and was appalled.”

Washington and its allies, including the people who are currently making decisions about Haiti at the OAS, are pushing these illegitimate elections for the same reason that they overthrew Aristide, and will not let him back into his own country – in violation of the Haitian constitution and international law. These people want to determine who rules Haiti, without allowing the majority of Haitians themselves to decide. There will be resistance to this, as to the dictatorships and foreign occupations of the past. We can only hope that it does not result in similar levels of violence.

Bill Clinton's Current Damage to Haiti Being Recognized by Oxfam

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:20:00 -0500

A year after an earthquake shook the small island-nation of Haiti, a mere 5 percent of the rubble has been cleared. Not even half of the donor money pledged has arrived. The government has failed to show leadership, and international NGOs are not helping — circumventing the Haitian authorities to write their own rules. Perhaps most biting, the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) chaired by Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has so far “failed” to deliver its mandate for reconstruction, plagued instead by “contradictory policies and priorities.”

These are the findings of a new report released today by the British-based charity Oxfam International. It’s a damning read out on the last year of reconstruction — or as the paper makes clear, lack thereof. While the emergency response is lauded for saving millions of people with vital supplies, services, and shelters, “neither the Haitian state nor the international community is making significant progress in reconstruction.”

What went wrong? The report paints a picture of an international effort entirely divorced from the needs and wishes of the Haitian people — not to mention the Haitian government. The original Action Plan meant to be put into place by the IHRC was favored by a mere 17.5 percent of Haitians, according to an Oxfam poll cited in the report. In implementation, the commission failed to include government ministers, for example consulting them in a tardy fashion — and providing documents for review often only in English (the Haitian government operates in French). Individual NGOs and aid organizations actually carrying out the relief effort have done no better. “Many aid agencies continue to bypass local and national authorities in the delivery of assistanc,” the report claims.

Ok, so the international community has been ignoring the Haitian government and just plowing ahead according to their own plan. Maybe that sounds like a good idea — indeed, the government lacks much of the capacity to run the country’s services and infrastructure today. It’s incredibly tempting as an aid operation to want to cut corners, forget to do a bit of paperwork, or just fail to consult the local government — so that your program can start helping people a few days or hours sooner. But the fact that Haiti’s government is seen as inept is precisely the point. The Haitian authorities will never have that capacity to run Haiti if the international community cuts them out. So unless the international community plans on staying and running Haiti forever (something that Haitians would never — and should never — stand for), this is a disaster of an approach.

Ironically, these are the very same principles that the IHRC itself recognizes and has nominally committed to. One of its founding precepts was to empower Haitian authorities and help build up expertise in the local ministries. But like rebuilding a country, it seems this is easier said than done.

via blog.foreignpolicy.com

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Haiti Second Round Vote Impossible Before February

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 16:53:35 -0500

From this link:

By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti will not be able to hold a second round of its disputed presidential election before February as it awaits a report from regional experts on contested preliminary results from the November 28 first round, a senior electoral official said on Tuesday.

The outcome of Haiti’s chaotic November elections has remained in limbo since violent protests greeted the December 7 preliminary results of the first round vote in the Caribbean nation. The presidential and legislative polls were held amid confusion, fraud allegations and a raging cholera epidemic.

The Western Hemisphere’s poorest state is preparing to mark the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake that struck a year ago on January 12. There are fears the political instability will delay the handover of billions of dollars of urgently needed reconstruction funds from foreign donors.

“Today we are at a dangerous crossroads,” outgoing President Rene Preval said in a Haitian Independence Day broadcast over the weekend.

He rejects accusations by opposition presidential candidates that he and his ruling Inite (Unity) coalition rigged the vote to put their contender in the second round.

Responding to international concern over reported irregularities in the November 28 vote results, Preval requested help from the Organization of American States and a team of OAS experts is working on verifying the preliminary tally.

But this has delayed the original electoral timetable which had foreseen final first round results being announced on December 20 and a second round run-off being held on January 16.

“It will be materially impossible to hold the run-off on January 16,” Pierre-Louis Opont, director general of Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council, told Reuters.

“From the date of the publication of the final results of the first round, we will need at least one month to hold the run-off,” the electoral official added.

But he could not say when the final results of the November 28 first round might be announced, saying only that this would follow the report by the OAS experts and completion of the process that deals with challenges to the results.

The December 7 preliminary results put Jude Celestin, a little-known government technocrat and Preval protege, in a second round run-off with former first lady Mirlande Manigat.

CALLS FOR PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT

But popular musician Michel Martelly, whom the electoral council placed narrowly third, less than a percentage point behind Celestin, has rejected this and called for a second round vote to include all 18 original presidential candidates.

Of these, a dozen demand complete cancellation of the vote, alleging massive fraud. They want Preval to resign and hand over to a provisional government when his five-year mandate formally ends on February 7.

Preval, who has served the constitutional limit of two terms in office, has rejected this option, saying he will only hand over to a legitimately elected president.

To allow for the possibility of election delays following the crippling January 12 earthquake, Haiti’s parliament last year passed legislation allowing Preval to stay on in office until May 14 this year if necessary, to be able to hand over to the new president once his successor was legally elected.

In December, supporters of Martelly, a charismatic star of Haiti’s Kompa dance music, staged several days of violent protests against the preliminary results, paralyzing the quake-ravaged capital Port-au-Prince and several other cities.

At least four people were killed in the riots, which the United Nations and aid groups warned would hinder an international medical response to the cholera epidemic.

The epidemic, which has affected all of Haiti’s 10 provinces, had killed 3,481 people up to December 29, according to the Haitian Health Ministry.

The United Nations, the United States and the European Union have appealed to Haiti’s government and presidential candidates to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the electoral dispute through legal and constitutional channels.

Observers Validate Haiti Election. OAS Validates Haiti's Election

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 19:20:00 -0500

By INGRID ARNESEN

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—The Organization of American States said Haiti’s presidential election should be considered valid despite a host of problems, giving a big boost to the government and election authorities here.

The judgement from the main international observers of the election could dampen claims of widespread fraud made by a majority of the 18 candidates that took part in Sunday’s vote.

The election was also marred by disorganization, sporadic violence and incorrect voting lists.

“As serious as some of the irregularities were, they did not invalidate the electoral process,” said Colin Granderson, head of the election observer mission to Haiti from the OAS, which counts all independent countries of the Americas as its members.

On Monday, ten candidates joined together to say the vote should be canceled, claiming itvote was rigged to help the ruling Inite Party’s candidate, Jude Celestin, a party bureaucrat.

The Haitian government, Mr. Celestin, and electoral authorities didn’t respond to the allegations.

Late on Sunday, election officials said the vote had gone well in general terms, citing problems in just 56 of some 1,500 voting stations. It said it would announce the results in the coming days.

Given the crowded field, it is likely the election will go to a runoff in January between the top two finishers.

The confusion surrounding the vote was a bad sign for a country still reeling from last January’s devastating earthquake and struggling to contain a deadly cholera epidemic.

Haiti also has a long history of political instability and violence.

Sporadic protests flared Sunday, but had died down by Monday. Yet most people remained off the streets amid fears of violence.

One leading contender, popular rap singer-turned-politician Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, held a news conference on Monday to announce that he was the likely victor—though a day earlier he had called for the vote to be suspended. He didn’t say how he reached his conclusion.

The Haitian people “made their choice. We request that the (election authority) respect the choice of the population,” he said.

Mr. Martelly appealed for Haitians to remain calm, while warning that the government “should understand clearly that the population is ready to fight for its rights.”

On Sunday, Mr. Martelly joined 11 other candidates in calling for the election to be suspended. But he and another leading contender, former first lady Mirlande Manigat, didn’t show up to Monday’s news conference by the remaining 10 candidates protesting the vote.

Many Haitians were despondent after a vote plagued by problems, especially flawed voter lists that left many people unable to cast a ballot.

Antenor Joseph, a 44-year-old truck driver, said he regretted having voted at all. “This was a bad start. I voted but now I regret it because the elections are spoiled. I don’t see any winner here,” he said.

Bob Maguire, a Haiti expert and professor of international relations at Trinity Washington University in Washington, said the international community should take the lead in the coming days to investigate the allegations of fraud and ensure the next government in Haiti has legitimacy.

“I think we learned that not holding elections in New Orleans soon after Katrina was the right decision. The logistics were just really daunting for the Haitians,” he said.

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Haitian's Protest as their Government Tries to Certify Unjust Elections

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:24:00 -0500

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Even as the international community continues to appeal for calm, Haitians gathered in the streets of Gonaives and elsewhere Monday to protest a decision to move ahead with election results despite allegations of voter fraud.

Thousands took to the streets to rally against what they believed was widespread wrongdoing in the day’s presidential race, including pre-stuffed ballots and thousands missing from voter rolls.

Voting bureaus were trashed and set on fire, international elections monitors withdrew in the middle of the voting, and some precincts closed due to sporadic violence.

At least a dozen of the 19 presidential candidates on the ballot have asked for the results to be voided, and a transitional government be charged with organizing new elections. They are accusing President René Préval and his INITE political party of “massive fraud” to advance his chosen presidential successor, Jude Célestin, former head of the government road building agency.

“It’s a very bad signal to the international community who is willing to help and not just from the opposition, but from the candidates of the ruling party,” Albert Ramdin, the assistant secretary general of the Organization of American States, said of Haiti’s current crisis.

Ramdin, who is in Port-au-Prince, said Haiti cannot afford a violent meltdown.

“Violence will not solve Haiti’s problems. Divisions will not solve Haiti’s problems. What Haiti needs is an understanding from all of the minds that they need to work together and the only way to do that is with proper dialogue,” he said.

The OAS and Caribbean Community led an international electoral observer mission. He said the international community knows things went wrong.

“We are not saying that was not the case. I strongly condemn the case of the death. I strongly condemn political leaders who are intimidating their supporters to become violent. Those things should not happen. The preparations should have been much more timely,” Ramdin said.

“It’s a very bad signal to the international community who is willing to help and not just from the opposition, but from the candidates of the ruling party.”

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, ranking Florida Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also expressed her regret regarding the allegations of irregularities the elections and called for “immediate action to correct the situation. ”

“They must be investigated immediately and steps taken to correct this wrong perpetrated against the democratic aspirations of the Haitian people,” she said.

She too also called for calm going forward.

“Violence must be avoided,” she said. “All parties and officials must work together to ensure that all necessary steps are taken so that the Haitian people can be confident in a fair and accurate result which reflects their will.

On Sunday night the president of the Provisional Electoral Council Gaillot Dorsinvil said the day was realized and “successful.”

The CEP said only 3.56 percent or 56 of the 1,500 voting centers had problems and that the results would, for now, be recognized.

Others disagreed.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. called on the elections to be rejected by the international community.

“The international community should reject these elections and affirm support for democratic institutions in Haiti,” Mark Weisbrot, co-director of The Center for Economic and Policy Research said. “Otherwise, Haiti could be left with a government that is widely seen as illegitimate.”

Weisbrot called the elections a “farce from start to finish.”

He noted that Fanmi Lavalas, the political party founded by former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was not allowed to participate and that the CEP had been plagued by credibility issues throughout the process.

In Haiti, as protesters walked through the streets, some snatched tires and set them aflame at major intersections. Young men threw rocks - a few hurling them over the base for the United Nations.

Meanwhile, there were reports that 1,500 protesters gathered in Saint Marc, a seaport between Gonaives and Port-au-Prince.

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Hurricane Tomas Soon to Hit Haiti

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 07:00:17 -0500

By INGRID ARNESEN And MIKE ESTERL
Associated Press
U.N. soldiers evacuate children from a tent camp on Port-au-Prince’s outskirts Thursday ahead of Tropical Storm Tomas. Many refugees stayed put.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—Hundreds of thousands of earthquake-displaced Haitians, still living in tents and under tarps, hunkered down in makeshift homes Thursday as a powerful storm threatened to push their Caribbean nation’s humanitarian crisis into a new phase of misery.

Tropical Storm Tomas was expected to strengthen overnight, potentially packing hurricane-force gusts of 75 miles an hour or more along Haiti’s western coast and dumping as much as 15 inches of rain in some areas.

Landslides and flooding are expected, raising what aid workers have long considered the disaster scenario here—standing water and overflowing latrines that could carry an epidemic of water-borne disease through a massive refugee community.

Haiti’s government urged citizens to flee low-lying areas and seek storm-proof shelters. Those calls also were directed at some 1.3 million Haitians who have lived in hundreds of makeshift camps around Port-au-Prince since a Jan. 12 quake leveled much of the city.

“We are focusing on trying to save as many lives as we can,” Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said in an interview Thursday. “There’s going to be a lot of water, a lot of flooding.” He said the government is asking people to find shelter for a day or two.

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Refugees showed few signs of leaving the capital’s crowded slums and camps, even as some white-and-blue “dignity buses” circulated to try to evacuate pregnant women, the elderly and other vulnerable people.

As skies darkened, community leaders at a refugee camp near the capital’s collapsed presidential palace shouted into a megaphone, telling the camp’s 665 families to find the sturdiest tin shacks or tents.

“We have nowhere to go. No one has come. No one has given us any materials,” said Jatelin Daniel, the camp’s volunteer president. “The only thing we have is this megaphone.”

The storm gathered force as international aid groups continued to wrestle with a cholera outbreak that surfaced two weeks ago. The acute diarrheal disease is transmitted through contaminated water and food. Most of Haiti lacks adequate sanitation.

“With water, cholera is disastrous,” Mr. Bellerive said. “Latrines will flood, surfaces will be submerged. All the measures organized to contain cholera will be critically affected, like cooking food, hygiene, washing.”

As of Wednesday, Haiti had identified 6,742 hospitalized cases and 442 deaths tied to the epidemic, up from 4,764 cases and 337 deaths Saturday. Officials said cholera has continued to spread to more parts of Haiti but that the fatality rate has slowed in recent days.

Bill Read, director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center, said Haiti likely would be hit with “a tremendous amount of rain in a short period of time” overnight Thursday and early Friday. “Even five inches of rain causes significant flooding and even landslides” in parts of Haiti, he said in a press conference in Miami.

The NHC also issued hurricane warnings for the Cuban province of Guantanamo, the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It expects the storm to weaken by the weekend and fizzle out as it moves farther north.

International aid organizations said they had positioned emergency supplies such as water buckets, blankets and shovels around much of Haiti. In recent months, they also helped dig trenches to help control flooding and reinforced hillside camps with sandbags. The USS Iwo Jima has been deployed to Haiti to help with humanitarian efforts. It is expected to arrive by Saturday. The amphibious assault ship has 1,600 sailors, 550 Marines and 10 helicopters.

But the Haitian government and aid groups acknowledged it would be impossible to empty hundreds of refugee camps and deliver everyone to safe shelters.

“I think the only magical supply you could have is a building large enough to accommodate 1.3 million people,” said Andrea Koppel, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross in Port-au-Prince. “That doesn’t exist.”

Haiti had been fortunate until now to escape a powerful storm since January’s earthquake killed more than 220,000 people and destroyed more than 100,000 homes. But the country often has found itself in the path of destructive storms. In 2008, four hurricanes killed 800 people. More than 300 Haitians were killed in 2007, when two hurricanes struck. In 2004, Hurricane Jeanne left 5,000 dead, the government estimates.

At Corail, a windswept refugee camp on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, authorities and aid groups were trying Thursday to evacuate about 2,000 of the most vulnerable residents to a hospital about two miles away. The estimated 4,000 refugees who remained were being directed to 10 camp buildings that provided some degree of protection, said Leonard Doyle, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration.

Some residents began throwing chairs and rocks in protest after being told they would be moved to a poor suburb about 20 minutes away, said Depardine Fritz Robingson, a local camp leader. Residents believed they were being moved from Corail to make room for other refugees from the capital, he added.

Refugees appeared resigned to riding out Tomas in the open at the Sylvio Cato camp, which houses 336 families inside a soccer stadium in Port-au-Prince.

Prime Minister Bellerive said some Haitians may have been lulled by a sense of complacency as Tomas weakened and slowed in recent days, before strengthening again as it turned toward their country. “There was this sense of incredulity until now. There was sunshine. People didn’t believe they had to move,” he saidBut he acknowledged the logistical challenges have been massive. Since January, the Haitian rescue effort has helped trim the number of refugees from 1.5 million to 1.3 million. Speaking of the prospect of relocating a million refugees, he said: “No one realizes what it takes to get 200,000 out of the camps alone,” said Mr. Bellerive.

“We have some family up in the hills, but we don’t have the money to get there,” said Jean Emmanuel Benjamin, a 26-year-old camp resident, as he sat in the stadium bleachers with his 60-year-old aunt.

Write to Mike Esterl at mike.esterl@wsj.com

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