After kidnapping president, U.S. orchestrates ‘elections’

For the last 20 months, since U.S. Marines kidnapped Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Central Africa and imposed a new government on Haiti, popular organizations all over Haiti have been demonstrating, demanding his return.

Though the Haitian National Police (PNH) have frequently killed protesters and raided the strongest pro-Aristide communities, thousands of people have heroically taken to the streets month after month, ready to risk death to get back the president they elected. They want the constitution respected and justice and hope restored.

The PNH announced early in Sep tember that no demonstrations could take place from Sept. 9 to Sept. 16, the first week of school, including a major demonstration scheduled for Sept. 13.

The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), set up by the Security Council, replaced a joint U.S./France operation that ran Haiti after the Marines “coup-napped” Aristide. MINUSTAH is keeping an illegitimate regime in place there with 8,000 troops.

In response to the police ban on demonstrations, it said it would follow PNH orders, even though the UN resolution authorizing MINUSTAH puts the police under UN command.

MINUSTAH also announced that a new contingent of 850 Jordanian troops was coming to occupy Cité Soleil, the community where the resistance to the current illegitimate government and MINUSTAH is the strongest.

Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan held separate meetings in New York on Haiti during the UN’s special session.

Washington and the UN appear to have decided that, for Haiti’s de facto government to gain any legitimacy, it needs to hold elections. But the only political party in Haiti with any real mass support is Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas. Furthermore, many of the progressive Haitian organizations have denounced “elections” under occupation as nothing more than ratifying the “selections” made by the occupiers.

For the past few months the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) has been conducting voter registration. Haitians say it is using bribes and threats to get people to sign up. The CEP announced at the close of registration Sept. 15 that 2 million voters out of a possible 4.4 million had signed up. Even that weak total may be exaggerated.

Some 54 political parties registered with the CEP on Sept. 15, with 45 presenting their candidates for president.

Aristide’s conditions

President Aristide released a statement from Pretoria, South Africa, where he is in exile, saying, “In Haiti, in order to have elections and not a ‘selection,’ the following steps must be taken: 1) The thousands of Lavalas who are in jail and in exile must be free to return home; 2) The repression that has already killed over 10,000 people must end immediately; 3) Then, there must be national dialog.”

Despite Aristide’s conditions, three of the Fanmi Lavalas leaders registered their party, first proposing the imprisoned Fr. Gérard Jean-Juste as its candidate. When the CEP refused to allow Jean-Juste to run, the three proposed Marc Bazin.

Bazin, a former World Bank official, is unpopular with the Lavalas rank-and-file. He ran against Aristide in 1990 with the full support of the United States. He also was prime minister in the government the Haitian military installed after its first coup against Aristide.

Multimillionaire television evangelist Pat Robertson, who recently called for the assassination of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, backs the National Unity Party for the Reconstruction of Haiti, headed by Pastor Chavannes Jeune. In the Sept. 14-20 edition of Haiti-Progres, Castro Desroches exposes and attacks both imperialist meddling and the reactionary ideas of this party’s leader.

The de facto government recently announced a 10-percent price hike for fuel, the third this year. When Aristide was in power, he had to raise fuel costs but did it in steps and subsidized the poorer layers of the people. His government also kept the price of basic necessities like flour and oil affordable. The current de facto government talks in neoliberal terms about the “immutable” laws of supply and demand and does nothing concrete to help the hunger of the Haitian people.

One safety net for Haitian workers has been to migrate to the Dominican Republic, where jobs paid four to five times more than they did in Haiti. Currently, the Dominican police and government are leading a major campaign to expel all Haitians to Haiti. They have even expelled some Dominicans who “look like Haitians.”

Except for Lavalas, none of the 53 other parties has offered a program to relieve the conditions of Haiti’s workers and peasants.

Given the 200-year history of U.S. oppression, repression and occupation of Haiti, which began with U.S. aid to the French colonial slaveholders during the Haitian Revolution and continued with hostility to the first Black republic in the Americas, progressives in the United States have an extra responsibility to show solidarity with Haiti.

As small and impoverished as it is today, Haiti remains, in the words of the great abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass, a “beacon of hope for the oppressed of the world.”