(part 1)

The second coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is now in its third week. U.S. Marines have killed six Haitians and suffered one casualty, a soldier wounded in the arm on Mar. 14. Thousands in Haiti and throughout its diaspora have demonstrated against the foreign military occupation of the country and for the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

On Mar. 14, a delegation including U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, CARICOM emissary Sharon Hey-Webster and Haitian government lawyer Ira Kurzban flew in a chartered Gulfstream jet to Bangui, Central African Republic to pick up President Aristide and his wife Mildred and to take them to Jamaica for a 10-week visit.

De facto Haitian Prime Minister Gérard Latortue called Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson’s hosting of Aristide an “unfriendly act” against Haiti and withdrew the Haitian ambassador, who he had already fired anyway. Congresswoman Waters called Latortue’s response “meaningless.” U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and Ambassador to Haiti James Foley all condemned Aristide’s presence in Jamaica. Foley ominously warned that Jamaica was taking a “great risk and responsibility” by inviting him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that Aristide should “not come back into the hemisphere and complicate [the] situation.”

Meanwhile, Latortue’s Interior Minister designate former Gen. Hérard Abraham has been seen in Pétionville embracing and meeting with “rebel” leader Guy Philippe, whom even U.S. officials have characterized as a “thug,” despite their transparent support of him.

The following is a synopsis of how the latest “regime change” in Haiti was carried out. Although written by Ira Kurzban as mere notes to serve as background for journalists, it offers a concise yet comprehensive review of the mechanics of the coup.

The May 2000 Election
In May, 2000, under the administration of President René Préval, an election was held in Haiti for 7,500 different offices. There were approximately 30,000 candidates running for these offices which included all local, state-equivalent, and national elections except several seats in the Haitian Senate and the Presidential election. Under Haitian law, the only entity empowered to organize and set the date for an election was the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). President Préval picked a CEP by seeking the best nine people he could find who had technical experience and knowledge that would be necessary to run a fair election. No member of the CEP was a member of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party.

During the months leading up to the election, the United States government, through the International Republican Institute (IRI), spent millions of dollars to create an opposition against Aristide’s party. The result of their work was first to establish the Espace de Concertation and then the Democratic Convergence, a group of disparate parties cobbled together by the IRI in an effort to create an opposition to Lavalas. In the weeks leading up to the election, the U.S. Embassy warned of great violence and there were sporadic instances of bombings.

On May 21, 2000 the Haitian people spoke clearly and unequivocally. Over 60% of the registered voters (which encompassed 92% of those who were eligible to vote) carried out a peaceful, fair and fully democratic election. The OAS described the election in the following terms: “The day was a great success for the Haitian population which turned out in large and orderly numbers to choose both their local and national governments and for the Haitian National Police …Election Day proceedings on May 21 represented the high point of the electoral process. An estimated 60 percent of registered voters went to the polls. Very few incidents of violence were reported.” (Final Report of OAS Mission CP/doc. 3383/00 13 Dec. 2000 at p. 2)

The report noted some irregularities in the tallying of votes and the failure to count others but concluded that “since one political party [Fanmi Lavalas] won most of the elections by a substantial margin, it is unlikely that the majority of the final outcomes in local elections have been affected.” (Id at p. 3)

Notwithstanding the above results, the May 21, 2000 election has consistently been described as “flawed” or “fraudulent” in the press and by U.S. and OAS officials. The “flaw” in the election was the methodology used to determine whether eight Senate races should have gone into runoff elections. Seven of those races were won by Fanmi Lavalas candidates, the other by a member of a minor party. Even if these seats had been discounted entirely or given to opposition parties Fanmi Lavalas still retained a majority in the Senate.

Nevertheless, the U.S. and the opposition continued to claim that the election was fraudulent and that Fanmi Lavalas “stole” the election. They also used it as a pretext to boycott the November 2000 election for the Presidency of the country. However, the real reason for the boycott was that no candidate had the slightest possibility of defeating Jean Bertrand Aristide. The United States-commissioned Gallup Poll confirmed it. Results of a USAID poll of 1002 Haitians conducted nationwide by CID-Gallup in October, 2000, clearly refute suggestions that Haitians were reluctant to vote in the November national elections or were deeply divided about their political preferences. Almost everyone (92.8%) knew about the upcoming presidential elections and the vast majority said they were very likely (55.9%) or somewhat likely (22.7%) to vote and nearly 65% believed there were no major obstacles to the successful holding of national elections. Over 68% of voters felt the May 21st legislative elections had been honest and fair and 61% expressed at least some satisfaction with the results.

The poll also demonstrated that Jean-Bertrand Aristide was the most trusted national leader in Haiti according to over 50% of respondents. No member of the opposition came anywhere near that figure. Evans Paul/Espace de Concertation was most trusted by only 3.8% of respondents. Leslie Manigat/RDNP polls only 3% in this category, Gerard Pierre Charles/OPL only 2.1% and all other opposition figures, including Marc Bazin, Hubert Deronceray, and Victor Benoit each received less than 1%. In the survey Fanmi Lavalas is the preferred party by a factor of 13 to one and far outpolled the opposition across categories of age, gender, economic situation and education. President Aristide’s support was not limited to the impoverished, disadvantaged “masses” as many in the media typically assert; he received a favorable rating from 83% of respondents with some university education.

Aristide’s Election
In November 2000, the national election was held for President. The opposition “boycotted” the election over the alleged “fraud” in the May 2000 election. No serious observer of Haitian politics believed that any candidate could beat Aristide, and the polls clearly bore that out. Because the OAS refused to monitor the election due to the claimed methodological dispute over the 8 senate seats, it did not send observers to the election. However, international groups that did observe the election stated that over 60% of registered voters went to the polls and the President won by 92% of the vote. The CEP confirmed that over 62% of registered voters cast their ballots in the election. However, a small group of journalists and “unnamed officials” from various embassies including the U.S. embassy, observing only several polling places in Port-au-Prince, concluded that 10% or perhaps 20% of the voters actually voted in the election. These fabricated numbers were later used by the opposition to undermine the legitimacy of Aristide’s election. In fact, on February 7, 2001, the day the President took office, the opposition appointed its own “President” claiming his election was “fraudulent.” However, no international organization has ever challenged the legitimacy of President Aristide’s second election.

The Eight Senate Seats
Within several weeks of President Aristide’s Feb. 7, 2001 inauguration, he convinced the seven senators who were part of his political party and whose seats were contested to resign. The eighth senator was from another party and refused to resign. He thereafter issued a letter to the OAS asking the OAS to move forward on a new election. The President was never taken up on his offer. Instead the opposition, with the assistance of the U.S., continued to say that it was Aristide who had not done enough to resolve the crisis. The President also obtained the consent of parliamentarians to cut their terms in half so that an election could be held for all seats in the legislature. The opposition ultimately rejected this offer as well.

The Embargo
Using the eight Senate seats as an excuse, the U.S. began a fierce economic embargo against the Haitian government. It shut off all aid to the Haitian government and used considerable institutional pressure to prevent the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank from giving money to the Haitian government. France did the same and prevailed on the European Union to withhold funds. The effects of the economic embargo are well known. It prevented $150 million dollars in loans that were approved by the Haitian Parliament and the IDB from being disbursed. It deprived Haiti, for example, of the ability to establish a potable water project in a country that has less potable water than any other nation in the world. The effort to make the economy “scream” as in Chile or simply fall apart as in Nicaragua was devastating in Haiti, and it was designed to drive a wedge between Aristide and his supporters. The incredible human suffering was largely ignored. The claim that the money was not given to Haiti because of the “flaws” in the 2000 election seemed quite insincere when compared to the institutional willingness to loan money to Duvalier, the military generals after Duvalier, and the coup leaders – all of whom received hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to their “governments” by the U.S. and the international financial institutions. It also seemed odd in light of the fact that there was no longer any controversy over the “flawed” elections because seven senators had resigned.

The Police
Although press stories consistently portrayed the Haitian police as weak and ineffective due to Aristide’s desire not to have any strong institutions, the situation on the ground in Haiti was quite different. The police were eviscerated by the international financial embargo, an international arms embargo, and the decision to withdraw the U.S. sponsored police training program from the Department of State.

In addition to the financial embargo stated above, the United States placed an arms embargo against Haiti. The government of Haiti was unable to purchase both lethal and non-lethal weapons and equipment. The Haitian National Police could not even purchase such items as bullet-proof vests or gas masks to protect themselves. As it had done with the international financial embargo, the U.S. used its considerable influence to pressure other countries from selling Haiti equipment and weapons. In addition, in 1998 the U.S. had stopped its training program for the Haitian police among allegations by one of the former directors of ICITAP (the US training program run out of the Department of State) that U.S. intelligence agencies were infiltrating and undermining the State Department’s training program.

(To be continued)