Haiti and Aristide

Mar 21, 2011 Editorial

Yesterday the Haitian people went to the polls once again to decide who will be the president of this disaster wrecked country. But overshadowing that event has been the return of ex-president Bertrand Aristide last Friday from his exile in South Africa.
The first freely-elected president of Haiti in 1990, after he ended the 29-year-long dictatorship of first “Papa Doc” Duvalier and then his son “Baby Doc”, he was quickly deposed. Returning to power two more times in the following decade through free and fair elections he was duly deposed after each accession to office.
After the last instance in 2004 he was spirited away by US forces “for his own safety” to South Africa. Aristide claimed he was “kidnapped” but the US denied the charge.
However, the resistance of the US to Aristide’s return from South Africa since 2004 gives some credence to Aristide’s claim. While he made no comment to the return of ex-dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier earlier this year, President Obama went so far to call President Zuma of South Africa to express concern over the latter country’s facilitation of Aristide’s return.
The US claims that Aristide’s presence in Haiti might be “destabilising”. But this position has grave implications for the return of a stable democratic order to Haiti, to which the US is adamant it is committed.
Aristide, after all, was the leader of the largest and most popular political force in Haiti – Lavinas, which was denied participation in the ongoing elections on grounds widely conceded to be very specious.
In his first speech on his return Aristide noted in Creole: “The exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas is the exclusion of the Haitian people.” In English, he added: “In 1804, the Haitian revolution marked the end of slavery.
Today, may the Haitian people end exiles and coup d’états, while peacefully moving from social exclusion to inclusion.”
Aristide’s allusion to the historical background of Haiti’s condition is not accidental. In stark opposition to the forces that are contending for power he is firmly opposed to the status quo that favours the tiny elite that had dominated politics for two centuries. He firmly believes that Haiti’s present decrepitude is a structural one rooted in historical injustices meted out to the Haitian people.
In the words of one former op-ed writer of the Wall Street Journal: “Haiti’s chronic impoverishment began at its birth in 1804, when, having overthrown its French rulers in a bloody, 12-year slave revolt, the new-born nation was subjected to crippling blockades and embargoes.
This economic strangulation continued until 1825, when France offered to lift embargoes and recognize the Haitian Republic if the latter would pay restitution to France!—for loss of property in Haiti, including slaves—of 150 million gold francs.
The sum, about five times Haiti’s export revenue for 1825, was brutal, but Haiti had no choice: pay up or perish over many more years of economic embargo, not to mention face French threats of invasion and re-conquest.
To pay, Haiti borrowed money at usurious rates from France, and did not finish paying off its debt until 1947, by which time its fate as the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country had been well and truly sealed .France must now return every last cent of this money to Haiti.
In 2004, at the time of the 200th anniversary of Haiti’s independence, the Haitian government (under Aristide) put together a legal brief in support of a formal demand for “restitution” from France.
The sum sought was nearly $22 billion!” Aristide was soon ousted and sent to South Africa. There are probably great fears that Aristide might raise this issue even though he has vowed not to enter politics.
The second contentious issue has been Aristide’s identification of the debilitating effects of the so-called humanitarian food aid that is being poured into Haiti. Aristide is convinced that since this food is sold in Haiti at lower prices that that produced in Haiti, this has destroyed Haitian agriculture.
He would rather aid groups purchase locally produced food to distribute and thus place local agriculture on a stable platform. For this he is “destabilizing”.

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