HAITI

Haiti: René Preval's Impossible Task
By Stephen Lendman

On February 7, 2006 (and with due homage to the great Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano) the people of Haiti were not to be denied. Few people anywhere have endured more oppression and human misery or for a longer period of time (with all too few periods of relief). In spite of an election process orchestrated, controlled and shamelessly rigged by an interim puppet government (the IGH) and an oppressive occupying force (UN Blue Helmets supposedly there to maintain order and protect them), they overcame overwhelming obstacles and elected Rene Preval for the second time as their President (his first time in office was from 1996-2000). It's no secret that the real power calling the shots in Haiti is not in Port-au-Prince. It's in Washington making policy, giving orders and letting its approved proxies do its bidding, which has been bloody and brutal since US Marines in the dead of night kidnapped and deposed democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide at gunpoint in February, 2004.

In a normal country with a tradition of stability and democracy (or any one for that matter) the election of the peoples' choice would be a cause for celebration. Indeed for the first time in the past 2 years the Haitian people are celebrating and hope finally for an end to the nightmare they've been through. But nothing is ever simple in Haiti, a country that for over 500 years has had very few periods of stability free from the oppressive heel of a foreign occupier or repressive dictatorship. They never had a real democracy until the election of Jean-Bertand Aristide in 1991. Two US led, directed or authorized coups later (both against President Aristide), they have one again at least in the office of president. But do they really have good reason to rejoice?

Before continuing I must point out that until February 7 Jean-Bertand Aristide was still Haiti's democratically elected President. It's a valid argument to say he's entitled to remain so for the remainder of the time he lost, but he graciously never requested it and now calls Rene Preval "my President." The benighted Haitian people loved Aristide, called him their President and want and expect him to return. They now have every reason to feel the oddest combination of joy and fear as they await future events to unfold without knowing what will haappen.

From behind the scenes, the Washington Chimeres, led by the Haiti Democracy Project (HDP), that is umbilically linked to the US State Department, and its former member and now acting US ambassador Timothy Carney are already sharpening their long knives and beginning their demonization and destabilization campaign to undermine the Preval administration even before it begins. They hope to render it stillborn or at least so falsely tarnished and weakened by a torrent of propaganda it will be unable to function effectively. And if doesn't, they'll blame it on him.

HDP works in conjunction with the so-called Democratic Convergence (DC) of about 200 Haitian political organizations. The DC, in turn, works cooperatively with The Group of 184 Civil Society Organizations (including Haiti's business elites) headed by Haiti's leading industrialist and sweatshop owner, Andy Apaid. These organizations are funded by the notorious US National Endowment of Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI - an arm of NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). These federally funded US organizations function to serve US interests in other countries. They're an arm of US foreign policy in those states not firmly established as reliable "clients" or "at risk" of ending that status. It's their job to support US-friendly regimes and try to undermine those that are not - like Lavalas, Aristide and Preval in Haiti.

It's a wonder Preval got to run at all or was even allowed to, as in the last 2 years the UN Blue Helmets (MINUSTAH) and brutal Haitian National Police (PNH) conducted a systematic reign of terror against the Lavalas party and everyone associated with it. They either murdered, imprisoned or forced into exile or hiding its members, effectively destroying it. There were some who believed that since Rene Preval escaped this fate, it meant he'd been co-opted and convinced to desert his former party and allies and join with those in the interim ruling junta. That suspicion (unproven, of course, and hopefully untrue) only grew as the most beloved and popular man still in Haiti, Father Gerard Jean-Juste, was falsely imprisoned without charge to prevent his inclusion in the election as the candidate the people most wanted. Father "Gerry", as he's affectionately known, did not run and while incarcerated was diagnosed with serious but still treatable leukemia, finally released after a long campaign on his behalf, and is now receiving medical care in Florida. (Read full Text) .

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