By Kevin Edmonds, NACLA

While the pres­i­den­tial can­di­dacy of rapper/entertainer Wyclef Jean in Haiti’s upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial and leg­isla­tive elec­tions has gar­nered much inter­na­tional atten­tion, under­neath the glare of this hype are the con­tin­ued assaults on the country’s demo­c­ra­tic process. Much is at stake in this key elec­tion, sched­uled for Novem­ber 28. The win­ner will be respon­si­ble for the colos­sal task of rebuild­ing the nation’s shat­tered infra­struc­ture and psy­che after the Jan­u­ary 12 earth­quake. Jean’s glitz and glam­our have stolen inter­na­tional head­lines (despite Haiti’s August 20 rul­ing deny­ing him the can­di­dacy), how­ever, the real story is that the country’s strongest and most pop­u­lar polit­i­cal force will again be excluded from these elections.

The United States and the prin­ci­pal inter­na­tional power bro­kers have stated over and over again that the pro­mo­tion of a sta­ble and demo­c­ra­tic polit­i­cal process is a pri­mary goal in Haiti. How­ever, inter­na­tional elites con­tinue to sup­port and fund an elec­tion that openly excludes the polit­i­cal party Famni Lavalas, the party founded by for­mer Hait­ian pres­i­dent Jean Bertrand Aris­tide. Not only has Lavalas been excluded from Haiti’s polit­i­cal process by the country’s Pro­vi­sional Elec­toral Coun­cil (CEP), its sup­port­ers are con­tin­u­ally intim­i­dated and vio­lently sup­pressed by a United Nations army that con­tin­ues to be in Haiti six years after the 2004 coup that ousted Aris­tide from the pres­i­dency. The CEP and the United Nations Sta­bi­liza­tion Mis­sion in Haiti (MINUSTAH) con­tinue to work in coor­di­na­tion with each other to make sure only the Hait­ian and inter­na­tional eco­nomic elite have their say in the country.

Though its stated mis­sion is peace­keep­ing, MINUSTAH has also taken a polit­i­cal stance in the coun­try. Since the UN army has been in Haiti it has worked with inter­na­tional elites to actively oppose the kinds of poli­cies that Lavalas was pro­mot­ing before its vio­lent ouster. Lavalas, for exam­ple, attempted to halt the pri­va­ti­za­tion of pub­lic util­i­ties, raise the country’s abysmally low min­i­mum wage, and pur­sue demands that France begin to pay the his­toric $21 bil­lion debt owed to its for­mer colony.

Since the coup, MINUSTAH and Hait­ian police have con­tin­u­ally referred to Lavalas sup­port­ers as “ban­dits,” which they have used to jus­tify ille­gal arrests and extra­ju­di­cial killings. MINUSTAH has killed civil­ians in Port-Au-Prince’s slums, specif­i­cally in the Lavalas strong­holds of Bel Air and Cité Soleil, silenc­ing the demands of self deter­mi­na­tion and socio-economic jus­tice of the peo­ple in these neigh­bor­hoods. MINUSTAH’s shoot-first tac­tics have been well doc­u­mented, and Haiti scholar Peter Hall­ward has com­piled a lengthy list of human rights abuses and out­right mas­sacres by MINUSTAH in his book Damming the Flood (pp. 275–310). The ter­ror and intim­i­da­tion of Lavalas sup­port­ers has con­tin­ued through­out Pres­i­dent René Préval’s term in office, espe­cially dur­ing the six months fol­low­ing the earthquake.

Though Pré­val, an Aris­tide pro­tégé, orig­i­nally ran on a pro­gres­sive ticket, he has since refused to sup­port a bill that would have increased Haiti’s pal­try min­i­mum wage and has not allowed Aris­tide to come out of exile. Now his admin­is­tra­tion faces social unrest due to the slow progress of post-earthquake recov­ery. The unrest, in large part, has taken the form of pub­lic demon­stra­tions orga­nized by sup­port­ers of Lavalas, still con­sid­ered to be the main polit­i­cal vehi­cle for Haiti’s poor, who make up 90% of the pop­u­la­tion. MINUSTAH has responded to these pop­u­lar demon­stra­tions with repres­sion, and has upheld Haiti’s inter­nal process that has excluded Lavalas from the elections.

As the prin­ci­pal offi­cial elec­toral insti­tu­tion in the coun­try, the CEP has banned the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Lavalas and 14 other polit­i­cal par­ties in the upcom­ing Novem­ber elec­tions. While under Hait­ian law the Préval-picked CEP does not have the legal author­ity to exclude any legally rec­og­nized polit­i­cal party, it has con­tin­ued to ignore both inter­nal and inter­na­tional pres­sure to reverse its deci­sion. Indeed, it seems to have made a habit of under­min­ing Lavalas’s efforts to take part in the demo­c­ra­tic process.

In the run-up to the 2006 elec­tions, for exam­ple, the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment impris­oned a pop­u­lar Lavalas pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, Father Ger­ard Jean Juste, on a bogus mur­der charge in an effort to block him from tak­ing part in the elec­tion. While in prison Jean Juste was unable to ful­fill the CEP’s demand of reg­is­ter­ing in per­son, and was banned from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the election.

This was just the begin­ning. In the 2009 Sen­ate elec­tions, in which 12 seats were con­tested, every Lavalas can­di­date was banned by the CEP on pro­ce­dural grounds. Despite Lavalas’s punc­tual sub­mis­sion of a list of its can­di­dates, the final list was rejected by the CEP because it did not have the orig­i­nal sig­na­ture of Aris­tide, who was the leader of the party despite his forced exile in South Africa. The spon­ta­neous cre­ation of this new require­ment seemed to be a bla­tant effort to block Lavalas’s par­tic­i­pa­tion and led the party to call for a boy­cott of the elec­tion. The voter turnout for the elec­tion was a measly 3–5% of the pop­u­la­tion – a clear sig­nal that Haitians rejected the elec­tion, and another indi­ca­tion of Lavalas’s immense pop­u­lar support.

In Novem­ber 2009, after the CEP announced the dates for the 2010 elec­tions, Famni Lavalas com­plied with all of the known legal require­ments and prepa­ra­tions to par­tic­i­pate. Aris­tide sent the CEP the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments with his orig­i­nal sig­na­ture and an accom­pa­ny­ing cer­tifi­cate from a Hait­ian notary, which autho­rized Lavalas rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dr. Maryse Nar­cisse to for­mally reg­is­ter the party for the elec­tions. Aris­tide appeared on the local radio sta­tion Radio Sol­i­dar­ity to con­firm that the party had fol­lowed all nec­es­sary require­ments. Once again the CEP dis­qual­i­fied Lavalas due to its fail­ure to sub­mit the proper doc­u­ments for the 2009 Sen­ate elec­tions, not the 2010 elec­tion. Street marches and spon­ta­neous protests ensued.

On August 20, the CEP ruled against the can­di­dacy of Wyclef Jean, as he did not meet the res­i­dency require­ments to par­tic­i­pate in the elec­tion. Jean pre­vi­ously viewed him­self as Haiti’s Bob Mar­ley, but in a recent inter­view with Time mag­a­zine, he likened him­self to another entertainer-turned states­man, Ronald Rea­gan, a fright­en­ing com­par­i­son for Haitians, given Reagan’s fer­vent sup­port for the Duva­lier dic­ta­tor­ship in the 1980s and the advent of eco­nomic neolib­er­al­ism dur­ing his term in office — with his enthu­si­as­tic sup­port. In one of Jean’s songs he sings “If I was pres­i­dent… instead of spend­ing bil­lions on the war, we can use some of that money, in the ghetto.” But given Jean’s stated ded­i­ca­tion to neolib­eral poli­cies, “if he was pres­i­dent,” he would be much more likely to carry out the wishes of the domes­tic and inter­na­tional busi­ness com­mu­nity, than those of the des­per­ately poor major­ity that he claims to rep­re­sent. With all the media cov­er­age on Haiti’s elec­tion fad­ing away with Jean’s depar­ture, it is unclear which remain­ing can­di­date he will endorse, but the can­di­date cer­tainly won’t be from Lavalas.

https://nacla.org/node/6700