Watch here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xjv26e_the-cbc-s-nil-koksal-speaks-with-nicole-phillips-of-the-institute-for-justice-and-democracy-in-haiti_news

The United States, the European Union and the United Nations decided to support Haiti’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections despite believing that the country’s electoral body, “almost certainly in conjunction with President Preval,” had “emasculated the opposition” by unwisely and unjustly excluding the country’s largest party, according to a secret US Embassy cable.

The cable was obtained by WikilLeaks and made available to the Haitian newspaper Haïti Liberté, which is collaborating with The Nation on a series of reports on US and UN policy toward the country.

At a December 1, 2009, meeting, a group of international election donors, including ambassadors from Brazil, Canada, Spain and the United States, concluded that “the international community has too much invested in Haiti’s democracy to walk away from the upcoming elections, despite its imperfections,” in the words of the EU representative, according to US Ambassador Kenneth Merten’s December 2009 cable.

Haiti’s electoral body, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), banned the Fanmi Lavalas (FL) from participating in the polls on a technicality. The FL is the party of then-exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was overthrown on February 29, 2004, and flown to Africa as part of a coup d’état that was supported by France, Canada, and the United States.

This history made Canadian Ambassador Gilles Rivard worry at the December donor meeting that “support for the elections as they now stand would be interpreted by many in Haiti as support for Preval and the CEP’s decision against Lavalas.” He said that the CEP had reneged on a pledge to “reconsider their exclusion of Lavalas.”

“If this is the kind of partnership we have with the CEP going into the elections, what kind of transparency can we expect from them as the process unfolds?” Rivard asked.

Despite the Lavalas exclusion, the European Union and Canada proposed that donors “help level the playing field”—they could, for instance, “purchase radio air time for opposition politicians to plug their candidacies.” They were presumably referring to “opposition candidates” who would come from parties other than the FL.

That plan was nixed by the United Nations, but when the elections finally did take place on November 28, 2010, followed by a runoff on March 20, 2011, Washington and the international donor community played an influential role in determining their outcome.

When the first-round results were disputed, international donors arranged for an evaluation by the Organization of American States, which pronounced that pro-coup candidate Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, 50, a former konpa musician, should face another neo-Duvalierist candidate, Mirlande Manigat, in the final round. Martelly emerged as the victor in the runoff.

Less than 23 percent of Haiti’s registered voters had their vote counted in either of the two presidential rounds, the lowest electoral participation rate in the hemisphere since 1945, according to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Furthermore, the second round was illegal because the eight-member CEP could never muster the five votes necessary to ratify the first-round results.

The December 2009 election donor meeting took place just over a month before the January 12, 2010, earthquake, which derailed the elections originally planned for February 28, 2010.

When the polling was rescheduled, there was even more at stake, primarily how billions of dollars in pledged earthquake aid would be spent and the future of the 11,500-strong UN military force that has occupied Haiti since the 2004 coup d’etat.

According to the December 4, 2009, cable, US officials pushed hard for the election.

Ambassador Merten urged a minimal donor reaction to the FL’s exclusion, saying they should just “hold a joint press conference to announce donor support for the elections and to call publicly for transparency,” because “without donor support, the electoral timetable risks slipping dangerously, threatening a timely presidential succession.”

His cable was classified “Confidential” and “NOFORN,” meaning “Not for release to foreign nationals.”

The US State Department declined to comment on the disclosures in this article, citing a policy against commenting on releases of documents that purport to contain classified information.

Merten explained in the cable that he had opposed FL’s exclusion because the party would come out looking “like a martyr and Haitians will believe (correctly) that Preval is manipulating the election.”

The election’s low turnout has been ascribed to Haitians’ sense of futility in the choice between two unappealing candidates, to a grassroots boycott campaign and, primarily, to popular dismay over the FL’s exclusion, the very issue that gave rise to the December 2009 meeting.

Former President Aristide, who returned to Haiti from exile on March 18, two days before the second round, drove the point home when he declared on his arrival: “The problem is exclusion, the solution is inclusion.”

See original article: http://www.thenation.com/article/161216/wikileaks-haiti-cable-depicts-fraudulent-haiti-election

See IJDH’s take on the elections:

IJDH Director, Brian Concannon Discusses Haiti’s Election Results on Uprising Radio (April 25)

Nicole Phillips on KPFA Radio discusses March 20 Fraudulent Elections (March 21)

June 6, 2011- On April 4, the Haitian government announced that Michel Martelly won the recent fraudulent “elections” imposed on Haiti by the United States, France and Canada, the so-called “international community,” and sanctioned by the United Nations. He did receive 67 percent of the vote, but fewer than 25 percent of the electorate went to the polls in a record low turnout.

Early in the process, Haiti’s electoral council had refused to allow Haiti’s largest party, Fanmi Lavalas, led by widely popular former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to run candidates, somewhat akin to not allowing Democrats or Republicans to run in this country, only more so, since Fanmi Lavalas wins every honest election with overwhelming majorities. Most Fanmi Lavalas members boycotted these “elections.”

First round voting took place on Nov. 28, 2010. Voter rolls contained the names of many of the 310,000 people who had died in the earthquake, and people had no idea where to vote. The number of polling places was reduced from around 12,000 in the last genuinely democratic election in 2000 to fewer than a thousand this time, helping to create the appearance of a large turnout while keeping turnout low. Official results claim that 23 percent of the electorate voted, but on-the-ground observers claim turnout was much lower.

By noon, 12 of the candidates, including Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat, had joined together to denounce the massive fraud and demand the “elections” be cancelled. That evening, however, Edmond Mulet, head of the U.N. occupation force in Haiti, called them both to say they were in the “run-off,” and they withdrew their opposition. Then the results were announced: Manigat first, Jude Celestin, the favorite of then-current President Preval, second, with Martelly a close third.

Protests broke out all over Haiti. The media credited the outrage to Martelly supporters, but people from many political tendencies protested the phony elections, the exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas, the U.N. occupation and the introduction of cholera into Haiti by U.N. troops.

The “international community” sent an electoral commission from the Organization of American States to “recount the votes.” A report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research states: “The amount of votes not counted or counted wrong in this election is huge … Based on the numbers of irregularities, it is impossible to determine who should advance to a second round.” Nevertheless, the OAS decided the “run-off” should be between Manigat and Martelly, in spite of several violations of Haitian law, and Hillary Clinton personally went to Haiti to enforce the message.

Significantly, on Jan. 16, former dictator Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier returned to Haiti from France, made only more relevant by links of both candidates to Haiti’s Duvalierist past connections, which have been unreported in the international press.

Martelly’s ties to the former dictator can be traced to his youth – he joined the Duvalierist death squad, the tonton macoutes, at the age of 15. He later attended Haiti’s military academy. Under Baby Doc, Martelly, a popular musician, ran the GARAGE, a nightclub patronized by army officers and members of Haiti’s tiny ruling class. After Baby Doc’s fall in February 1986, a mass democratic movement, long repressed by the Duvaliers, burst forth and became known as Lavalas, from which emerged Aristide, who was elected president in 1990 by 67 percent of the vote in the first free and fair election in Haiti’s history.

Martelly quickly became a bitter Lavalas opponent, attacking the popular movement in his songs played widely on Haitian radio. Martelly “was closely identified with sympathizers of the 1991 military coup that ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide,” the Miami Herald observed in 1996, and ran with members of the vicious FRAPH death squad from that period, infamous for gang rapes and killing with impunity. On the day of Aristide’s return to Haiti, two days before the “run-off,” Martelly was caught in a video on YouTube insulting Aristide and Lavalas: “The Lavalas are so ugly. They smell like s**t. F**k you, Lavalas. F**k you, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.”

Martelly’s candidacy had significant backing from an anonymous Florida supporter who hired the Spanish public relations firm Ostos & Sola to manage his campaign. This same company secured Felipe Calderón the presidency in Mexico and worked on John McCain’s campaign, so there are powerful forces behind Michel Martelly.

In his first visit to the United States, Martelly met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, officials from the IMF, the World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank, indications of where his allegiances lie. Clinton stated the U.S. is behind him “all the way.” Since his return, Haitian police have violently obliterated three camps of internally displaced persons living on public land in the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, destroying belongings and violently beating people with batons.

In his visit to Washington, Martelly announced his intention to reconstitute the Haitian army, disbanded by President Aristide when he left office in 1995, one of Aristide’s most popular decisions. The Haitian army grew out of the Garde d’Haiti, created by the United States Marines after an almost two decade-long U.S. occupation that ended in 1934. It was developed from the model of the Nicaraguan National Guard, which was established the year before to secure the dictatorship of Somoza after the Marine occupation of that country.

The Garde d’Haiti operated with impunity, was widely hated by most Haitians, and became an important mechanism through which the U.S. controlled events in Haiti. Since Haiti has no external enemies, the purpose of this new army, like the old one, will be to repress the popular grassroots movement led by President Aristide, who was finally able to return to his homeland on March 18 to a massive outpouring of love from his supporters after seven years of exile in South Africa. (See “School of the Americas: The Haitian Case” by Adrianne Aron.)

Haiti now finds itself at a crossroads. On one side is the Lavalas movement, which has won every honest election in which it has participated. Aristide put the needs of poor Haitians ahead of the demands of international and national elites, though by doing so he created powerful enemies. (See Haiti Action Committee’s “We Will Not Forget.”) The Haitian majority has tasted real freedom and democracy and will not willingly return to the bad old days of Duvalier, which makes the army restoration all the more ominous.

On the other side is Haiti’s tiny elite, supported by the “international community” and a 12,318 member U.N. occupation force. They rigged these “elections” in a desperate effort to present an illusion of democracy to the world and to insure that transnational corporations will not find their power and privileges in any way limited in Haiti. They have selected Martelly as the new face of this repression, paid for by an anonymous millionaire in Florida. Baby Doc lurks in the background while he dines in fine homes, unable to leave the country, as a court decides whether or not to charge him with corruption and embezzlement, while ignoring his far more significant crimes against humanity.

The choice could not the more clear: The twice elected Aristide vs. the never elected dictator Duvalier. The impoverished majority vs. an entrenched elite backed by international bankers. A nation born of rebellion against African enslavement vs. the countries of the former slave masters. An economy for all vs. an economy for a few. One person, one vote vs. might makes right. Unarmed demonstrators vs. tanks and death squads.

Haiti needs to be part of the larger global conversation about democracy and repression, so present in world consciousness with the Arab Spring. As in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Honduras, Uganda and other countries, Haitians have been shot dead in the streets protesting, ever since a military occupation overthrew the overwhelmingly popular, twice democratically elected President Aristide in 2004.

The obstacles remain challenging, with the imposition of Martelly and the restoration of the army and Duvalier only the latest ones, but to quote Dr. King, “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Charlie Hinton, a member of the Haiti Action Committee, may be reached at ch_lifewish@yahoo.com.

See original post: http://sfbayview.com/2011/haiti-the-emperor-has-no-votes/

Haiti’s new president is a friend of coup-plotters, fascists, and armed right-wing groups in his country and abroad.

No sooner had Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly been confirmed the winner in Haiti’s deeply flawed presidential election than he jumped on a plane and headed to Washington, where he met with his country’s real power brokers: officials from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the US Chamber of Commerce and the State Department.

Many of Haiti’s poorest citizens were not dissuaded by former singer Michel ‘Sweet Micky’ Martelly’s near-total lack of political experience.

There, he committed his desperately poor country - where some 700,000 people are still homeless as a result of last year’s earthquake - to fiscal discipline, promising to “give new life to the business sector”. In exchange, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave him a strong endorsement. “We are behind him; we have a great deal of enthusiasm,” she said. “The people of Haiti may have a long road ahead of them, but as they walk it, the United States will be with you all the way,” she added.

Martelly, a well-known kompa singer, is an unusual choice to lead Haiti. With no political experience, he represents a clear break with the country’s other democratically elected presidents since the island nation ousted the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and ushered in an unprecedented era of democracy.

The US press billed his victory as “overwhelming”. But with Haiti’s most popular political party, Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas, banned from participating in the election, a vast majority of Haitians didn’t vote. Martelly took the presidency with just 16.7 per cent of the electorate.

Compare this dismal turnout with the election of Haiti’s last two presidents. Aristide, a popular liberation theologian priest, won the presidency twice in landslides where a majority of the electorate voted, first in 1990 and again in 2000. Aristide’s first prime minister, Rene Preval likewise was elected twice by large margins with high turnouts, in 1995 and 2006. In this election, Martelly got two-thirds of the vote — but three-quarters of registered voters didn’t turn up.

It bodes ominously for Haiti, but Martelly may have more in common with Gerard Latortue, the head of state imposed on Haiti following the 2004 US-backed coup d’etat against Aristide. A South Florida talk-show host, Latortue, like Martelly, had no background in politics. But, like Martelly, he did have friends in Washington.  During Latortue’s brief stint in office, 2004 — 2006, Haiti experienced some 4,000 political murders, according to The Lancet — while hundreds of Fanmi Lavalas members, Aristide supporters, and social movement leaders were locked up - usually on bogus charges. Latortue’s friends in Washington looked the other way.

Martelly’s Washington friends include Damian Merlo, his presidential campaign manager. Merlo’s CV should alarm anyone concerned with democracy in Haiti. Merlo has worked for Otto Reich, the Iran-Contra veteran and supporter of coups in Honduras and Venezuela. Merlo has also worked with the International Republican Institute, which — under the banner of “democracy promotion” — funds “civil society” organisations to destabilise governments it deems to be a problem.

During his stint at IRI, Merlo took steps to weaken Brazil’s governing Workers’ Party. Prior to taking on Sweet Micky’s campaign, Merlo beefed up his experience with John McCain’s failed 2008 presidential bid. McCain, interestingly, chairs IRI’s board, and brought Reich on as a foreign policy adviser during the 2008 campaign.

Many Haiti observers may be familiar with the IRI for the key role it played in overthrowing Aristide’s government during his second term. IRI trained and funded various anti-Aristide groups, promoted anti-Aristide propaganda, and, as described in a New York Times feature article in 2006, even worked to undermine political solutions being negotiated with Aristide by the US embassy and the Organisation of American States. Two years earlier, the IRI was also deeply involved in the failed coup against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

Support and campaign

While in Washington, Martelly promised his supporters that he would promote transparency when it came to foreign aid. That openness, however, apparently doesn’t apply to his campaign donations, raising the possibility that he is funded by the same groups which drove Aristide from power in 2004. Martelly admits that he received financial support from foreign sources but, in response to questioning by the Miami Herald, he refused to identify them other than saying they are “people who believe in us”. When pressed, he deflected, telling the interviewer, “you talk to them”.

All told, Martelly reportedly spent some six million dollars on his campaign - the equivalent of $15billion in the US. To put this in perspective, Obama is hoping to spend US$1billion on his upcoming reelection campaign.  These deep pockets were probably the deciding factor in his victory.

It was Merlo, along with right wing Spanish PR group Ostos & Sola with close ties to Spain’s neo-fascist Popular Party, that successfully made-over Martelly’s public persona, putting him in a suit and encouraging him to tone down his rhetoric. These spin doctors counselled him to go from “Sweet Micky” — popular and bawdy entertainer, to the more respectable Michel Martelly — presidential candidate.

Still, some disturbing “Sweet Micky” outbursts bubbled up towards the end of the campaign - troublesome YouTube moments that might have doomed a presidential contender in the United States.  In one, apparently recent, video, Martelly was filmed surrounded by a small group of friends at a club. “All those shits were Aristide’s faggots,” he shouts in kreyol in the candid video, while pulling his T-shirt up and rubbing his belly. “I would kill Aristide and stick a dick up his ass.”  This was followed by an audio recording - also posted on YouTube, accompanied by a photo of Martelly in a suit - in which the candidate denounced Fanmi Lavalas: “The Lavalas are so ugly. They smell like s**t. F**k you, Lavalas. F**k you, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.”

Martelly’s ties with coup-supporting Republicans in the US and neo-fascists in Spain are perhaps the least worrisome of the president-elect’s relationships. His relationship to Haiti’s violent far-right goes way back. It is well known, for instance, that he ran a nightclub frequented by Duvalierists in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. He has also admitted to having joined the Tonton Macoutes - the world-infamous, murderous militia of the Duvalier dictatorships - in his younger days.  Martelly has also spoken freely about his friendships with convicted murderer Michel François and others involved in the coups against Aristide - which Martelly also admits he supported. His famous song, “I Don’t Care” is a rebuff to controversy about such associations.

Obama’s push

Despite all these documented troublesome statements and associations, the Obama administration went to great lengths to ensure that Martelly wound up running in the election’s second round.

Official results in the disputed first round initially had the government-supported candidate, Jude Celestin, placed second, with Martelly close behind in third. Martelly’s campaign alleged widespread fraud and other irregularities. True enough, but it was not clear that the net fraud went against him. When an Organisation of American States “expert” mission was sent in to determine the actual runner-up, they selected Martelly by recounting only a sample of the ballots, without using any statistical inference. The 234 tally sheets that they disqualified turned out to be from areas where Celestin had strong support. Six of the seven members of the OAS mission were from the US, Canada, and France - that is, the countries that supported the 2004 coup against Aristide. When questioned by independent experts from the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (who actually counted all the voter tally sheets in their independent election report), the mission could not explain its methodology.

In fact, the mission’s chief statistical expert - US statistician Fritz Scheuren — admitted that the OAS mission had no statistical basis for its recommendation: to replace Celestin with Martelly. Observers noted that it was also highly unusual - perhaps unprecedented - for an election to be overturned without a full recount.

But that is exactly what happened. The Obama administration insisted that Haiti’s electoral authorities accept the OAS mission’s conclusions and put Martelly on the ballot. Hillary Clinton made a surprise trip to Haiti - in the midst of the Egypt uprising — just for this purpose. Preval was threatened with a cut off of US aid and even with being flown out of the country before his term was up - ala Aristide in 2004 - to pressure him to weigh in with the electoral council — even though the council, by law, is supposed to be independent.

Ultimately, the council never achieved a majority of members to support putting Martelly on the ballot.  But the council’s spokesperson publicly stated that it had, and the election proceeded - with Martelly running instead of Celestin - with legal experts unsure whether the election would have any legal validity.

In short, the US government got its way. Following the deeply flawed first round of elections, Martelly supporters launched violent protests, sometimes attacking other candidates’ partisans. By the time they were over, five people had been killed in the riots. Other disturbing incidents persisted even after Martelly was selected for the runoff ballot. On March 8, for example, three campaign workers for Martelly’s opponent, Mirlande Manigat, were found murdered, their bodies mutilated in apparent signs of torture. The killers remain unknown, as does the motive.

Martelly and the army

To many observers, the violence seemed well-orchestrated, and Martelly conspicuously did or said little to attempt to reign in his raging supporters. Journalist Kim Ives has noted that, during the campaign, Martelly began organising something that looked familiar to the old system of Tonton Macoute “volunteers”.

“For $30, before the election, potential voters could join the Base Michel Joseph Martelly,” writes Ives, “and invest in a pink plastic membership card, with photo, which promises many advantages (such as a job, say) when the Martelly administration comes to power.”

As Ives notes, during the Duvalier period, “every Macoute received a card that afforded him many privileges, like free merchandise from any store he entered, entitlement to coerced sex, and fear and respect from people in general”. The Macoutes became one of the most notorious death squads to wage terror in the region during the Cold War - no small accomplishment.

Considering this history, one proposal Martelly made on the campaign trail is especially alarming. He has promised to reconstitute the Haitian army, which Aristide disbanded over fifteen years ago.

The modern Haitian army was notoriously bloodthirsty. Established by the US military during its 1915–1934 occupation of Haiti, the army has long been denounced as a prolific human rights abuser. Since its 1995 disbanding - following overwhelming support for the measure in a popular poll - its “veterans” (including suspected narco-trafficker, Guy Philippe, and Louis Jodel Chamblain — head of security for Duvalier since his surprise return in January) have played a prominent role in the country’s violent right wing. They were involved in overthrowing Aristide in 2004 and, in the past, have also engaged in occasional attacks on police stations, pro-Fanmi Lavalas communities, and even the presidential palace — sometimes wearing their old uniforms. When the death squad named the Front for the Advancement of the Haitian People terrorised the Lavalas support base following Aristide’s 1991 ousting, it too was headed up by former soldiers - who were also funded by the CIA.

The Associated Press visited one would-be “army” camp just weeks before the second round of elections, encountering men there who proudly acknowledged their role in the 2004 coup. Some had served in the military during Aristide’s first exile, when the army ruled Haiti, killing and raping thousands. The AP called it “a tableaux of the pro-military fringe right, a looming presence in Haiti”.

Some of these “soldiers” and “officers”-in-waiting told freelance journalists just a few weeks later that Martelly had visited their camp during his campaign - certainly an ominous sign of things to come.

In the past, Martelly has made other worrying statements. He has said that, “Haiti needs a Fujimori-style solution” - a reference to Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori’s power grab, when he dissolved Congress — and called for the outlawing of “all strikes and demonstrations” - something his backers in Washington would undoubtedly welcome.

Greg Grandin is a professor of history at New York University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of a number of prize-winning books, including most recently, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan 2009), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, as well as for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/20115413435816393.html

Nicole Phillips is a Staff Attorney at the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. Here she discusses the recent announcement of Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly as Haiti’s new President.

Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly, Haiti’s President-elect, has won the hearts of the international community and foreign press, but enjoys much less enthusiasm from his own citizens. With Martelly at her side, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared at a press conference last week that the election “offered the people of Haiti an opportunity to give voice to their dreams for their country’s future.” The reality that 83.3% of registered voters did not vote for Martelly, however, might make this Haitian honeymoon short.

Despite strong international support for Martelly, he barely made it onto the ballot for the March 20 runoff elections. Martelly came in third place in the first round of elections on November 28, with former first lady Mirlande Manigat and the current government’s party candidate Jude Celestin as the front-running candidates. Only the top two candidates are allowed to proceed to the runoff elections.

Given widespread voter fraud and historically low voter turnout (22.8%) due in part to the illegal exclusion of political parties in the first round of elections, Haitian people, human rights organisations and 12 of the 19 Presidential candidates (including Martelly and Manigat) called for new, fair elections. But rather than supporting new elections, the international community imposed its own idea of democracy. The U.S. government, with the help of the Organization of American States, pressured the Haitian government to alter election results so that Martelly instead of Celestin would be one of the runoff candidates.

The Haitian government caved in to the pressure after the U.S. government revoked visas of several top officials of the Haitian government, threatened to freeze aid money, and sent Secretary Clinton to Haiti, even during the political crisis in Egypt, to insist that the election results be reversed and runoff elections be scheduled promptly. Martelly’s thugs did their part by closing down Port-au-Prince with violent protests after the results were announced. As a result, two right-wing presidential candidates who had received combined support from only 11% of all registered Haitian voters went to the runoff elections.

While seen to Haitians as a president imposed by the U.S. government, Martelly is seen by the U.S. as a “good partner” in reconstruction. The U.S. is contributing $124 million towards one of the first major projects since the earthquake — a new industrial park in Northern Haiti valued at $300 million. The Miami Herald reported that so much is at stake in the project that “some Haiti observers mused that it was perhaps one of the reasons for the United States’ heavy involvement in the Nov. 28 presidential election debacle.” Martelly has assured the international community that he will support projects like this one and any project that “will help exports; anything that will create jobs; anything that will help the private sector.”

But the imbalance in Martelly’s support spells trouble for his presidency. Martelly’s government will need to ask its citizens to make sacrifices in order to implement the reconstruction plans. People will have to endure many inconveniences as damaged cities are reinvested and rebuilt – some might have to relocate their homes and businesses, go without water, government services and even food.

A government can obtain these kinds of sacrifices in two ways: it can develop trust or it can use force. A government elected by 16.7% of the voters, who could chose only parties approved by the outgoing government, will be hard-pressed to develop trust. As 45 members of the U.S. Congress warned Secretary Clinton last October, supporting flawed elections “will come back to haunt the international community by generating unrest and threatening the implementation of earthquake reconstruction projects.” Republican Senator Richard Lugar also warned that “[the] absence of democratically elected successors could potentially plunge the country into chaos”.

Without the support from the people who he needs to govern, President Martelly may have to compel Haitians’ cooperation through force. Martelly’s pledge to bring back the Haitian military, demobilised by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1995 because of its notorious human rights record, suggests that he may already anticipate the need for force. Martelly’s associations with right wing dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and the military coup governments of 1991 and 2004 make Haitians fear he will not tolerate dissent.

Martelly’s real constituency lies with the international community, as evidenced by his pilgrimage to the White House while his presidential results were being announced. Secretary Clinton reciprocated by declaring Martelly’s success “a personal priority for me, my husband and many of us here in Washington”. The reality is that President Martelly is now our man in Port-au-Prince. Secretary Clinton got what she wanted, but now the Administration has an obligation to the Haitian people to ensure that Martelly respects their rights and makes his political honeymoon one to remember for the right reasons.

http://www.thefreshoutlook.com/index.php?action=newspaper&subaction=article&toDo=show&postID=5307