U.S. TRIES TO MANIPULATE HAITIAN ELECTION
By G. Dunkel
26 Nov 2000--The strings pulled by the "invisible" government of the CIA and the Pentagon became a little more visible in the violence, chaos and coup attempts before the Haiti's presidential election scheduled for Nov. 26.
Of course, Washington's campaign against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the candidate expected to win the presidency, has many angles. The major big-business press have published a series of articles smearing Aristide. The U.S. State Department is still complaining about the parliamentary elections last May 21. Then the Haitian election board followed its own rules and Haitian law rather than the wishes of the U.S. government.
Until 1990 the Haitian army chose the president. If the people dared to go to the polls--as they did on Nov. 29, 1989--the army drowned the election in blood by machine- gunning those standing in line. The U.S. government, which financed and trained the Haitian army, uttered a few mild reproaches but did nothing to stop it.
The 1990 election marked a turning point. Aristide, a radical priest who made his mark in championing the poor against the Duvalier dictatorship and the Tonton Macoutes death squad, decided to run. The masses stood up and voted him into office, sweeping aside Marc Bazin, the candidate backed by millions of U.S. dollars.
The Haitian army overthrew Aristide less than a year after he became president.
U.S. TRAINS POLICE FORCE
The coup years were murderous. Over 5,000 people resisting the army were killed. Washington allowed Aristide to return only when he promised to step down at the end of what should have been his five-year term. The last thing he did before leaving office was to disband the army.
The FBI and various other big-city U.S. police departments trained the new Haitian police force. Its officers were carefully selected from among former army officers. Having no standing army was more of a bother than a real hindrance to controlling Haiti, at least in the eyes of the people in charge of the police training.
In the 1995 elections René Préval, an ally of Aristide, was elected president. A reactionary bourgeois grouping controlled parliament. The elections drew little popular interest.
This year, however, when Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party contested all the seats in parliament, the masses turned out and gave it a resounding victory. It won 19 of 20 seats in the Haitian Senate and a solid majority in the lower house.
The votes had to be counted by candlelight, without air- conditioning or even fans in most of the country. But the tallies were ready quickly, candidates were notified and most Haitians felt the process was fair.
But not the U.S. government. It criticized the way winners were calculated, the way voters who were illiterate were helped, the way that ballots were stored after they were tallied and so on.
As late as the end of October, Donald Steinberg, the State Department's special Haiti coordinator, told the New York Times, "It's essential that we reach a resolution on the May 21 elections and proceed as rapidly as possible to presidential elections so that we can have a smooth transition on inauguration day."
COUP PLOT EXPOSED
In early October a different transition was sketched out. Eleven senior police commanders tried to stage a coup. Their plot was uncovered and they fled to Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. A U.S. citizen gave some of them a ride out of the country. That person is now under arrest.
According to a report in the weekly newspaper Haiti Progress, U.S. Special Forces trained these police chiefs. Former Pétionville Police Chief Goodwork Noel was trained with them but decided not to participate in the plot. Noel went to Haiti Progress and told the story instead.
Haitian-born U.S citizens who met obstacles trying to vote in the recent U.S. presidential election said they were reminded of past elections in Haiti.
Merleine Bastien, president of the group Haitian Women of Miami, told a Newsday reporter: "I think about Haiti and all the people who died with a ballot in their hands, all the people who voted while bullets were raining down on them. Here, on Election Day, intimidation and threats and fear rained down on the people."
