Carter Tries to Intimidate Aristide
December 19 to 24, 1990
Haïti-Progrès Staff
Translated by Paddy ColliganWhen the U.S. pretended to applaud the Aristide victory and to congratulate the Haitian people today, didn't they give him a Judas kiss, considering all the maneuvering they had done to steal the election victory? One of the main figures orchestrating this plot was none other than Jimmy Carter, who has reinvented himself as a globetrotter going around the world wherever there are elections and guaranteeing victory to the Balaguers or the Endaras. In Haiti, he would have been quite happy to see Bazin, the protégé on the U.S. payroll for many years, carry off the victory. He did all he could to ensure this. Antoine Izméry, member of the group Onè Respe pou Konstitisyon, [Honor, Respect for the Constitution] spells out precisely how Carter did this in an interview he gave to us on December 18, 1990.
"Sunday afternoon (Election Day)," he reported, "from 3:00 to 5:00 PM, the entire Carter delegation met with Aristide. From the way they spoke, they made it seem like Aristide was going to lose and they wanted him to promise that he would order the people not to go into the streets ( . . . ) Little was made of the fact that this was highly irregular." Earlier Izméry had noted that there were rumors going around, particularly in Miami, that Bazin would be the next president.
Then, according to Carter['s plan], in the middle of Election Day, with crowds of people lining up before polling places, Aristide was already supposed to admit defeat. Can you imagine such arrogance and such interference on the part of a man charged with supervising a delegation of election observers?
When Izméry became aware of this, he did not remain idle but immediately went to the El Rancho Hotel, where the delegation was staying, so he could speak with Carter in person. When Izméry arrived, all the members of the group had left. "I had Carter informed," Izméry continued, "that he would have to take charge of the bloodbath which might take place the day after Bazin became president in the wake of this skullduggery that he was managing. And then I had a drink and waited for Carter to return with his team." Some journalists arrived, among them one from the Washington Post, who knew Izméry and to whom he told this development. "He took some notes," Izméry relates, and then he said to me, 'Antoine, McNamara is right there. Let me talk with him. Is that a problem for you?' I said, 'Not at all.' When he told it to McNamara (former president of the World Bank and secretary of defense under Kennedy), all hell broke lose. They did not want that reported by the press. It was then 8:30 or 9:00. Then, one after another, each member of Carter's team came to see me. ( . . . ). They asked me why I was making such a statement, all the while saying that it was not true, that they wanted to help us, etc."
Antoine Izméry said he was interviewed by Jim Wright, former member of Congress; Andrew Young, former ambassador to the UN and former mayor of Atlanta; Robert Pastor, an academic from Atlanta, and some people whose names he did not know -- at least five people -- all but Carter and McNamara. He was told that he had misunderstood, that it was a question of language and other things like that to calm him down. But Izméry stuck to his position, using the examples of the Dominican Republic as well as Panama where -- he said -- it was only the Canal that the U.S. wanted to defend. "I gave them several examples of this and I told Andrew Young not to forget why he had been fired from his position at the UN -- simply for meeting with Arafat."
Izméry refused to deny his statement to the Washington Post journalist and the only promise which he made was that he would call him and tell him the version held by the Carter delegation "but," he specified, "this would take nothing away from what I said before." Izméry, people know, has the habit of crossing his t's and dotting his i's and is not easily impressed, but you can also see how he was scandalized by Carter's attitude.
So, there it is -- Carter had quite simply decided that Aristide ought to fade away and he was doing his best to intimidate him with that arrogance typical of the United States. Afterwards he realized the scale of his blunder and tried to minimize it, making excuses. But in light of the experiences with Carter in the elections in many countries, we cannot doubt that he wanted to get Bazin through. The case of the Dominican Republic, so close to home, is very much alive in the minds of the Haitians because each of them knows that Carter approved the election of Balaguer, a disciple of Trujillo.
The frustration of the United States is understandable -- after investing millions of dollars in him, constructing his image and promoting him tirelessly for years, their protégé collapsed pitifully at the finish line. Fine words are good but they also serve to sap the vigilance of the Haitian people and that is extremely important. On December 16 Haiti gave a very good example of democracy to the whole world by acting like a civilized and responsible people. In exchange, the U.S. with their flood of "observers," who said they came to give support, did not even have the patience to wait until the end of the voting before resorting to dishonorable maneuvers to block the road to democracy. Like Father Aristide said, the Haitian people wants very much to have friendly relations with the U.S., but with one extremely important condition: that there is mutual respect and complete equality between the two parties.
Haïti-Progrès, December 19 to 24, 1990===============
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