Ian Boyne, Contributor
P.J. PATTERSON and Colin Powell. Two sons of Jamaica. One cast in the role of Supreme Villain, the other as Hero in the Haitian crisis.
Well-known civil rights activist Randall Robinson has scorchingly dismissed US Secretary of State Colin Powell as the most troubling black official in anyone's memory. And the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, dubbed by US Senator Edward Kennedy as "one of the most respected bodies of scholars and policymakers", said on Monday that no one's reputation is "more likely to be tarnished by the role played in bringing down President Aristide's constitutional rule than Secretary of State Colin Powell".
Saying that he had become a "willingly captive of the Bush Administration's obsessive right-wing ideologues", the Council said Powell's Haitian policy was "dazzlingly inept". In a stinging article on Monday which also attacked France, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, the United Nations(UN) and the Organization of American States(OAS) for their inaction in preventing Aristide's fall, the Council said, "reminiscent of Ethiopia's Haile Selassie's mournful appearance before the League of Nations in Geneva in 1936, where he pleaded for help to suppress Mussolini's legions, only the English-speaking Caribbean, led by Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, displayed any spunk in challenging the inelegant US-orchestrated game plan".
The sharply-worded piece from the US capital said, "Mexico's silence over Haiti on the eve of President Fox's visit to the Bush family ranch was sadly understandable, given the Mexican leader's lonely quest for immigration reform, but the silence of the region's other heavy hitters was totally incomprehensible".
Said the Council: "At the end of the day, standing almost alone, it was Jamaica's Prime Minister PJ Patterson who upheld the region's honour by implicitly rebuking the timidity of other hemisphere leaders in their hiding behind 'Jesuitic' reasoning to justify their decisions to be irrelevant, if not indifferent to the fateful interruption of the democratic process in Haiti. Patterson took this stand in spite of the vulnerability of Jamaica's sagging economy and its need for Washington's financial backing." Michael Manley from the grave, as it were, must have been smiling pleasingly at his successor. It is not hard to see why Powell and Patterson could be compared unfavourably in the Haitian scenario. In a February 19 interview on radio with Sam Donaldson, Powell strongly defended Jean-Bertrand Aristide against the rebel attacks he was coming under. In a report prepared by the US State Department itself , Powell is quoted as telling Donaldson that "Since he (Aristide) is the elected leader, we should not be putting forward a plan that would require him to step down. Right now President Aristide is the elected president of Haiti and that is what we are standing behind".
The State Department writer noted that "Armed gangs - have vowed to attack the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince within a week if Aristide does not step down. Powell insisted that these threats must not succeed." Note that very carefully. Now here's the direct quote from Powell: "We cannot allow these thugs to come out of the hills or even an opposition to simply rise up and say "we want you to leave" in an undemocratic, non-constitutional manner. We want this situation to play out in a constitutional manner". That was February 19-not 2002 or 2003, but 2004. By February 29 he had changed his tune completely and was in the media saying what an awful fellow Aristide was.
GOVERNING POORLY
Just this past Monday in an interview with National Public Radio's Juan Williams, Powell said though Aristide was democratically elected he was "governing very poorly. He governed in a way that allowed thugs to take over. He governed in a way that allowed the legislature, frankly, to be unable to do its work and finally had to come out of existence. The police became corrupt and he essentially allowed conditions of chaos to exist".
While on February 19 he rightly attacked the thugs, vowing that they should not be allowed to force out a democratically elected Government and while he had said plainly that "Aristide is the elected president of Haiti and that is what we are standing behind", a few days later he was saying that Aristide had corrupted democracy and was unsupportable. Did his knowledge of the Haitian situation change so dramatically in a few days?
The Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs said in its statement on Monday that "While Powell's rhetoric at the time appeared to represent the high road on the issue, he continuously was being undermined by Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega and White House Aide Otto Reich in their off-the-record briefings to journalists and other interested parties. In contrast to Powell's line, these Press sessions implied that regime change was very much an option and that Aristide could be muscled aside in any negotiation process".
The Council noted that despite Powell's pledge to seek a constitutional solution to Haiti's crisis, "he reversed himself by ignoring Haiti's constitution which stipulates that a president can only convey his resignation to the country's legislature."
AN EMBARRASSMENT TO BLACKS
If Powell had been consistent in his denunciation of Aristide, he would not come out of the Haitian crisis with so much egg on his face. It is a source of embarrassment to people of African descent that Colin Powell is made to seem so contradictory and confused. At least the Caucasian hawks in the Bush Administration have never hidden their aversion to Aristide.
Wilmot Perkins has raised a valid point and that is that it is not enough to note that a person was elected democratically and to behave as though how he behaves between elections is irrelevant to his rule being characterised as democratic. Indeed, we are witnessing increasingly in the world the phenomenon of what Fareed Zakaria calls "illiberal democracies" in his 2003 book The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. We are seeing Governments democratically elected suppress human rights, trample on the rule of law and corrupt national institutions. It is not enough to draw attention to the fact that a particular Government was voted into office.
Colin Powell has the right to comment on how Aristide governed, not only that he was democratically elected. (And keep in mind, too, that the 2000 elections were disputed and were at the heart of the issues that led to his downfall). Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others showed that Aristide violated human rights and persecuted journalists. He did, indeed, have thugs who murdered people and he seemed to have corrupted the police force. He was no saint or pure black hero, as some is mythologising him.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights carried out on-site visits to Haiti in 2002 and issued a report stating that it was "deeply preoccupied by the weakness of human rights in Haiti, the lack of an independent judiciary, the climate of insecurity, the existence of armed groups that act with total impunity and threats, to which some journalists have been subjected." And the OAS Special Rappateur for freedom of expression documented increases in the acts of harassment against journalists.
What is significant about CARICOM's mediatorial effort was that it did not gloss over these problems and, in fact, that CARICOM Prior Action Plan which Chairman Patterson and the group had Aristide agree to contained steps to deal with this issue. It is not true that CARICOM simply wanted to save Aristide and was unconcerned about the quality of his governance. The facts don't bear that out.
THE CARICOM PLAN
On January 31 when P.J. Patterson hosted Aristide in Jamaica and came up with the CARICOM Plan, with the OAS in attendance, measures were outlined to deal with the security issues. The Opposition groups in Haiti had been saying for years that Aristide had not made enough progress on the security issues, which were pivotal to previous OAS resolutions. And, incidentally, while Aristide is totally blamed by some for not holding elections as promised, it is not usually noted that the opposition groups continued to refuse to nominate representatives to the Provisional Electoral Council, a prerequisite for holding new elections under Resolution 822 of the OAS, passed in 2000.
The CARICOM Plan brokered by Patterson included measures to improve the security climate and improve confidence by the Opposition. The CARICOM Prior Action Plan also dealt with such crucial issues as the release of detainees, negotiation for rules for demonstrations, the disarmament of strong-arm groups and the "enjoyment of fundamental freedoms". CARICOM was not cozening up to a repressive Aristide. Indeed, the evidence was that CARICOM was pressuring Aristide to adhere to the finest traditions of Caribbean democracy.
The plan envisaged the establishment of an electoral commission, the formation of a council of eminent persons which has now been adopted by the U.S-inspired regime and the appointment of a neutral and independent Prime Minister. It also called for the formation of a new Government through a process of consultations involving the Prime Minister, the President and the Council and it included the Opposition in a power-sharing arrangement. This was as good and as fair as it gets and is a tribute to the brilliant and well-honed negotiating skills of P.J. Patterson. Not many people know that the Security Council itself had issued a statement deploring the rejection of this excellent plan by Opposition groups. It's inaction prior to Aristide's departure, therefore, is scandalous.
The Opposition had been using one excuse after the other not to co-operate with the Government and had made it clear for a long time that it would accept nothing less than the removal of Aristide. And you have the situation of the world's only Superpower bowing to this rag-tag group of people.
"The coup against Aristide, and by extension the Haitian people, was prolonged, a chronic coup", says the U.S . magazine, The Nation, in its March 22 edition. "One should be clear about the opposition in Haiti right now: Although it includes some very good people, it is largely a group of malcontent career politicians, wealthy businessmen and ambitious power-seekers. It is exactly the kind of 'civil society' opposition the United States encouraged and financed when it was attempting to remove Manuel Noriega in Panama".
HAITIAN DEMOCRACY
Aristide should not be deified. But it is not about Aristide. It is that Haitian democracy however fledgling, however halting, however, imperfect should have been given a chance with the CARICOM Prior Action Plan. The US decision was based on realpolitik and represents the triumph of the Realist school of thinking in the State Department. Colin Powell should have remembered his words just published in the January/February issue of the highly influential Foreign Affairs Journal: "America must stand firmly for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law, limits on the absolute power of the state. Free speech - equal justice. We should stand by these values now and always. Beyond Partnership comes principle."("Partnership and Principle").
It is time Colin Powell stops talking like an Idealist and starts walking like a Realist.
Ian Boyne is a veternan journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
