Following brazen diplomatic arm-twisting, Haitian President René Préval and
his Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) have caved in to U.S.-instigated
pressure to change the Nov. 28 presidential election results.

They are not formally adopting the Organization of American States’ (OAS)
demand that the CEP change its results so that the front-runner, former
first lady Mirlande Manigat, faces pro-coup konpa musician Michel “Sweet
Micky” Martelly in a presidential run-off rather than Jude Célestin of
Préval’s Unity party. Instead, Unity decided to withdraw Célestin’s
candidacy after a late night closed-door meeting on Jan. 25. The party’s
leadership had been split about the move.

This past week, US, UN, and OAS officials made many statements threatening
Préval’s government with dire consequences if it did not follow their
dictates.

“Having officially received the report of the OAS technical mission, the CEP
must now honor its commitment to fully take into account the report’s
recommendations,” UN Under-Secretary General Alain Le Roy said last week,
meaning the CEP must follow the OAS “recommendations.”

“Should the CEP decide otherwise,” he continued, “Haiti may well be faced
with a constitutional crisis, with the possibility of considerable unrest
and insecurity. At this critical juncture, it is vital that the CEP be
allowed to carry out its work without political interference,” not counting
his own, of course.

The climax came on Jan. 24 when US, French, Brazilian, Spanish, and European
Union ambassadors and embassy officials, along with UN Mission to Stabilize
Haiti (MINUSTAH) chief Edmond Mulet, bypassed Préval and directly delivered
an ultimatum to the CEP to announce “definitive results” by Feb. 2 or they
would cut off reconstruction aid and not recognize Préval’s government after
Feb. 7, the constitutionally set limit on Préval’s term. But before it
expired last year, the Unity-dominated Parliament passed a measure extending
Préval’s mandate to May 14, five years after he was sworn in belatedly due
to delays caused by the 2004 coup d’état.

Over the weekend, the US government also yanked the travel visas of 12
Préval associates as well as current and former government officials: Social
Affairs Minister Gérald Germain, former Interior and Health Minister Jean
Joseph Moliere, former Commerce and Industry Minister Jean Francois
Chamblain, former Finance Minister Fred Joseph, West Department Senator John
Joel Joseph, businessman Dimitri Vorbe, Presidential spokesman Assad Volcy,
popular organization liaison René Momplaisir, and Lionel Calixte.

“Washington and its carefully selected allies are telling Haiti what the
results of their election should be,” said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the
Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in a Jan. 23
Sun Sentinel op-ed. “Of course, the election was illegitimate to begin with
because the country’s most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, was
excluded from appearing on the ballot. Mostly as a result of this exclusion,
only about a quarter of Haiti’s voters went to the polls… [The US and
allies']Great Fear is that if the election were to re-run – as it obviously
should be – this arbitrary exclusion… might be called into question.”

At the same time, Washington has been working to stop Aristide’s return from
exile in South Africa. “Haiti needs to focus on its future, not its past,”
tweeted State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.

But the South African Times reported this week that the South African
“government has been negotiating with Haitian authorities, with the help of
the Cuban government, since last year for Aristide’s departure” from exile.
“But his return has been delayed by US concerns that the former Catholic
priest would destabilize the country,” that is, his own, Haiti.

But the popular calls for Aristide’s return have only multiplied since
former Haitian “President-for-Life” Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier
unexpectedly arrived in Haiti on Jan.16. The California-based Haiti Action
Committee put a full-page ad in the Jan. 23 Miami Herald, calling “on the
Haitian government to immediately renew President Aristide’s passport as he
has requested, and to facilitate his return, without any conditions, to the
country of his birth” as well as “on the international authorities,
particularly the United Nations and the United States government, to end
their opposition to President Aristide’s return.” The ad was signed by
dozens of activists, lawyers, journalists, religious figures, artists,
scholars, and celebrities, including actors Harry Belafonte and Danny
Glover, authors Randall Robinson and Eduardo Galeano, filmmaker Oliver
Stone, former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark, Dr. Paul Farmer, Bishop
Thomas Gumbleton, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Meanwhile, on Jan. 21, Duvalier finally held his long awaited press
conference. Saying he had landed at the “Francois Duvalier International
Airport,” as the Toussaint L’Ouverture International Airport had been called
prior to his 1986 departure in the face of a nationwide uprising, Baby Doc
said he had returned “to pay homage to the numerous victims of the
devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010″ and was prepared for “all sorts
of persecution” and “harassment.”

While he offered “condolences to my millions of partisans” who he claimed
were persecuted, brutalized and killed after his departure, he expressed no
apology but only “deep sadness to my compatriots who recognize, rightly,
that they were victims under my Government,” not “of” his government.

Duvalier may find that his “sadness” increases as four former political
prisoners – Michele Montas, Alix Fils-Aimé, Nicole Magloire and Claude
Rosier – filed charges against him on Jan. 19 for “arbitrary imprisonment,
exile, destruction of property, physical and psychological torture, and
violation of civil and political rights,” said their complaint.

This past week, it also came to light that Duvalier may have returned to
Haiti in an effort to get his hands on some $7.6 million that Swiss
authorities have withheld from him. It is due to be returned to the Haitian
government, but under a Swiss law that takes effect on February 1, Duvalier
can reclaim the money if he manages to enter Haiti and leave again without
being prosecuted and convicted of embezzlement.

Even more alarmingly, after Duvalier’s press conference three North
Americans – former Georgia congressman Bob Barr, longtime Duvalier family
adviser and lawyer Ed Marger and lawyer Mike Puglise – took questions from
reporters.

“Marger, who handled most of the queries, said they were there to help
Duvalier collect undelivered reconstruction funds promised by the United
States and other countries at the March 31, 2010, U.N. donors’ conference,”
reported Jonathan Katz of the AP. “He said Duvalier could manage them more
effectively than former U.S. President Bill Clinton and distribute them more
justly than current Haitian President René Préval.”

So Duvalier is not satisfied with the $800 million that he and his cronies
embezzled in the 1980s. He has come back to Haiti to see if he – with Barr &
Company’s help – can make off with some of the $10 billion that other
nations have promised for Haiti’s reconstruction.

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Related articles

• Haiti president: Duvalier should face justice (msnbc.msn.com)
• Pressure mounts over Haiti vote (bbc.co.uk)

The big question Haitians are asking is: who is behind Jean-Claude “Baby
Doc” Duvalier’s surprise arrival in Haiti with an expired Haitian passport
on Jan. 16 aboard an Air France flight from Paris? “I have come here to see
how I can help my country,” he announced, stepping off the plane.

Yeah, right. It is inconceivable that Baby Doc, 59, would return to the
country where there are outstanding criminal proceedings against him without
knowing that some powerful foreigners have his back.

With dozens of Haitian SWAT team police outside and a helicopter hovering
overhead, Haitian government prosecutor Aristidas Auguste and investigating
magistrate Gabriel Ambroise met for about an hour with Duvalier in his suite
at the posh Hotel Karibe in Pétionville on Jan. 18 and then took him
unhandcuffed to their offices downtown for more questioning, before allowing
him to return to his hotel. Ambroise will now weigh the evidence, which
sources say is solid and massive, that Duvalier, his former wife Michelle
Bennett, and other cronies embezzled over $300 million (and by some counts
almost triple that) during the course of his rule from 1971 to 1986.
However, Judge Ambroise’s ruminations might take as long as three months,
which lends the whole episode an air of “grimas,” as they say in Kreyòl, a
face-saving show. Duvalier should have been arrested immediately at the
airport, most Haitians say. Instead, he was escorted by Haitian police and
United Nations occupation troops to his hotel.

“Usually in Haiti a thief gets unceremoniously dumped into a pickup and
carted off to a stinking cell to await trial in a few years or never,”
quipped author and journalist Amy Wilentz on Twitter. Duvalier will await
his improbable indictment dining on grilled conch at the Karibe.

He has this luxury because he has surely received a wink and a nod from
powerful government sectors, even if not the official ones, in either the
U.S. and/or France, the two nations which helped prop up his regime with
economic and military aid. The U.S. also flew Duvalier out of Haiti on Feb.
7, 1986 on a C-130 loaded with his sports cars and motorcycles and his wife’s
furs, while France has hosted his golden exile and protected him from
prosecution ever since.

DUVALIER’S LAWYER IS GERVAIS CHARLES, the head of the Haitian Bar
Association. He makes the dubious claim that the files pertaining to the
charges against Duvalier were all destroyed in the earthquake and that,
anyway, the statute of limitations on the embezzlement proceedings,
undertaken by several governments against Duvalier since 1986, has run out.

But Brian Concannon of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
(IJDH) says this is unlikely. “The statute of limitation on these financial
crimes is something like five years after the last instance of investigation
by a judge into the case,” he said, noting that “a July 3, 2009 order from
the First Court of Public Law of the Federal Court of Switzerland said the
Haitian government had informed it of criminal proceedings against Duvalier
as late as June 2008.”

On Jan. 17, the IJDH along with the International Lawyers Office (BAI) in
Port-au-Prince issued a statement urging the Haitian government “to comply
with Haitian law” by arresting Duvalier for embezzlement on the basis of
rulings and investigations in both Haiti and the U.S..

The statement also pointed to “Duvalier’s human rights violations, including
the torture and disappearances of political dissidents at the Fort Dimanche
prison and other crimes committed by organizations under his control,
including the Armed Forces of Haiti and the Volunteers for National Security
(Tontons Macoutes). Mr. Duvalier is not protected against prosecution by any
statutes of limitations” for these violations because they are “crimes
against humanity, which are imprescriptible under international law.”

Meanwhile, former political prisoners and other victims like youth sports
trainer Bobby Duval and former journalist Michelle Montas (Duvalier’s thugs
destroyed her husband’s radio station in 1980) expressed their outrage that
Duvalier was in Haiti without being immediately arrested and vowed
prosecution.

THE STANDARD STORYLINE BEING REPEATED TODAY IS THAT BABY DOC inherited
Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s repressive dictatorship in 1971 and continued
it until the Haitian people rose up and chased him out of the country 15
years later.

History is, of course, a good deal more complicated than that, and between
the elder and younger Duvalier regimes there are important differences, an
analysis of which can help us decipher, or at least make an educated guess
about, what lies behind Duvalier’s sudden return.

Throughout most of its 207 years, Haiti has had two ruling classes: the
grandon, Haiti’s big landowning class, and the comprador bourgeoisie, an
import-export merchant class based in the coastal cities, primarily the
capital, Port-au-Prince. These two ruling groups carried out a bitter
rivalry for political power in the capital, control of which gave one an
upper hand over the other. This rivalry explains why Haiti’s history is
checkered with at least 32 coups d’état. The grandon often organized rural
militias which would run bourgeois presidents out of the capital, and the
bourgeoisie often ousted grandon presidents with the standing city-based
Army.

Papa Doc, a former country doctor who came to power in a military sponsored
election in 1957, was a classic representative of the grandon, who extract
surplus value from peasants through a form of semi-feudal share-cropping
called the two-halves system or de mwatye. The arch-reactionary grandon were
often hostile to encroaching foreign capitalists, who sought to turn peasant
sharecroppers into starvation-wage-earning workers. This put Papa Doc at
odds with Washington officials, but they needed him as a bulwark against the
spread of communism from revolutionary Cuba, only 60 miles west across the
strategic Windward Channel.

To offset the bourgeoisie’s and Washington’s influence over the Haitian
Army, Francois Duvalier, a student of Machiavelli, established his own
militia, the infamous Tonton Macoutes. Their reign of terror and violence is
legendary, immortalized in Graham Greene’s novel The Comedians and Bernard
Diederich’s and Al Burt’s exposé Papa Doc: The Truth about Haiti Today.

The elder Duvalier used the Macoutes to beat back several
Washington-sponsored (and ratted on) invasions during the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations. But there was a sea-change in 1969 when Papa Doc
received President Nixon’s envoy, Nelson Rockefeller. Shortly afterward,
cheap labor U.S. assembly factories began setting up in Haiti.

When Papa Doc died of natural causes in 1971, he passed the title of
“President for Life” (won in a 1964 referendum that some 2.8 million people
voted for and only 3,234 against) to then 19-year-old Baby Doc, and the
sweat-shop sector began to take-off.

Jean-Claude had gone to Haiti’s finest schools with the bourgeoisie’s
children, developing a taste for fancy women, fast cars, and a less brutish
reputation. He began to offer a “reformed” Duvalierism, called
“Jean-Claudism,” in response to the Carter administration’s call for “human
rights” in Latin America. Carter’s crusade was actually the beginning of a
U.S. policy shift away from strong-arm and corrupt dictators like Duvalier
to facade democracies which were backed by so-called multinational
peace-keeping forces.

The push to reform the Duvalier dictatorship did not stop with Reagan’s
election in 1980 as the old guard Duvalierists had hoped. Jean-Claude did
crack down on journalists that year, exiling many of them. He also married
archetypal bourgeois princess Michelle Bennett. That marriage begat an ugly
new offspring, a kind of Macoutized bourgeoisie, which would become more
familiar to the world during the 1991 and 2004 coups d’état against
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

At the same time, the comprador bourgeoisie was transforming into a more
assembly industry variant, typified by “Jean-Claudiste” and later
coup-backing families like the Apaids, the Bouloses, the Brandts, and the
Mevs.

WASHINGTON BECAME PEEVED AS JEAN-CLAUDE AND HIS CREW SKIMMED OFF MILLIONS of
development aid dollars into Swiss bank accounts, money that was supposed to
build a better roads, water systems and electrical networks to serve
expanding U.S. sweatshops and other foreign investments. Even the Pope
visited Haiti in 1983 and warned that “Things must change here.”

Finally, in 1986, the U.S. decided to give Jean-Claude the boot, fully
expecting they could easily install a puppet in post-Duvalier elections.

Among the democratic activists fighting for that change a quarter century
ago was René Préval, now Haiti’s president. Like activist businessman
Antoine Izméry and radio journalist Jean Dominique, Préval came from Haiti’s
“enlightened bourgeoisie,” which was inspired by the anti-imperialist
struggles of the 1960s and 1970s and dreamed of a democratic Haiti. Préval
along with Izméry were the two who pushed Aristide , a former parish priest,
into the electoral ring for president in 1990 against the neo-liberal
U.S.-backed candidate, former World Bank economist Marc Bazin.

Six years later, Préval himself was Haiti’s president, thanks to Aristide’s
long coattails. But over the past 15 years, he has compromised repeatedly
with the U.S. empire he once vowed to fight, bowing to their demands that
Haiti privatize its state enterprises, lower its tariff walls, and allow
U.S. military aircraft and vessels to enter Haitian airspace and waters any
time they please.

Préval has gradually been turned into a Washington’s patsy, often happily
but sometimes grudgingly, doing its bidding. Until now.

Washington and Préval are presently at loggerheads over the disastrous Nov.
28 elections, which Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council claims should go
to a second round between neo-Duvalierist former First Lady Mirlande
Manigat, who supposedly came in first, and Jude Célestin, the candidate of
Préval’s party Unity.

But the Organization of American States (OAS), acting on Washington’s
behalf, has issued a report that orders Préval to change the second-place
candidate to neo-Duvalierist former konpa musician Michel “Sweet Mickey”
Martelly. “There is nothing to negotiate

in the [OAS] report,” said US ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten. But Préval
is resisting. And this is where Duvalier, his old nemesis, comes in.

Manigat and Martelly are essentially the old and young faces of resurgent
Duvalierism, of which Baby Doc is the living symbol. Célestin is not that
much different; he was, after all, escorted to enlist as candidate by Rony
Gilot, an infamous Duvalierist crony who is today escorting Baby Doc around
Haiti. But Célestin is suspect because “sources in the American government
know that Préval recently sought $25 million from [Venezuelan president
Hugo] Chávez to bankroll [Célestin's] runoff campaign,” complained the
American Enterprise Institute’s Roger Noriega, who as President George W.
Bush’s Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, was an
architect of the 2004 coup against Aristide.

Also among the former dictator’s current escorts is Jodel Chamblain, the
former No. 2 of the death-squad FRAPH during the first coup against Aristide
and a leader of the “rebels” who terrorized Northern and Central Haiti
during the second coup against Aristide.

So we have come full circle. For the first time in 20 years, the
bourgeois-grandon alliance, along with the U.S. and France, have a chance to
install one of their preferred puppets through an election, however patently
bogus, rather than a coup. This is likely why Duvalier is now in Haiti.

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Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier ensconced himself Monday in a high-end hotel following his surprise return to a country deep in crisis, leaving many to wonder if the once-feared strongman will prompt renewed conflict in the midst of a political stalemate.

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By JONATHAN M. KATZ – Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Three international organizations canceled $1.2 billion of Haiti’s debt Tuesday, freeing up millions of dollars each year for the deeply impoverished Caribbean nation that is beset by humanitarian crises.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund said their boards decided this week to forgive Haiti’s obligations to the two organizations, a move that triggered previously announced debt relief from the Inter-American Development Bank.

The actions erased nearly two-thirds of Haiti’s outstanding debt. As of April, Haiti owned more than $1.9 billion, according to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

“This is a pretty big victory, definitely. This is what we’ve been wanting,” said Dan Beeton, an analyst with the center, said by phone from Washington. “It’s a shame it had to take so long.”

Until now, the desperately poor country, where more than 80 percent of its approximately 9 million people live on less than $2 a day, has been paying about $1.6 million each month to the World Bank, according to debt relief advocates at the Jubilee USA Network.

A significant portion of the debt forgiven Tuesday dates back to loans that lined the pockets of Haiti’s dictators, especially Francois “Papa Doc” and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, whose father-son dynasty ended in a 1986 popular rebellion.

Haiti was added to the World Bank and IMF’s debt cancellation program for heavily indebted poor countries in 2006. The Inter-American Development Bank previously approved debt relief for Haiti, pending its completion of that program.

But it took several years for Haiti to implement reforms that included auditing government accounts, adopting a law on public procurement and strengthening tax and customs administration, as well as debt reporting. Other steps included approving an AIDS prevention and treatment plan, financing school tuition for children and improving immunization rates.

That was accomplished in spite of years of turmoil, including last year’s food riots that toppled the prime minister and four tropical storms that killed some 800 people and caused more than $1 billion in damage.

Finance Minister Daniel Dorsainvil praised the announcement in a statement issued through the World Bank, saying the millions freed up from debt payments “will help us invest in growth and poverty reduction programs.”

Others were skeptical about the benefits of the move. Haitian economist Kesner Pharel said debt forgiveness will make it far more difficult for Haiti to get new loans, impeding the government’s ability to finance much-needed improvements in infrastructure and other areas.

“I don’t see the government for the next five to 10 years having a lot of money. It’s a bad idea. It’s a cost, not a benefit,” Pharel said.

Haiti is the 26th country to have its debt forgiven under the initiative, a list that includes Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Honduras and Bolivia.

Associated Press writer Jennifer Kay in Miami contributed to this report.

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