Widening coalition over case of Aristide's fall
Rickey Singh column
Guyana Chronicle
March 14, 2004
THE controversies - in and out of Haiti - over the circumstances of the dramatic downfall of the Aristide presidency, could prove a good opportunity in the pursuit of a full-scale diplomatic offensive by the Caribbean Community in its commendable opposition to the illegal removal from office of an elected Head of Government.
And there were indications last week of efforts being made by CARICOM to build as wide a coalition of interests as possible to deal with the implications of an elected Head of Government being forced out of office by a combination of local armed rebellion and external military intervention.
French and American lawyers were last week simultaneously resorting to legal challenges over the removal of Jean Bertrand Aristide from power on Sunday, February 29, as the deposed Haitian leader kept repeating in exile in the Central African Republic his claim of being a victim of a coup involving America and France.
Jamaica was at the same time working on arrangements to host, for as long as 10 weeks if necessary, Aristide, his Haitian-American wife and their two children, while the deposed Haitian President determines his political options and future.
And Jamaica's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Delano Franklyn, who was integrally involved as a member of his country's negotiating team for a resolution to Haiti's governance crisis, has sketched for public information CARICOM's "peace" initiatives on Haiti.
Franklyn has raised some very pertinent questions on the controversial question whether or not Aristide's "resignation" was a "voluntary or forced action".
The questions would no doubt be relevant to plans to press ahead for a United Nations-sponsored probe into the circumstances of the departure from office of the Haitian President.
Persuaded by information at their disposal, CARICOM leaders who met in Kingston between March 2-3 under Prime Minister P. J. Patterson's chairmanship, were emphatic in declaring:
"The circumstances under which the President demitted office set a dangerous precedent for democratically elected governments everywhere as it promotes the unconstitutional removal of duly elected persons from office..."
It was a concern to be quickly echoed by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, an African nation that had earlier linked its own current tenth anniversary of freedom from the apartheid system as the youngest Black nation, with Haiti's bicentennial anniversary as the oldest Black nation of the world.
African Union
More significantly, by last week, while an interim President and an interim Prime Minister were taking the oaths of office, even as Aristide's loyal supporters passionately demonstrated for his return, the 53-member African Union (AU), meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, were ready to openly echo the sentiments expressed by CARICOM on the dangerous implications of how Aristide was removed from power.
Small though it is in terms of sub-regional groupings, and with no pretence at economic or political muscle, CARICOM is, nevertheless, well placed to influence support among its allies in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group as well as those within the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) and the Organisation of American States (OAS) in mobilising the widest possible demand for an independent probe - all in defence of democratic, constitutional governance.
The fact that President Robert Mugabe's party and government continue to make a farce of democratic government in Zimbabwe and remain guilty of gross human rights violations, should not preclude CARICOM, the AU, the OAS and other groupings of states from fiercely exposing the dangers of foreign powers moving into a sovereign nation with troops and take out an elected Head of State.
Here, in the Western Hemisphere, potential allies would include powerful nations like Brazil - which has already declared its opposition to joining any multinational military force in post-Aristide Haiti - as well as Venezuela, whose President continues to warn against externally-instigated violent demonstrations to oust him from power.
Under Article 18 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, the OAS could be challenged into an emergency session to review Haiti's status in view of the circumstances of Aristide's removal from office.
The unfolding of the CARICOM strategy to secure an UN-sponsored probe into Aristide's loss of power, may coincide with the forthcoming Inter-Sessional Meeting of Community leaders in St. Kitts later this month.
But quiet, coordinated diplomatic initiatives would have to be vigorously pursued well before the St. Kitts meeting, knowing that both Washington and Paris are engaged in their own manoeuvres to undermine efforts for an independent international probe.
Prime Minister Patterson, speaking on behalf of CARICOM, has already made it abundantly clear that post-Aristide arrangements in Haiti have nothing to do with CARICOM's 'Action Plan' for a compromise solution to the Haitian governance crisis. At the core of that plan was for Aristide to be permitted to complete his elected six-year presidential term that ends in February 2006. He was forced to resign and sent into exile.
Grenada-Haiti Lessons
It would be some time yet before we get through the fog of political somersaults and the deceit spun by the U.S.A. and France in relation to CARICOM's Action Plan and Aristide's "resignation" that was quickly followed, within 24 hours, by American, French and Canadian troops on Haitian soil.
Already, however, comparisons are being made between what happened in Haiti on February 29, 2004 - when a hastily-installed Chief Justice as interim President hurriedly "requested" a foreign military presence, and what had occurred in little Grenada on October 25, 1983 when a United States military invasion was reportedly "invited" by the then Governor General - after a "revolution" devoured itself.
It was U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who had stated, following a February 13 Washington meeting with representatives of CARICOM, France, Canada and the OAS, that backed the CARICOM Action Plan, that there was no question of "regime change" in Port-au-Prince since Aristide, for all his faults, was the elected President of Haiti.
However, political subterfuge resulted in things quickly falling apart. The anti-opposition forces in Haiti, by then unofficially embracing criminals and armed rebels on the anti-Aristide warpath, rejected the CARICOM Action Plan - without a word of rebuke from the U.S.A., France and Canada.
The Haitian Chief Justice, Boniface Alexandre, who reportedly signed the letter as interim President to request the multi-national military force, was still not lawfully functioning in that capacity when the troops arrived. His endorsement as interim Head of State must come from a Haitian parliament. But no such parliament is in place.
Some 21 years earlier, then Governor General Paul Scoon of Grenada, also controversially made a "request" for the U.S. military invasion of October 25, 1983. No written evidence was ever produced of that "request", and he was quite safely on board the U.S. warship 'Guam' while the American troops were already swarming across the Isle of Spice, to "free" it from a claimed Cuban involvement in an international communist conspiracy.
There are lessons from Grenada to Haiti on how foreign powers can engage in disinformation and manipulate military intervention in a sovereign state.