Le Nationaliste Progressiste: 2011

During the last four months, Haiti experienced violent political uprising, a shocking reemergence of an ex dictator, dubious recount of fraudulent votes and a historic debate between candidates Mirlande Manigat and Martelly ahead of their run off elections on March 20. However, none of these events generated as much excitement in Haiti as the second coming of twice elected and twice deposed, ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide ending his seven-year exile in South Africa.

The former president landed in Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture Airport on Friday morning onboard a private jet and emerged to a greeting mob of journalists and supporters eager to catch a glimpse of him. “The problem is exclusion,” he proclaimed in his address to supporters. “And the solution is inclusion, inclusion for all Haitian people as human beings,” he continued.

Aristide became the first democratically elected president of Haiti in February 1991, but suffered a military coup seven months later. He reclaimed office in 1994 aided by President Clinton and his 20,000 U.S. marines. He overwhelmingly won the presidency again in 2001 with 92 percent of the vote, but large-scale insecurity, mismanagement, drug allegations and chaos resulted in political unrest and another coup in 2004. While the Bush administration called his ousting a voluntary departure, Aristide maintained that the Americans kidnapped him and his family, and forced them into exile.

His speech in the VIP lounge of the airport unloaded a mixture of poetry, languages, nostalgia, parabolas, sympathy, emotions and gratitude. “If you could put your ears close to my chest,” he said. “You would hear and feel my heart’s fastest rhythm singing a soothing melody of healing for Haiti our mother who need to inhale the air of dignity to outlive shame,” he told supporters. “If my heart was a house, I would know how many rooms all the victims would need so they could stop sleeping on the streets, in the mud and under tents,” he said. The crowd listening to his remarks outside the airport reacted jubilantly as it grew exponentially. One ecstatic supporter, Jean-Exeter Versailles, 33, told the Time: “He represents our father. I’m happy to welcome my father back home.”

Actor Danny Glover who shared the trip home with Aristide exclaimed, “It’s one of the most beautiful moments for the Haitian people,” speaking to the Associated Press (AP). “It is a historic moment for the Haitian people,” he added. Glover is a long time friend and strong supporter of ex-President Aristide. “I flew to Johannesburg to accompany my friend back home. We have a long history together. He is my friend and I am in support of his return to help the Haitian people rebuild, to be a part of all the wonderful things that he championed as president,” Glover told Agence France Press.

The Provisional Electoral Council barred Aristide’s party, Fanmi Lavalas, from participating in the recent elections on some technicalities, a sobering moment for the popular leader whose aides feared if he waited until the next inaugural address, he could be in exile forever. In spite of tremendous pressure from the U.S. to prevent or delay Aristide’s trip home, his persistence materialized. Thousands of cheering fans greeted him at the airport as security struggled to get him inside.

President Obama and the United Nations characterized Aristide’s return to Haiti two days before the scheduled second round of the elections as a destabilizing factor that could potentially derail an already delicate process. According to some polls, popular singer Michel “Sweet Micky Martelly, 50, enjoys a two-point lead over Manigat a 70-year-old academician and former first lady: Martelly 50.8 percent to Manigat 48.2 percent with a 1.27 percent margin of error. As they draw big crowds on the campaign trail, some of their rallies got increasingly violent prompting several organizations to denounce the acts.

For his part, Aristide not only denounced violence, but also insisted that he had no political ambitions and wanted to contribute to the rebuilding of the shattered country. Speaking to Democracy Now, a news organization who covered his homecoming trip, the former leader reaffirmed, “I share their happiness, I share their hope. I renew my commitment to help the in the field of education and when we move together toward such a goal, a difference will be made.” While both of the candidates strategically declared their support for the former leader to return home, little surfaced about their willingness to solicit his help or even keep him in the country once elected. Meanwhile, Aristide remains largely popular among an electorate hungry for strong leadership. His bodyguards and the police had to use tear gas to get him inside his home in Tabarre near the capital as thousands struggled to touch him. At least for now, his fans eager for directions will have to decipher his coded message. “We’re going to stay wherever he is until he tells us what to do,” said 44-year-old minibus driver Tony Forest to the AP, “We will vote for the candidate he picks.” However, many think tanks argued that Aristide, a deliberate metaphorical speaker, already delivered his message to his followers. Meanwhile, the anxious nation waits for the voting polls to open on Sunday to choose their next leader.

Rapadoo,

Aristide returns to Haiti | Philadelphia Inquirer | 2011-03-19 – Philadelphia Inquirer(news.google.com)
Haiti: Aristide returns – War On Terror News (news.google.com)
Thousands greet Aristide in Port-au-Prince – UPI.com (news.google.com)
Presidential Run-Off Scheduled for Sunday in Haiti (lezgetreal.com)
Jean-Bertrand Aristide exile ends with rapturous welcome home to Haiti (guardian.co.uk)
Aristide spends first full day home as Haiti’s vote looms – Montreal Gazette (news.google.com)
Haiti: “Would Kill Aristide” Says Presidential Candidate Martelly in Video(conversationswiththelivingofficial.wordpress.com)
Presidential Run-Off Scheduled for Sunday in Haiti (pinkbananaworld.com)
Aristide makes triumphant Haiti return before vote (reuters.com)
Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide prepares to head home (telegraph.co.uk)
Aristide makes historic return to Haiti (redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com)
Aristide not on Haiti ballot but on voters’ minds (reuters.com)
You: Haitians face crucial presidential run-off vote (france24.com)
As election nears, Aristide returns to Haiti – Boston Globe (news.google.com)

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Manigat and Martelly's Real Opponents in the Haitian Presidential

Former first lady and presidential candidate Mirlande Manigat has written several books over her professional career, including her 2002 publication, Etre Femme in Haiti Hier et Aujourdhui that explored the evolution of women in Haitian society throughout its history. Her counterpart, Michel Martelly, spent the latter half of his 49 years writing an interesting chapter of Haitian culture through his music, most importantly, by bridging the gap between “classical Kompa”—ethnic Haitian music—and the “nouvelle generation Kompa” of the 1980s. As the two candidates travel the country ahead of the second round run-off generating excitement and accumulating votes, it is ironical their fiercest opponent is not each other.

The increased competitiveness of the run-off has baffled academia and political communities prompting scholars to compile lists of characterizations depicting Martelly as an unqualified, irrational candidate. Martelly had alarming deficiencies in education, statesmanship, and principles of morality; hence, should not have even passed the first round, let alone seriously challenging Manigat for every vote in the second round, they reasoned. Although not misplaced, those pointed criticisms revealed a veil of ignorance in academia. They have grossly underestimated Martelly’s enormous popularity, his ability to excite fans as an accomplished entertainer and the electorate’s fatigue of the political elite’s abysmal failures.

Sympathizers of the Martelly bandwagon have expressed in a common, frustrating tone: “We have tried intellectuals from academia since inception and they have produced absolutely nothing, it’s time to take a chance on the unconventional,” a rationale that is not misplaced either. Evidently, that segment of the population has lost faith in the intellectuals and their leadership abilities, indicating a hunger for some pragmatic leadership. Therefore, these fans have not only acknowledged Martelly’s shortcomings, but have also embraced them in the name of change.

Calling Martelly unorthodox or irrational is by no mean an exaggeration. Far from being a conformist, the popular singer had never placed morality and conventional wisdom at the forefront of his agenda nor had me made any effort to hide it. Consequently, he has struggled to establish the difference between “Sweet Micky” the entertainer who takes his pants off on stage to entertain his fans and Michel Martelly, the candidate who vows pragmatism and radical changes in the country’s political structure. As he staked his claim to the presidency, the past that brought him so much fame has constituted, thus far, his steepest challenge.

His carefree attitude, open admission of illicit drug use, sexually explicit recordings, indecent exposures on stage and attacks on education have provided his opponents plenty of ammunitions to motivate defectors whom have complained: “We [Haiti] are so bad now, anybody thinks he/she can be president, even Micky.” This has in fact been the recurring theme in Manigat’s campaign. “Vote morality,” would invoke the former first lady struggling with her own demons.

Her opponents perceive the Sorbonne-educate, PhD scholar, author and educator as the face of academia, a stoic reminder of the Haitian political élite and everything that has gone wrong with the country over the past two centuries. Nevertheless, those perceptions have not been her toughest challenge. She could easily crush the competition had she been able to overcome inherent gender-based inequities inhibiting a significant segment of the electorate. “She is a woman,” many often reasoned, “What could she do when facing tough diplomatic upheavals?” That line of rhetoric is similar to the barrage of ideological deterrence Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faced, in 2008, during her race with President Barrack Obama for the democratic nomination. On the campaign trail, Secretary Clinton often compared herself with male figures to gain the respect of her male constituency and signal her toughness and resolve.

This parallel between Manigat and Clinton illustrates the depth of on Manigat’s challenges. If the gender gap could negatively affect Secretary Clinton in the US, a modeled democracy, its influence would be even more disastrous in Haiti, a country with little History in civil rights and virtually no systematic legislative authority in human rights. If elected, Manigat would become the first woman to run the highest office, a historical accomplishment not welcomed by many.

On the campaign trail, Manigat embraced her femininity and even argued that it was the kind of revolution Haiti necessitated to cause a rupture in the discriminating elitism of the reigning political class. Meanwhile her ability to break the famous glass ceiling remains, to a large extent, in the hands of that important segment of the population who believes that male dominance is a divine authority. Similarly, Martelly’s success depends on his ability to divorce his past and win over voters who feel that immoral leaders are unfit for the presidency.

Rapadoo,

Monday, January 17, 2011

Puzzling Re-emergence of "Baby Doc" Duvalier in Haiti

As the ousting of Tunisian dictator Ben Ali sent shock waves and fear through the Arab world, ex-dictatorJean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier stunned the Western world with his surprised return on Jan. 16, 2011, developments that left political pundits puzzling. “It’s such a critically important moment for Haiti and this guy to drop in from nowhere is very strange,” said Robert Maguire, associate professor of International Affairs at Trinity University in Washington, D.C. to the Miami Herald. “What does he bring to Haiti, aside from a lot of confusion. Does he come back with political pretensions? We just don’t know,” he added.

Amid massive anti-government demonstrations that originated in Gonaives, north of the capital, Duvalier and his wife, Michelle Bennett boarded an US military aircraft in destination to France on Jan. 7, 1986 leaving the power he inherited from his ill father, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, in 1971. The self-proclaimed president for life ruled Haiti with an iron fist through his infamous personal militia “tonton macout” causing a massive migration of Haitians to the shores of Miami.

He came to help his country he told flocks of reporters behind the shield national police and UN peacekeepers. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive expressed disbelief claiming his government knew nothing about Duvalier’s return until he was airborne. “This time I’m totally lost. No way I’m going to believe the French didn’t know,” Bellerive told The Miami Herald. “We’re informed one hour before he landed with his passport ‘perime’ (expired) so this should at least have brought some attention!”

Duvalier’s Air France flight landed at Toussaint Louverture Airport shortly before 6 p.m. where he met a sea of reporters desperately trying to catch a glimpse of him. After waiting about four hours in the diplomatic lounge at the airport, the 59-year-old emerged to a growing, cheering crowd and left quickly in the back seat of an SUV.

Duvalier left the diplomatic community speechless as his well-orchestrated return caught everyone by surprise. As many scholars scramble around for more information about the intentions of the former dictator, “At least in the short term, the Haitian political chessboard has changed and changed utterly,” said Robert Fatton, Jr., a government and foreign affairs professor at the University of Virginia. “We need more information from the French, the United States and the Haitian governments before arriving at a sensible idea of this event.”

Meanwhile, Duvalier told Radio Caraibes. “I’m not here for politics, I’m here for the reconstruction of Haiti.” Veronique Roy, his longtime companion, told reporter he planned to stay three days and will hold a news conference on Monday.

Rapadoo,

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Anniversary Media Blitz of Haiti (1)

Still strong one year later

Port-au-Prince, Haiti— Year 2010 was arguably the longest of Haiti’s 206-year history, reflect some historians on the plurality of unprecedented events taken place in the country starting on January 12. Some recalled with upmost clarity and disbelief as global television screens bled horrific images of apocalyptic episodes seared into memory months after months. If the magnitude 7.0 earthquakes did not steal someone’s mom, dad, uncle, limbs, friends or neighbors— at the very least, it stole barrels of tears. As the first anniversary sneaks up on surviving Haitians, buckets more will flood the overwhelming emotions they will feel on that day.

While no stranger to chaos of catastrophic proportions, nothing could prepare Haitians for such a tumultuous year. Historically, Haitians have survived their colonial overlords, imperial invaders and occupiers, several violent revolutions, authoritarian dictators, political mediocrity and international dismissal; nevertheless, the succession of ill-fated events of 2010 was inconceivable even by wildest Hollywood accounts.

With an estimated population of 9.8 million people, 3 million of whom lived in the epicenter of the earthquake, the loss of life was colossal. Novices to earthquakes, Haitians—young or old-- had nowhere to run, no one to turn to, no emergency response system in place or any infrastructure to provide shelter as more than 230,000 lives succumbed to 20 million cubic meters of cement blocks.

Consequently, the immediacy with which the world responded to the devastation captured hearts and mind of Haitians everywhere. Global pledges did not lack empathy, monies, non-governmental organizations (NGO), UN peacekeepers, philanthropists, and regular humanitarians to help the victims, nor did they lack unscrupulous child traffickers and other type of criminals seeking to prey on the vulnerable. Worldwide media migrated to Haiti and, according to their coverage, were in culture shock seeing inhumane condition humans lived in.

News organizations told tales of a prehistoric people living on less than two dollars a day, led by a government deeply rooted in corruption. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, they emphasized, lacked fundamental necessities, infrastructure, and leadership and would be lost absent a strong international humanitarian presence. It was the story of a population, nearly 50 percent of which was illiterate, caught in the pre-industrial era, and then there were survivor stories, amazing rescue images.

For Haitians however, confusion, gargantuan losses and chaos highlighted their side of the story. It was about finding moms, teachers, husbands, sons and daughters muted by the debris or among burning corpses on the roadsides. Their story featured another routine foreign invasion with more than 12,000 uncontrollable NGOs carrying a $1-billion purse donated on behalf of the affected and 24,000 foreign troops sometimes bearing contemptuous residual sentiments from a lengthy history of crippling international policies. It was a race against time and the gripping suspense of unpredictability.

The Haitian saga evolved in sporadic leaps and bounces over the last 12 months with hundreds of aftershocks, ineffective governance, temporary shelters turned into permanent housing, rapes, floods and Tropical Storm Thomas. Furthermore, imported cholera snatched more than 3,500 additional lives, including 45 voodoo lynching prompted by ignorance and fear. Post-election violence soon stole the headlines prompting Edmund Mulet, UN’s top man in Haiti, to threaten to disown them unless government officials changed existing discourse.

Please read part 2 below:

Rapadoo,

via Rapadoo Observateur www.rapadoo.com

Voodoo Killings Reportedly Rise in Haiti (time.com)
W5: Haiti a year after the quake (ctv.ca)
Cholera could hurt Haiti’s rice crop (cnn.com)
Why desperate Haitians want to kick out UN troops | Isabeau Doucet (guardian.co.uk)
Help For Haiti Slow, Frustrating (npr.org)
MIT Launches Phone-Enabled Work Site for Haiti (readwriteweb.com)
OAS Removes its Special Representative in Haiti for Telling It Like It Is About UN Peacekeeping Mission (hcvanalysis.wordpress.com)

Anniversary Media Blitz of Haiti (2)

Please read part 1 first

Still strong one year later

Largely under the media’s radar, encouraging signs of progress offered glimpses of hope to many Haitians, including the emergence of an ambitious 20-year plan promising the reinvention of Haiti’s education system with a projected $4.3 billion expenditure over a two-year period. In addition, this plan would provide free or nearly free education from kindergarten through the 12 grades and a new $15 million 320-bed teaching hospital would be constructed in Mirebalais, a town in central Haiti. The government would also build 625 new primary schools tripling the number of publicly financed schools. It would also retrain 90 percent of the country’s teaching force — 50,000 people — to teach the new curriculum, and it would train 2,500 new teachers a year, many through a program patterned on Teach for America.

Among many other significant programs were the Haiti Hope Project (HHP) that brought together a coalition of businesses, government, and civil society partners to invest about $8 million to develop a sustainable mango industry in the country. Coca Cola, Clinton Bush Haiti Fund (DBHF), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Multilateral Investment Funds (MIF) led HHP initiatives. The World Food Program provided work and food for many Haitian families and coordinated efforts of the four major medical organizations (the Red Cross, MSF, Doctors of the World and FRIEND) have made medical care available to them. However, the introduction of the cholera strand to the Western world did no justice to remarkable and sometimes exhausting efforts of the medical community. Many other significant and positive contributions, immersed in the agony of the victims and fraudulent election fracas, went unnoticed.

On Jan. 12, 2011, Haiti will experience a media blitz similar to the six-month anniversary spotlight. Media corporations, big and small, will raid the capital and small town to report on reconstruction processes. After all, Haiti’s trauma fit well with the media’s framing mechanisms: drama, villains, victims and heroes.

We urge foreign Journalists -- with the support of the Haitian press community – to engage in robust community relation efforts and capture the Haitian experience contextually and objectively. This would guarantee news coverage that works ‘for’ Haitians as opposed to a repetitive story ‘about’ a prehistoric people with awkward cultural norms. In addition, this comprehensive approach would also help Haiti take advantage of a constellation of factors holding potential for success.

We also encourage journalists to resist usual episodic framing devices by trying to understand the conundrum that is the Haitian actuality and refrain from using reporting styles requiring them to detach their values from the stories and actors. These practices would only project an illusion of objectivity and fairness in their coverage.

Evidently, the Haitian people have a story to tell, a human tragedy told from their perspective. Without a profound understanding of their way of life, tangible solutions could be as elusive as they were in 2010, a sure way to build resentment for the foreigners and possibly derail recovery efforts. The role of Haitians in pulling their country from under the rubble is pivotal and the media has a responsibility to voice the voiceless, demand transparency from all of the actors and expose unethical practices. As many observers have alleged, the most deceptive humanitarian heist may be taking place in Haiti while the level of squalor and desperation lingers unabated.

It is not the actions of individuals the make them heroes, rather the values and meanings attached to those actions. On the anniversary of its darkest day, Haiti is undoubtedly full of Heroes on the heels of disruptive year 2010 and the first thousand of them would probably not be foreign internationals.

Rapadoo,

Via Rapadoo Observateur www.rapadoo.com

Voodoo Killings Reportedly Rise in Haiti (time.com)
W5: Haiti a year after the quake (ctv.ca)
Cholera could hurt Haiti’s rice crop (cnn.com)
Why desperate Haitians want to kick out UN troops | Isabeau Doucet (guardian.co.uk)
Help For Haiti Slow, Frustrating (npr.org)
MIT Launches Phone-Enabled Work Site for Haiti (readwriteweb.com)
OAS Removes its Special Representative in Haiti for Telling It Like It Is About UN Peacekeeping Mission (hcvanalysis.wordpress.com)

Subscribe To Le Nationaliste

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Monday, December 19, 2011

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Friday, November 11, 2011

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Friday, November 4, 2011

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Friday, October 28, 2011

Monday, October 24, 2011

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Monday, October 10, 2011

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Friday, September 30, 2011

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Related Articles

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Monday, January 17, 2011

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Related Articles

Related Articles