Sunday, March 20, 2011

Aristide and Haiti, a Love Affair or Simply Serious Hunger for Strong Leadership?


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,
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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,
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