While a de facto foreign-imposed protectorate was installed following the 2004 coup, this recent editorial from Haiti Liberte editor, Berthony Dupont captures the changing character of it (Protectorate 2.0).
Editorial: A Protectorate is now Installed in Haiti
By Berthony Dupont (Editor, Haiti Liberte)
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI * June 30 - July 6, 2010 Vol. 3, No. 50 (French original published in Vol. 3 No. 49) http://haiti-liberte.com (Web subscription, U.S.$20 per year; web and print subscription in Canada, U.S.$125 per year)
How humiliating! What a shame! The Haitian people will now be ruled by a foreigner, and not just any foreigner. It is none other than former U.S. president Bill Clinton, who recently, to placate the naive, made his now famous mea culpa: "it's my fault, my most grievous fault, to have destroyed Haitian agriculture." But the immediate objective of this new colonial master was more psychological, like waving a knife at an unhealed wound. Clinton thought that shedding crocodile tears would bring forgiveness. But how can the peasantry and the nation's progressive forces ever forget the deliberate wrong done to our agriculture by the full-spectrum neoliberal policies carried out under his administration and those after him?
In fact, the statements made by U.S. officials always have ulterior motives, so we must question the real motives of Clinton's contrition. We know from experience that their words and their deeds don't match. Deception is a political weapon as old as politics, and Clinton seems to excel in both.
In the same vein, the U.S. Senate's Committee on Foreign Affairs has argued for "appropriate structural reforms within the Provisional Electoral Council" in the lead-up to forthcoming elections. Haitian politicians desperately cling to these illusions which comfort them and which apparently pushed the Lavalas Family party's representative Maryse Narcisse to declare: "If the U.S. Congress today claims it is against exclusion, we can only rejoice. It is simply justice being done. What we really want, however, is an honest, independent and democratic CEP."
Haitian politicians never learn their lesson. They fail to see the maneuvers, plots and two-faced policies of the United States. Obsessed with elections, they could not even perceive or understand that Haiti's true government has just been installed on June 17 with 26 members, all handsomely paid, at the Karibe Convention Center. There are 13 junior Haitians, all too happy to be nominated, but who have no credibility with the Haitian people. Then there are the real members of the Interim Commission to Reconstruct Haiti (CIRH): the 13 foreigners. With fanfare, they trumpet a reconstruction that all indicators make clear - even financially - will never take place. Since the March 31 Summit at the UN, donor countries which promised the world to Haiti have until now delivered nothing, with the exception of Brazil, Venezuela and Norway. Even if they fulfill their promises, the exploiters are just waiting to swallow their prey.
Here is another fact that has gone practically unnoticed: William Jefferson Clinton does not represent any sector in the Interim Commission, neither the U.S. nor the UN, as they both have their own representatives. How is it that Clinton has been named president of this institution? Is it to sugarcoat the pill so we can better swallow it? Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has been appointed co-president, if not to say deputy. What power will he have alongside someone as crafty as Bill Clinton? We know this subservient petty bourgeoisie and especially these technocrats who have become politicians out of necessity. They could not ask for better. On the contrary, this is a dream opportunity to make their bread and butter.
Worse yet, Clinton is constitutional. In April, the Haitian parliament passed in both houses this Machiavellian imperialist charade, legitimizing the unscrupulous Yankee policies that have been destroying Haitian institutions and robbing the Haitian people of all their resources. In short, this magician of American politics has more than one rabbit in his hat. It is merely a matter of time before his craftiness is revealed. He has already given us a show with the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and the Canadian director Frank Guistar, who together gave $20 million in small business seed money, hoping to dazzle us while working his tricks.
In this context, until we eradicate from Haiti this colonial policy of occupation under the guise of reconstruction, the Haitian people will continue to flounder in the morass of a sickly and repressive system that is exploitative capitalism.
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