Neoliberal Jeffrey Sachs alarmed over Haiti coup

He "stole"
elections and intransigently refused to address opposition concerns. As a
result he had to leave office, which he did at the insistence of the US and
France. Unfortunately, this is a gravely distorted view.

President George Bush's foreign policy team came into office intent on
toppling Mr Aristide, long reviled by powerful US conservatives such as
former senator Jesse Helms who obsessively saw him as another Fidel
Castro in the Caribbean. Such critics fulminated when President Bill Clinton
restored Mr Aristide to power in 1994, and they succeeded in getting US
troops withdrawn soon afterwards, well before the country could be
stabilised. In terms of help to rebuild Haiti, the US Marines left behind
about eight miles of paved roads and essentially nothing else. In the
meantime, the so-called "opposition", a coterie of rich Haitians linked to
the preceding Duvalier regime and former (and perhaps current) CIA
operatives, worked Washington to lobby against Mr Aristide.

In 2000, Haiti held parliamentary and then presidential elections,
unprecedented in their scope. Mr Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas, clearly
won the election, although candidates who won a plurality rather than a
majority, and who should have faced a second-round election, also gained
seats. Objective observers declared the elections broadly successful, albeit flawed.

Mr Aristide won the presidential election later that year, in a contest the
US media now reports was "boycotted by the opposition" and hence, not
legitimate. This is a cruel joke to those who know Haiti, where Mr Aristide
was swept in with an overwhelming mandate and the opposition, such as it
was, ducked the elections. Duvalier thugs hardly constituted a winning
ticket and as such, did not even try. Nor did they have to. Mr Aristide's
foes in Haiti benefited from tight links with the incoming Bush team, which
told Mr Aristide it would freeze all aid unless he agreed with the
opposition over new elections for the contested Senate seats, among other
demands. The wrangling led to the freezing of $500m in emergency
humanitarian aid from the US, the World Bank, the Inter- American
Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The tragedy, or joke, is that Mr Aristide agreed to compromise, but the
opposition simply balked; it was never the right time to hold elections, for
example, because of "security" problems, they said. Whatever the pretext,
the US maintained its aid freeze and the opposition maintained a veto over
international aid. Cut off from bilateral and multilateral financing,
Haiti's economy went into a tailspin.

All this is being replayed before our eyes. As Haiti slipped into deeper
turmoil last month, Caribbean leaders called for a power-sharing compromise
between Mr Aristide and the opposition. Once again, Mr Aristide agreed but
the opposition merely demanded the president step down - reportedly
rejecting even US Secretary of State Colin Powell's requests to compromise.
But rather than defending Mr Aristide and dealing with opposition
intransigence, the White House announced the president should step down.

The ease with which the US thereby brought down another Latin American
democracy is stunning. What has been the CIA's role among the anti-Aristide
rebels? How much US money went from US institutions and government agencies
to help foment this uprising? Why did the White House abandon the Caribbean
compromise proposal it endorsed just days before? These questions have not
been asked. Then again, we live in an age when entire wars can be launched
on phony pretences with few questions asked.

What should happen now is unlikely to pass. The United Nations should help
restore Mr Aristide to power for his remaining two years in office, making
clear that yesterday's events were an illegal power grab. Second, the US
should call on the opposition, which is largely a US construct, to stop the
violence immediately and unconditionally. Third, after years of literally
starving the people of Haiti, the long-promised and long-frozen aid flows of
$500m should start immediately. These steps would rescue a dying democracy
and avert a possible bloodbath.