Gary Younge (Guardian Utd): The ouster of democracy

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Monday March 8

The ouster of democracy
In Haiti, Washington confirmed a foreign policy that is driven by self-interest and delivered through force
By Gary Younge

All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of people," wrote Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski in his book, Shah of Shahs, about the Iranian revolution. "They should begin with a psychological chapter, one that shows how a harassed man breaks his terror and stops being afraid. This unusual process demands illuminating."
The tottering, and now toppled authority of the former Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has been well chronicled over the past month. The story of the psychological effect his departure had on the Haitian people has been less comprehensively observed. There is good reason for this. Despite the overthrow of the president and the outpouring of rebel supporters in the streets, the Haitian people are pretty much where they have been for the past 200 years - in a desperately impoverished country where political violence is sustained, if not encouraged, by foreign intervention and crushes any hope of reconciliation, democracy and economic prosperity.
In revolutions the people take centre stage and the leaders follow - the popular will outpaces and overpowers the established institutions and moulds something essentially new from the old. But over the past week the Haitian people have been not actors but spectators in their own destiny, watching one band of armed thugs, who supported a leader with diminishing democratic legitimacy, replaced by another band of armed thugs, who support a movement with none at all, with the help of foreign governments. The death squad leaders, army officials and US marines are back. There are no longer any democratic violations to criticise because there is no longer any democracy. What happened was not a revolution but a coup. And no simple domestic overthrow either. This was the kind of regime change that the French and the US could sign up to.
The circumstances of Aristide's departure remain under dispute. Aristide says a huge number of US and Haitian "agents" came to his house and forced him on to a plane that eventually landed in the Central African Republic. The US says Aristide was resigned to exile once it was understood that he could no longer hold on to power, his life was in danger and bloodshed was inevitable. What cannot be seriously contested is that Aristide did not go voluntarily in any meaningful sense, and that the Bush administration was the primary instrument in his removal. It is debatable, yet doubtful, whether the Haitian rebels could have achieved his removal on their own. Whoever the US came into protect, it was not the Haitian people. Even as they were advising people to stay out of the country because it was not safe they were sending Haitian boat people, fleeing the crisis, back home.

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