Baby Doc's return haunts Haiti (Guardian)

[struggle4progress]

The return of former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier at a critical moment for Haiti's shaky democracy cannot bode well

Isabeau Doucet
guardian.co.uk
Monday 17 January 2011 20.31 GMT

... Duvalier's return demonstrates that the popular movement that overthrew him, uprooted his Macoutes, disbanded his army and elected the country's first and only mass-based government, has itself, for the time being at least, been put safely out of action: broken, divided, misrepresented, discredited.

During last week's one-year anniversary of the earthquake, in addition to the commemoration of the tragic loss of life there, outrage at broken promises and systematic NGO, UN and government failure, much of the discussion was over a leaked copy of the Organisation of American States findings about the contested 28 November elections. According to the international monitoring body, President Rene Preval's desired successor, son-in-law Jude Celestin, should be disqualified from participating in the second round of the elections. But independent observers said the OAS had used questionable methodology in coming to what Mark Weisbrot from the Centre for Economic and Policy Research called "a political decision", adding it was "highly unusual and perhaps unprecedented for any electoral authority to change the results of an election without a full recount."

So, how does Baby Doc fit into this? His father, François, a country doctor and amateur anthropologist, took power after winning a rigged election in 1957. He used voodoo influence and a Haitian militia called the Tonton Macoute to terrorise all segments of the population, and installed his inept, socialite son, Jean-Claude, as president for life. An estimated 50,000 people were killed under the Duvaliers. There was no freedom of speech, dissidents were murdered, jailed or forced into exile; Haiti has never recovered from this brain drain of the intellectual class, exiled into diaspora.

Haiti's oral culture means that information circulates by rumours – the word on the street, in the hotels, on the radio, on Twitter and bouncing all over town via text messages. The whispers are a typically contradictory mixture of half-truth and falsehood: Baby Doc was brought back by Preval to support Celestin for a Duvalierist succession; Aristide is poised in Panama and the army is coming back next; Baby Doc is sickly and dying, and already has a return ticket; Preval has been forced to leave the country; this is France and the US's doing ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/17/jean-claude-baby-doc-duvalier-haiti

[customerserviceguy]

1. I figure he wouldn't have come back

if he hadn't used enough of the Duvalier Swiss bank accounts to pave the way.

[vaberella]

3. It's actually not conducive for him to come back. Not for his health anyway.

This is the mistake of the article writer.

[vaberella]

2. This article has a lot of half-truths or misinterpretation of Ayiti. Oy...n/t