WITH PASSION and integrity thousands of Haitians have been protesting against political manoeuvres to delay the return home of the ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide – prior to next month’s scheduled second-round presidential run-off.
Aristide, ousted from the presidency on February 29, 2004, amid widespread political turmoil and documented involvement of then President George Bush’s administration, was earlier this month issued a new Haitian passport by the outgoing government of President Rene Preval.
On learning of the approval of his new passport, Aristide, who has spent most of his years of exile in South Africa, following periods in Jamaica and Central Africa, made it clear that he had no interest in participating in presidential politics.
He simply wished to be back home, he said, to help in the massive task of reconstruction and healing. But President Barack Obama’s administration quickly opted to send a puzzling message through its State Department.
The message, wrapped in diplomatic nuances, and expressed by spokesman Philip Crowley, was that the Obama administration is of the view that Aristide’s return to Haiti before the second-round presidential run-off (now expected on March 20) “would be an unfortunate distraction; and the two participating candidates should be the focus (at this time) . . .”.
That was hardly the political message the supporters of the still popular Aristide and his Lavalas Party that, incidentally, was banned from participating in last November’s presidential and parliamentary elections, wished to hear. Certainly not from a foreign government – United States or any other.
“No Aristide, no second round” was their chanting response, according to media reports out of Port-au-Prince.
Question is, with the ex-dictator Jean Claude Duvalier already in Haiti and awaiting a court trial on crimes associated with his presidency, what’s the rationale for the United States going public with its reservations against Aristide’s return?
Unlike Duvalier, Aristide is not known to be wanted for crimes committed. It could, therefore, prove most provocative to raise such a spectre at this time in a highly volatile social and political climate when there still remains little doubt that, for all his real and perceived political shortcomings, Bertrand Aristide, the former freely elected Head of State of the Republic of Haiti, and victim of a coup, remains a popular and relevant national figure.
It is quite appropriate to conclude with a very sobering observation he made in an article published earlier this month in the Guardian (UK): “As I have not ceased to say since February 29, 2004, from exile . . . I will return to Haiti to the field I know best and love – education. We can only agree with the words of the great Nelson Mandela, that indeed education is a powerful weapon for changing the world.”
