By Gotson Pierre
Updated on August 23, 2024 at 11:40 a.m.
Thursday, August 22, 2024 [AlterPresse] — Thirteen years after propelling Michel Martelly to power in Haiti, the United States denounces and sanctions him for drug trafficking, money laundering and sponsorship of gangs, which sow terror across the country.
This measure is likely to compromise Martelly’s possible plan to return to power, after having been head of state from 2011 to 2016, with strong and explicit support from Washington.
Make Martelly win
On April 4, 2011, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced Michel Martelly’s victory in the second round of the presidential election. The bawdy singer beat former first lady and constitutionalist Mirlande Manigat, with 67.57% of the vote, or 336,747 votes.
Haitians finally went to the polls on March 20 to elect a successor to President René Préval. This put an end to a long and stormy period between the two rounds characterized by various maneuvers that led to the imposition of false results from the first round of November 28, 2010.
The preliminary results, published on December 7, 2011, are as follows: Mirlande Manigat of the Rally of Progressive National Democrats (RDNP) comes in first with 31.37%, followed by the candidate of the ruling Inite party Jude Celestin (22.48%) and Michel Martelly of the Repons Peyizan party (21.84%).
Following multiple pressures from the international community (State Department, United Nations and OAS), and in the midst of intense and deadly unrest, the results are being evaluated by a mission of the hemispheric organization, accepted with a heavy heart by President Préval.
The experts’ report was submitted to the CEP on 18 January 2011 by the government, which had officially received it the day before from the Secretary General of the OAS, Jose Miguel Insulza. The OAS recommended the sidelining of Celestin and a second round between Mirlande Manigat and Michel Martelly.
Clearly, the international community, led by the United States, had put all their weight into the balance to tip it in Martelly’s favor, because it was necessary at all costs to avoid the continuation of the Préval experiment.
Fraud
“The fraud that was organized at the time was widely documented, among others by Ginette Chérubin (former electoral advisor) in her work Le ventre pourri de la bête, by Ricardo Seintenfus, special representative of the Secretary General of the OAS, in his work HAITI: Dilemas e Fracassos Internacionais (Dilemmas and international failures in Haiti)”, underlines the writer and economist Leslie Péan in an article published in 2016 on AlterPresse.
In her book, the former electoral advisor from 2009 to 2011 recounts, with examples to support her, the involvement and control of the international community in the Haitian electoral process. Ms. Chérubin reports the words of Edmond Mulet, head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti and representative of the UN Secretary-General, on December 3, 2010, during a meeting with electoral officials:
“I am sorry for what I am going to tell you. I am not going to speak on my own behalf. But on behalf of the entire international community. As you know, we are very concerned about the results of the elections… We want to tell you that we will not accept that Mr. Jude Célestin is present in the second round of voting, or even that he wins in the first round!”
“But, Mr. Mulet, we haven’t even finished receiving the minutes from the different regions!” retorts Pierre-Louis Opont, general director at the time of the Cep, of which he would later become president in 2015.
It was on July 3, 2015 that the senior official finally acknowledged, on the airwaves of Radio Vision 2000, that the final results of the first round of the November 2010 elections were not those established by the CEP services. The results were modified under pressure from international actors, admits Pierre-Louis Opont.
USAID Aid
Another important episode concerns the direct support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to a political movement with close links to Michel Martelly during the 2010 elections in Haiti, according to revelations by the Al Jazeera channel, cited by the American researcher Jake Johnson, in an article published in August 2015 on AlterPresse.
“The money was allocated shortly after Washington helped overturn the election results that propelled Martelly to power,” he said.
“In May 2011, just days before Martelly’s inauguration, USAID provided $98,928 to the MTK (Mouvement Tèt Kale). According to Chemonics’ internal activities database, the support was for a cleanup of the capital ‘in preparation for the presidential inauguration.’ Chemonics and USAID declined to be interviewed about the matter.”
The elements reported here do not mention the continuation of international involvement in the accomplishment of Martelly’s bumpy mandate. The latter spent 5 years in power without having organized elections. He plunged the country into a whirlwind of corruption, notably with the Petro Caribe affair: Squandering of billions of dollars of Venezuelan aid, documented by the Superior Court of Accounts and Administrative Disputes (Cscca).
Nor is there any mention of the responsibility of the Haitian elites, who have largely benefited from the operations implemented by the international community to make people swallow the bitter pill and contributed to dealing a fatal blow to the Haitian democratic process.
Alongside notorious gang leaders, many figures from the economic and political elite were, well before Martelly, the subject of international sanctions from Canada and the United States for illicit trafficking, money laundering and gang financing.
Since the murder of former President Jovenel Moise on Wednesday, July 7, 2021, criminal acts including kidnapping and rape have continued to escalate across the country, particularly in Port-au-Prince. The violence has left thousands dead and injured as well as hundreds of thousands displaced.
Signs of a significant improvement in the situation are still not perceptible more than three months after the establishment of a new transitional administration, following the disastrous performance of former Prime Minister Ariel Henry, appointed by Jovenel Moïse just before his assassination. [gp apr 22/08/2024 17 :00]
