LThe US Treasury Department announced on Tuesday, August 20, 2024, that former President Michel Joseph Martelly is being sanctioned for drug trafficking. But this anecdote is neither news nor information for us Haitians, because who in the country did not know that Michel Martelly was a trafficker?
Announcing it now is to put children to sleep. Isn’t there something else behind this astonishing announcement? Who do the US leaders think they can make fun of?
In truth, this statement did not bother the majority of the Haitian population. Especially when Bradley T. Smith, Acting Under Secretary of State for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, stated in his statement that “Today’s action against Martelly underscores the significant and destabilizing role that he and other members of the corrupt political elite have played in perpetuating the current crisis in Haiti.”
There is a certain hypocrisy in this case, why wait all this time to unmask him? What beast demanded them to declassify such a sensitive file for them? It is like a discovery that the United States has just made if we take into consideration Bradley T. Smith who indicates that “The United States, working with our international partners, is committed to disrupting those who facilitate drug trafficking, corruption, and other illicit activities that fuel horrific gang violence and political instability.”
It cannot be said that the Washington experts have a short memory to already forget that they were the ones who imposed Michel Martelly as president of our country to humiliate us further. And now, they come to tell us that: “Martelly abused his influence to facilitate the trafficking of dangerous drugs, including cocaine, into the United States. In addition, Martelly engaged in the laundering of illicit drug proceeds, worked with Haitian drug traffickers, and sponsored numerous Haiti-based gangs.”
Didn’t Barack Obama and Joe Biden know this when they chose him as their protégé in Haiti? Didn’t Hillary and Bill Clinton know the itinerary of the one they cherished, pampered in the presidency in Haiti? To honor Martelly, didn’t Bill Clinton once declare that Michel Martelly would be the greatest head of state that Haiti has ever known?
Obviously, Washington wanted him in power in Haiti at this precise moment, so that he could carry out their orders in order to safeguard their interests and further destabilize the country. Starting with the PetroCaribe project of the Chavista government, this aid program for the Haitian people was simply plundered and wasted so that the country would never get out of its hell. The United States did not want history to remember that the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela helped Haiti get out of its ordeal of chronic underdevelopment. And the Martelly regime was used as an instrument of the United States against the Haitian people.
Imperialism never plays loser, it always wants to win. Yesterday Martelly was their darling against the Haitian people, with whom he smeared our faces with mud. Today imperialism mistreats him, for the sole reason that it has realized that everywhere in the world where Haitians emigrate, former president Michel Martelly is declared persona non grata, the people prevent him from sleeping. Now, to mock us, imperialism claims to settle on a position going against its former puppet.
The trafficker worked for them, he was their bastard, they don’t need to release him. They can continue to operate with him and their entire human arsenal working for them in Haiti, starting with those who are part of the Presidential Council that they installed to continue their work where Martelly left it.
By this open denunciation, does this mean their end of its use? The United States also does not understand that they are tarnishing their face by sullying that of their trusted man in Haiti. This shows, once again, that American imperialism does not oppose anything, as long as its interests are not harmed, but the defense of any interest cannot be done by using mercenaries of the ilk of Martelly, Juan Guiado and so many others.
This announcement probably also looks like a tract to create a certain diversion in the Haitian world to lighten the climate of revolt in gestation against the Presidential Council of corruption that Washington has put in place which only sows the same filth as their predecessor Michel Martelly.
Washington, Martelly is your bastard! Stay with… It’s your crime lab that built such an instrument!
No to Michel Martelly! No to the domination of American imperialism in Haiti!
