The West’s treatment of Haiti confirms that white supremacy has still not abandoned its plan to impose a racially racist, violent, capitalist and imperial world order.
“The Haitian people are right to fear the abuses of a president who constantly destroys the legislative apparatus and who authorizes himself to govern by decree.”
Demonstrating for several years to denounce the involvement of their president in a corruption scandal, the Haitian people have since July 2018 occupied the streets of the cities of the Haitian Republic against this same president who plays with constitutional arguments[1] – election in 2015 or in 2016? therefore does his term of office end in 2021 or 2022? -. The Superior Council of the Judiciary, recognized, at the beginning of February, the end of the mandate of the president and expressed itself “deeply concerned by the serious threats resulting from a lack of political agreement in response to the expiration of the constitutional mandate of the President of the Republic, His Excellency Jovenel Moïse on February 7, 2021.”
The Haitian people risk their lives in the face of the forces of order, the militias but also in the face of an army reinstated in 2017 by the same Moise when it had been suppressed by Jean Bertrand Aristide at the end of the Duvalier period. To justify this return of an army which has fomented dozens of coups d’état and has been accused of serious and repeated violations, Jovenel Moïse certified that this new army would be different: “… the army is our mother. When our mother is sick and she wears dirty clothes, we do not kill her. We take her to the hospital. So let us join forces to provide the necessary care for our mother.” The tone is set. The Haitian people are right to fear the abuses of a president who constantly destroys the legislative apparatus and who authorizes himself to govern by decree.
He put “to retirement,” by presidential decree of February 8, 2021, three judges of the Court of Cassation, contesting their irremovability. It should be noted that these three judges had been approached by the opposition to lead a transitional government.
This decree, de facto, is null and void as it violates article 177 of the Constitution, which stipulates that “The judges of the Court of Cassation, those of the Courts of Appeal and the courts of first instance are irremovable. They can only be dismissed for legally pronounced breach or suspended following an indictment. They cannot be the object of a new assignment, without their consent, even in the event of promotion. Their service may only be terminated during their term of office in the event of duly established permanent physical or mental incapacity.” But he doesn’t care.
He is heading towards a policy of terror, torture and death that prevailed during the Duvalier years: arrest of the judge Ivickel Dabrésil, accused of wanting to overthrow him[2] – the latter should have assumed the presidency of the provisional government – but also of an Inspector General of the National Police and 23 other personalities who allegedly instigated an attack on his life; wanted notice against the mayor of Port au Prince, denounced for being a notorious criminal; arrests and imprisonments which follow, use by the 453 soldiers of the new Armed Forces of real bullets to disperse the demonstrations …
“Jovenel is heading towards a policy of terror, torture and death that prevailed during the Duvalier years.”
In a decision, the Supreme Council of the Judiciary says that the retention in power of the current president is not legitimate. The country is heading towards a dictatorial drift; this is feared by both the opposition and different sectors of civil society. And what the Haitian people no longer want, knowing the price they have already paid under the decades of the Duvalier dictatorship. Price to pay in terms of the right to public and private freedoms, the right to life and freedom of expression. Price to pay by decades of corruption process which was the rule of the dictatorship and continues to be ; thus, the Superior Court of Auditors[3] documented the numerous irregularities which allowed the embezzlement of the 1.5 billion euros fund granted by Venezuela under the Petrocaribe agreement; this sum was intended for development projects. Obviously, the president and Haitian businessmen were the main “beneficiaries.”
The country continued to be ruined but also the vast majority of the Haitian people who were forced to guarantee the nomenclature of the dictatorship to live in opulence, to survive in poor development, even in very great poverty.
It is this return to the future that Haitian society fears; this is what it reads under the explosion of insecurity in the country since the coming to power of Jovenel Moïse; insecurity largely fueled and instrumentalized by this power. Moreover, one need only look at the IMF data to glimpse that the political and security crisis is looming, an economic crisis that is growing day by day. In 2019, inflation exceeded 20% and the economy entered recession with a reduction in national GDP of 1.2% for the same year, while in 2017, the country’s growth rate was 1.5 % and inflation at 14.7%.
Haitian society, in the street, is the only one to resist in the face of a predicted catastrophe; all the donors, the main ones being the United States, the European Union, the World Bank, the IMF, watch it, call for calm, balance and resume the path of dialogue …
“The country is heading towards a dictatorial drift; this is feared by both the opposition and different sectors of civil society.”
We remain speechless.
In a context where the president undermines the independence of the judiciary system, where the army and a large part of the Police serve as an armed wing and put up with criminal acts of gangs or militias against the legitimate demonstrations of the Haitian people, we must doubt the role of the international community and certain UN agencies and their complicit silence. This is proof that this president has no respect for the institutions and the constitution and it does not bode well for this abandoned country, of which none of the donors is seeking an exit from crises respecting the interests of the majority of the Haitian people, including the end of corruption, the end of impunity protecting corrupt people regardless of their level of responsibility, the end of extreme poverty affecting 59% of the population[4], the end of choices not allowing the land reform to be brought to an end, the end of clientelism, the end of authoritarian and anti-democratic policies.
It is about something else than restoring democracy as affirmed it, in 1994, Bill Clinton, or before him the United States which occupied it between 1915 and 1934 or the French from 1625 to 1804. The Westerners , in the lead the United States and France, have not ceased since the independence of Haiti to want to impose their new order, their rule, thus depriving them of the possibility of building the history of their democracy of which they would have to define the limits, the variations.
To claim to restore or strengthen democracy is to impose it by force and behave like perfidious colonial states which reduce their aid according to the evolution of what democracy should be. If some leaders move away from it, they will be accused of criminal acts, such as Jean Bertrand Aristide.
The aim of the defenders of Western-style democracy is not to lose control of countries which offer them geostrategic positions in territories which may escape them. Isn’t that why France, with the help of the United States, succeeded in imposing an illegal debt on the brand new Republic of Haiti? Thus forcing him to make the choice, because it was best for “democracy,” to repay this debt rather than rebuilding a country left in ruins by a Napoleon furious at the revolts of the enslaved. To drive the point home a little more, in the face of a young republic that does not respond to the injunctions of its new occupier, the United States, upon their arrival, the navies will seize all of its gold reserves; a way of bringing a country to its knees and making it debtor to these colonizers in the name of “democracy.” And thus forbid it any endogenous development.
Doubly debtors to the French state and the United States, Haiti can only survive and its population is sinking deeper into poverty and insecurity. This situation has deprived the Haitian state of the possibilities of establishing successful independent development.
It is neither more nor less than the expression of the coloniality of power exercised with regard to another country, which, at the international level, in the light of the Charter of the United Nations, comes back to a violation of the preamble of this Charter which specifies that “determined to preserve future generations from the scourge of war which twice in the space of a human life has inflicted untold suffering on humanity, to proclaim again our faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, as well as of nations large and small, to create the conditions necessary for the maintenance justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law, to promote social progress and establish better living conditions in greater freedom.” But this is not surprising, since the United Nations is, despite its wishfull thinking, one of the important elements of the expression of the coloniality of power which is expressed at a macro geostrategic level, which constitutes the dishonor of the United Nations as emphasized by Alain Lyonel Trouillot[5].
“The Westerners , in the lead the United States and France, have not ceased since the independence of Haiti to want to impose their new order, their rule.”
Coloniality of power assumed and maintained by two colonizing and slave countries, one because it had lost its colony and its plantations, the other because the Haitian people had refused to have their country transformed into an American plantation. A revenge that Haiti must watch unfold on its territory when presidents are made and defeated by a few states and donors, when funds are allocated or against promises to respect conditionalities unworthy of a rule of law or against development programs benefiting only the oligarchy.
Western democracy considers that the peoples who have freed themselves from the yoke of enslavement and colonization are unstable peoples, poorly educated and therefore incapable of seizing the very essence of democracy. Therefore, the goal of white and euro-centric democracies is to teach them, at their expense, by force and subjugation, what democracy is; thus depriving them of « experiencing » what this democracy covers, if it respects the sovereignty of peoples, the right to self-determination and the right to freely determine its political status and to freely ensure its economic, social and cultural development, as specified in article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights[6].
It is curious to note that these colonial processes are specifically intended for Black and Arab peoples. Further proof, if needed, to confirm that white supremacy has still not abandoned its democratic plan to impose a racially racist, violent, capitalist and imperial world order.
The Haitian people have never ceased to be confronted with a series of metaphysical catastrophes brought by Western civilization, which keeps this country in a situation of constant instability.
One way out of this deadly spiral for the Haitian people is to support them in the face of an oligarchy that despises and slowly kills them, but also to support and accompany their political demand for reparations against the French state and against the United States. Perhaps at that time, Haiti can begin to think about democracy other than in an imported way.
Rather than talking about a bankrupt society, Western states should ask themselves how they impose their « democracy » and look at their societies which, too, are experiencing the « democratic deficit » and particularly in times of economic, social and pandemic crisis? They should also question their sick inability to think of the black or Arab man only in a subordinate ontological position.
The situation in Haiti highlights the mechanisms of domination, exploitation and alienation that Frantz Fanon described in The Wetchred of the Earth and allows us to understand that, faced with an absurd and criminal social, political and economic system, only the path of revolt remains for the emancipation of all, dominated but also dominant, in a decolonial sense.
Mireille Fanon Mendes France, Frantz Fanon Foundation
This article previously appeared in the web site of the Frantz Fanon Foundation.
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NOTES:
[1] Constitution haïtienne, Article 134.1: « The presidential term is five (5) years. This period begins and will end on February 7 following the date of the elections. »
[2] https://lenouvelliste.com/article/226134/arrestation-du-juge-ivickel-dabresil-qui-devait-etre-installe-comme-president-provisoire-annonce-le-premier-ministre-joseph-jouthe
[3] https://www.cscca.gouv.ht/view.php?download_file=documents/247.pdf
[4] Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of $756 in 2019 and a human development index ranking it 169 out of 189 countries in 2019. According to the Human Capital Index, a child born today in Haiti has an adult potential estimated at 45% of what he or she could have had if fully educated and healthy. The latest poverty survey (2012), reports that more than 6 million Haitians live below the poverty line on less than $2.41 per day, and more than 2.5 million have fallen below the extreme poverty line, living on less than $1.23 per day. https://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/country/haiti/overview
[5] https://lenouvelliste.com/article/226899/la-lime-contre-haiti-ou-le-deshonneur-des-nations-unies; 2021/03/03
[6] Adopted and opened for signature, ratification, and accession by General Assembly resolution 2200 A (XXI) of December 16, 1966.
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