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UNO und USA drücken beide Augen zu

Beobachter bezeichnen Haiti-Wahlen als gültig

Von Hans Ulrich Dillmann, Santo Domingo *

Die Präsidentschaftswahlen in Haiti sind nach Ansicht der internationalen Beobachter trotz vieler Beschwerden gültig. Zuvor hatte der Chef der gemeinsamen Beobachtermission der karibischen Staatengemeinschaft Caricom und der Organisation Amerikanischer Staaten, Colin Granderson, in Port-au-Prince von ernsthaften Unregelmäßigkeiten gesprochen.

Am Sonntag noch (28. Nov.) beschuldigten Mirlande Manigat und der Pop-Star »Sweet Mickey« Michel Martelly die haitianische Regierung, die Präsidentschafts- und Parlamentswahlen massiv manipuliert zu haben, und riefen ihre Anhänger zum Protest auf die Straße. Am Montag mäßigten die beiden aussichtsreichsten Oppositionskandidaten ihre Kritik und versprachen, die Wahlen anzuerkennen.

Insgesamt hatten 13 der 19 Präsidentschaftskandidaten Wahlbetrug durch die Regierungspartei unter Staatschef René Préval beklagt. Obwohl nach wie vor auf die ersten Ergebnisse der Auszählung gewartet wird und noch nicht einmal die Wahlbeteiligung der insgesamt 4,7 Millionen Stimmberechtigten ermittelt werden konnte, versuchen sich die Bewerber um das höchste haitianische Staatsamt bereits für einen zweiten Wahlgang in Position zu bringen. Nachdem sich die internationale Gemeinschaft zwar besorgt über Gewalt bei dem Urnengang geäußert, aber ansonsten den »weitgehend ordnungsgemäßen Ablauf der Wahl« konstatiert hatte, scheinen vor allem Manigat und Martelly ihre Rettung in der Akzeptanz der Wahl zu sehen und auf den zweiten Wahlgang am 16. Januar zu hoffen.

Es wird immer offensichtlicher, dass die USA, die Vereinten Nationen und auch die EU wenig Sinn darin sehen, über Wahlmanipulationen zu lamentieren. Lieber kneifen sie ein Auge zu, um endlich René Préval loszuwerden, den alle als das größte Hindernis für den Wiederaufbau des Landes sehen. Und Manigat und Martelly scheinen die Stimmen gehört haben, dass es jetzt besser ist, dem Weg der großen Berater zu folgen, um im zweiten Wahlgang Préval und seinen Favoriten Jude Celestín, den eigenen Schwiegersohn, in die Wüste zu schicken. Bedingung ist aber, wie »Sweet Mickey« sagt, dass der Spitzenkandidat der regierenden »Inité«-(Einheits)-Partei nicht schon zum Sieger im ersten Wahlgang erklärt wird.

In Port-au-Prince und anderen Städten des Landes herrscht derzeit angespannte Ruhe. Erstmals meldete sich auch der schon vor den Wahlen aus dem Kandidatenkarussell ausgeschiedene Wyclef Jean wieder zu Wort. Der weltberühmte Hip-Hopper forderte das Ausland auf, eine schnelle Lösung zu finden »Wenn die internationale Gemeinschaft innerhalb von 24 Stunden keine wirkliche Lösung gefunden hat«, drohte er, »wird es Gewalt geben.«

Der Provisorische Wahlrat Haitis muss spätestens bis 5. Dezember das endgültige Wahlergebnis veröffentlichen.

* Aus: Neues Deutschland, 1. Dezember 2010


Haiti Elections: A Sham in the Time of Cholera

by Isabel MacDonald **

In the midst of a cholera epidemic that has killed a reported 1,300 Haitians, the U.S., Canada and the United Nations insisted that Haiti's elections go ahead yesterday, as scheduled.

However elections might not be the most accurate term for the process by which a new Haitian president and lawmakers will be selected at the polls.

The ruling party's hand-picked electoral council has banned the most popular Haitian political party, Fanmi Lavalas (FL), from the presidential election. FL leader Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was elected as Haiti's president in 2000, has been exiled in Africa since a coup d'etat in 2004, when he was removed by the U.S., and warned, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, not to "come back into the hemisphere."

Meanwhile, the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti is warning that the presence of troops from the UN "stabilization" mission in Haiti (also known as MINUSTAH) at polling stations "is more likely to trigger violence than prevent it."

UN troops and Haitian National Police killed two demonstrators at anti-MINUSTAH protests in the city of Cap Haitien on November 15 and 16. And over the following two days, they tear-gassed Haitians participating in a march in Port-au-Prince, which as journalist Kim Ives reported for Haiti Liberte, "seriously sickened many women and children in the tent camps on the Champ de Mars in front of the collapsed National Palace."

Calls for the withdrawal of the UN troops have been escalating amidst accusations that UN soldiers' fecal matter, dumped into a waterway that feeds into Haiti's Artibonite river, was the likely source of the cholera.

Prior to last month, there had never been a documented case of cholera in Haiti, and as late as March the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was saying that the illness was "extremely unlikely" to occur in Haiti. Today, the Pan-American Health Organization is projecting that 200,000 people may be infected within a year, and that "we may have 10,000 dead."

On October 27, Associated Press reporter Jonathan Katz broke the story of the suspected source of the cholera--an overflowing septic tank behind a UN base housing the Nepalese peacekeeping troops, who had arrived in Haiti just after a summer of cholera outbreaks in Nepal.

After visiting the site of the UN base, Katz reported that a tank was clearly overflowing. The back of the base smelled like a toilet had exploded. Reeking, dark liquid flowed out of a broken pipe, toward the river, from next to what the soldiers said were latrines. U.N. military police were taking samples in clear jars with sky-blue U.N. lids, clearly horrified.

At the shovel-dug waste pits across the street sat yellow-brown pools of feces where ducks and pigs swam in the overflow. The path to the river ran straight downhill.

According to Harvard University microbiology chair John Mekalanos, the cholera "very much likely did come either with peacekeepers or other relief personnel." "I don't see there is any way to avoid the conclusion that an unfortunate and presumably accidental introduction of the organism occurred," he recently told AP.

However the cholera epidemic sweeping the country raises a bigger question about the role of countries such as the U.S., Canada and France, that have boasted for years about all the "aid" they've provided to Haiti.

I mean, with all this international "help," why on earth doesn't Haiti have the basic infrastructure that could have prevented the cholera outbreak?

Independent journalist Isabeau Doucet recently offered some very relevant context in a commentary for the Guardian, pointing out that

A decade ago, money was in place to address the country's failing water system. In 2000, a $54m (£34m) loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) should have given the Haitian government means to rehabilitate its urban and rural water systems."

However, "US foreign policy objectives of destabilising the democratically elected Aristide government got in the way," Doucet stated.

In a 2004 article for the London Review of Books, Harvard medical professor Paul Farmer, who is now the UN's Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti, specified that "Haitian and American sources have confirmed to me that the US asked the bank to block the loans."

At a UN donors' conference in March 2010, the international community promised $5.3 billion to rebuild Haiti after the January 12 earthquake. (A sum that is considerably less than the tens of billions of dollars Haiti is owed for the illegitimate debts that have been extorted from Haitians by Western governments and financial institutions since 1825.)

Nearly eight months after these pledges, an estimated 1.7 million people are still living under tarps in unsafe makeshift camps.

MINUSTAH recently issued a statement calling the organizers of recent protests in Haiti "the enemies of stability and democracy."

But protest seems the most reasonable response to the present situation.

Not least for those of us whose governments promised a bright future for a "New Haiti" just nine months ago.

** Isabel MacDonald is a Montreal-based freelance journalist. She can be reached at isabelmacdonald1 at gmail.co. Follow her on Twitter: www.twitter.com/isabelmacdo

Published on Monday, November 29, 2010 by CommonDreams.org



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