Haiti: Awaiting the next installment

THE EDITOR: Now that the democratically elected president of Haiti has been forced out by what seems like hemispheric unwillingness to assist where needed, a hands-off policy of talk while the town burns, and major financing of unrest by the narco-businessmen of the region and their financiers/backers, one can tremblingly ask: Who’s next?

Will there be another end-run at the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez? Will the attempt to unseat the President of Brazil succeed?
Will further destabilisation attempts be made against the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, which supplies two-thirds of the natural gas used on the east coast of the USA? Could the “Fishing dispute” between Trinidad/Tobago, manipulated from or interfered in from elsewhere, escalate into something major requiring “intervention” — to keep the shipping lanes open, and all that? All of these countries suffer from the “sore loser” syndrome that affected Haiti; that is, a refusal to accept the will of the people as reflected in an open election. Those forces, as they do everywhere, do not give up, they may change tactics, faces and publicists, and financiers, but they are the same. Haiti now joins Bolivia where the identical thing happened last year to the democratically elected president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, now living in exile in the USA.  How many more will follow? Remember, it began with the riots in Chile that led to the assassination of Salvador Allende, that other democratically elected ruler in 1972.

It may be that history will record that democracy cannot exist in the shadow of big powers. It may be democracy has to be learnt, and we in the hemisphere are not of the School of Athens — which you will recall was only a city state, but without CNN and the Associated Press. The situation in Haiti raises more questions that it can possibly answer. I look at the map and think; that is very close to Cuba, a Caricom country across the Windward Passage, but a regime some in the hemisphere are determined to remove. A base established, or re-established in Haiti “to bring stability to the region” could be used... 
Drugs, money and guns in the wrong hands. Money for guns, for drugs and to foment unrest. The cycle continues while Caricom (The Caribbean Free Trade Association) talks, tut-tuts and is on stand-by alert. Will Raoul Piedras and his henchmen now have a free hand at mob rule? Haiti too can be a beautiful “piece of real estate” as was said of Grenada during the staged riots that took out the Bishop government. We await the next installment of hemispheric disaster.

LINDA EDWARDS
Port-of-Spain