JESSICA DESVARIEUX: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore.
On Sunday Haitians head to the polls to select their next president in the first round of
elections. But now there's evidence of U.S. interference in the last presidential election
back in 2010. Recently-released emails from Hillary Clinton's private server revealed
details of how U.S. officials worked closely with the Haitian private sector as they forced
Haitian authorities to change the results of the first round of presidential elections
in late 2010. Eventually the U.S. government ended up supporting the current president,
Michel Martelly.
Here to discuss the influence of the international community are our two guests. Joining us from
New York is Ezili Danto. She is the president of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network.
And joining us from Haiti is Nicole Phillips. She is a staff attorney for the Institute
for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Thank you both for joining us.
So Nicole, I'll start off with you. What do the Clinton emails reveal about the last round
of elections? And was this event an election or a selection process at the end of the day?
NICOLE PHILLIPS: Well, I think most Haitians would say that the last elections were a selection,
not a fair election. I think that the emails showed manipulation by the Clinton administration.
We knew this in 2010 and 2011. We witnessed this happening. These emails just confirm
what many of us already knew. In the first round of elections the last two candidates
were considered the winners by the electoral council, and the Clinton administration intervened.
Brought in a delegation from the organization of Americans. [Inaud.] And did a recount of
the vote, and then reversed the results so that only one of the original candidates,
the second one, is now the president, Martelly went into the, into the runoff elections in
2011.
Of course, there was many problems with this. But one of the problems is that the recount
by the OAS was no more legitimate than the original count by the electoral council. So
neither of those vote tabulations really had any statistical basis for them. Both--and
the elections had so many irregularities that really the only answer would have been to
have new elections. But instead what the Clinton administration did was manipulate the election
results so that the, so that they took out one of the candidates and put in another candidate.
These emails revealed their desire to want the president at the time, Rene Preval, to
step down. They wanted him out. And the candidate that they excluded was his candidate in his
political party, a family member. So that, I think those emails sort of backed up our
theory that the administration was clear on what they wanted after the first round of
elections, which was to replace President Preval's candidate with President Martelly.
DESVARIEUX: Ezili, you've also written about how the U.S. buried official records which
gave President Martelly--essentially wasn't a U.S. citizen. And if he was, that would
have disqualified him from running constitutionally, he could not run for president. So can you
speak to that a bit, and what proof do we have of those type of allegations?
DANTO: Do Hillary Clinton and [Cheryl] Mills handing Haiti a different result than was
handed to them by the [inaud.]. Haitians have said, and Senator--there's a senator who's
running for president right now, he's called Sen. Moise, he was dealing with, with this
whole issue of whether Mr. Martelly was ever even qualified. And frankly, Kenneth Merten,
who's a U.S. ambassador, when this thing came out they actually said that he was not qualified.
There is--I have on my website right now a Haitian radio station who says that their
source is from a high level up U.S. official. And also we know that Martelly actually voted
in Miami. So you can't vote unless you are a citizen of the country. So we have some
of those public records.
But Kenneth Merten, the ambassador to Haiti, when Haitians after this, this amazing fraudulent
elections, where by 12:00 on that day of that election all the candidates, including Mr.
Martelly, and Mme. Manigat and Jude Celestin, said that it was so fraudulent that they wanted
it annulled. But the [UN] went to these candidates, Mme. Manigat and Mr. Martelly, and told them,
don't pull out of the elections. Each of--they told them each of them had won. So it was
that divide and conquer, so the opportunistic part of these--Mrs. Manigat and Martelly won.
And then you had this travesty of now what we're dealing with, which is Martelly running
the country for the last five years by decree, without [parliament] and putting out all sorts
of decrees, taking Haiti's offshore islands. He's added 19 new deputies to a parliament
that he never used during a time he was--the whole time.
So in terms of the evidence that we have, we're asking the United States how could they
allow Ambassador Kenneth Merten--we have charged, the Haitian Lawyers Leadership has charged
based on the information we have, that Kenneth Merten, actually the ambassador to the United
States, was dishonest and said that Mr. Martelly was not a U.S. citizen. We know the--so the
official records either had to be changed, or they have been submerged.
DESVARIEUX: All right. So with all this information, Nicole, how can Haitian people actually have
faith in the democratic process? What do you think needs to happen in order for there to
be free and fair elections in Haiti?
PHILLIPS: Well, it's of course a great question, and we should have been talking about this
question 18 months ago. Because that's what really it would have taken to have truly free
and fair elections, and even I think some would argue pretty rightly it's impossible
to have elections when you do have the international community so present in this country. That's
something I think a lot of Haitians feel.
In order to have fair elections what we're sort of hoping will happen is that the violence
will be minimized so that people can vote. I think a lot of Haitians are, see so many
obstacles to voting on Sunday. Last round of elections on August 9 there were at least,
by some civil society observers, there were serious irregularities in at least 50 percent
of the voting stations. One out of two voting stations. I mean, that's enormous. There was
pre-election violence, there was violence on election day. I think at least five people
died on election day. There was violence after elections. There has been violence last week,
in the last few weeks, of people being assassinated.
So this is all posing a problem for Haitians wanting to vote. This of course makes them
fearful of coming out and voting. It even makes them fearful of being election observers.
And it's having the intended impact. A lot of the investigations showed that President
Martelly's political party was in the majority of the cases responsible for the violence.
And yet of course the justice system is not pursuing the acts of violence. Some of the
candidates were disqualified. That was a great step forward. But we haven't seen the pursuit
of the remedies, judicial remedies, against them as they should be. So that's sending
a clear message out to local candidates and their supporters, that violence wins in these
elections.
Another issue was, another obstacle for Haitians to vote, was the interference of the international
community, as we spoke about. Haitians know--they didn't need Clinton's emails to know the interference
of the international community, in particular the United States government in the results
of the 2010 elections. Another fatal flaw in those elections that the United States
spent over $15 million on in 2010 was that they excluded the majority of the opposition
party, at least 15 political parties, including [inaud.].
So even beginning--and regardless of what happened in 2010, on day one they weren't
going to be fair elections. And the United States government paid for those, meaning
they thought that was fine for democracy in Haiti. And then they said at the end of these
elections, this was a great step forward for democracy in Haiti. In August 9 elections,
like I mentioned, there were so many irregularities and violence, and what we saw at the end was
a delegation from the Organization of American States, a delegation from the European Union,
saying there were some problems in these elections, but by and large they were a good step forward
for democracy in Haiti, whereas we here in Haiti thought that they were terrible, and
not--lacked any legitimacy at all. So there is this disconnect.
DESVARIEUX: And some people would even argue, Nicole, that there can't be legitimacy if
you have the UN and other non-governmental organizations essentially propping these elections
up and conducting them. So Ezili, I know you make that argument. So if you cannot have
free and fair elections with these groups involved, I guess someone could argue, though,
how do you expect Haitians to pay for the elections?
DANTO: Well, well, we have actually made the one--when President Aristide, right after
[Duvalie], Haiti did throw elections. They did throw elections in 2001. The international
community has an economic interest in Haiti, and that economic interest and that strategic
interest is hidden by the media, who refuses to look at the fact that Haiti has the largest
cache of gold, $20 billion they say, but the geologists in Haiti says it's like, about
$100 billion. So we're talking about real economic interest. Deepwater ports.
The United States after they took out President Aristide built its largest embassy in the
Western hemisphere in Haiti. They have over 1,000 people in that embassy, in tiny Haiti.
So there's no way they're going away. You've got to understand that Hillary Clinton left
the Benghazi, that's the Benghazi crisis, to go to Haiti and basically strongarm the
Haitians at the [CAP] and basically said, you know, I'm going to take away--we're going
to take away your visas if you don't step back and let us do what we want, and put Martelly
in office.
Now, at the Haitian Lawyers Leadership and the Free Haiti movement, we have been struggling
forever to let everyone understands that the United States is in Haiti because of its oil,
of its gold, of its strategic interest within that Windward Passage, next to Cuba and Venezuela.
They have set up bases. And all of this is being done under the auspices of the UN and
the humanitarian front, which is what everyone wants to talk about. So essentially at the
Haitian Lawyers Leadership and the Free Haiti movement, we've basically been--this is our
position. Election under occupation is not legitimate, and Haiti cannot have free elections
when it's being financed by foreigners, when the NGOs are put into areas in Haiti to influence
the people, starve the ones that don't have, have criticism against what we call the legal
bandits. Martelly's whole crew. The legal bandits. Kidnapping, drug trafficking.
And right now one of our biggest concerns as human rights lawyers is that this travesty
that the United States is a facsimile of democracy, that the UN, the United Nations, and the OAS,
and this core group of internationals, is putting on Haitians' throat, is not worth
one life. Not one Haitian life. Because it's not about us, it's about the international
interests in Haiti. It's about Bill Clinton's luxury hotels, sweatshops for South Koreans.
It's not about Haitians. It's about mining, Canadian mining. We have issues, real issues,
like cholera. Like the deportations that's happening to 80,000 Haitians at the Dominican
border. We have real issues like hunger. Like food sovereignty. But the United States only
cares about these elections because it needs to have a, a face for what it's doing in Haiti.
So right now, that face is Michel Martelly. But it's--we have, I think it's about 6,000-8,000
UN troops in Haiti right now. And their purpose is supposed to be about stability, about the
rule of law. About human rights. And yet they're in cahoots with all the illegalities of the
United States. And recently we've had all of the voting fraud, and the UN as the arbiter
of human rights is participating in this--as a matter of fact it's trained the special
units that are killing the people in the populist areas who have been really against the fact
that [inaud.]. So where is the UN?
DESVARIEUX: I hear you, I hear you. But we're going to pause the conversation here, and
in part two let's discuss some of these top candidates. And whether the Haitian electorate
actually has much of a choice in their candidates.
So Ezili Danto and Nicole Phillips, thank you both for joining us.
PHILLIPS: Thank you.
DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.