The Haiti Crisis: Aristide Is Not the Issue

[struggle4progress]

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At that time, the U.S. government imposed on President Aristide a set of conditions that were the equivalent of handcuffing him. He was expected to adopt, almost wholesale, the economic approach that has come to be known as the Washington Consensus. This included the elimination of thousands of civil service positions and the advancement of a privatization agenda. The United States and multilateral lending institutions demanded this approach of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, one emerging from a history of political despotism and neo-colonialism. For better or for worse, President Aristide accepted these parameters.
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In some respects, then, it is appropriate to see the post-1994 Aristide as a political character buffeted by contending political waves. On the one hand, his bases among the historically dispossessed protested against privatization and demanded that Aristide carry forward his promised reforms—and were in some cases able to halt neoliberal efforts. Sections of this base became disenchanted, feeling that Aristide had either gone back on his word or was not moving forward quickly enough. In some cases there were more serious criticisms about alleged human rights abuses by the government and its failure to investigate them. Nevertheless, it appears that the bulk of his base remained loyal to him and to his party, Famni Lavalas.

The other wave was from the political right. It was a wave generated from both Washington and from the Haitian elite. This wave saw in Aristide, even the new-and-improved Aristide after 1994, a person too far to the left and an unstable political element. Aristide’s efforts to change the conditions of the Haitian poor through improvements in health care, education, and roads were viewed as a threat to the dominance of the rich and powerful.

Thus, President Aristide went too far to the right to satisfy important sections of his base (and in some cases demoralizing them), but not far enough to the right to satisfy the Bush administration and the Haitian elite.
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http://www.dollarsandsense.org/0504fletcher.html

[Dover]

1. Aristide is no exception. The elite rule the U.S. leadership in the same

way. Anyone too far to the left of their interests is eliminated, or never even makes it into the running.