Hillary Clinton needs to answer for her actions in Honduras and Haiti
This time, the scene is Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, in January 2011. Though the uprisings in Egypt were in full swing, then-Secretary of State Clinton paid a personal visit to Haiti shortly after the first round of the country’s presidential election, on Nov. 28, 2010. It quickly became clear that the pop singer-turned-candidate Michel Martelly, whom The Post in 2002
characterized as “favorite of the thugs who worked on behalf of the hated Duvalier family dictatorship before its 1986 collapse,” was Washington’s pick to win. Though the voting was badly marred by irregularities (the United States had pushed for quick polls), the OAS went even further and declared —
without evidence — that Martelly had qualified for the final round over the incumbent party’s candidate. Rather than rerun the preliminary round and let the Haitian people choose, Clinton reportedly pressured then-President René Préval with the
loss of U.S. and international aid unless the election results were changed to fit the OAS’s recommendation.
Préval’s electoral commission backed down, and Martelly won an election with only 25 percent turnout. Fast-forward to today, and Haiti is still in the grips of political crisis. In Martelly’s four years in office, Haiti never held a election, and as terms ran out on parliament members, only 11 elected officials were left in the country. A
New York Times article documented the criminal activities of his friends and aides, who had been charged with crimes ranging from kidnapping to rape, murder and drug trafficking. Martelly stepped down at the end of this term in February amid violent rallies for his removal and disputed election results, without a successor in place. The country has postponed its elections yet again, and fresh
political standoffs are underway, despite the United States spending $30 million on Haiti’s elections.
Jonathan Katz, former Associated Press correspondent in Haiti and author of “
The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster,” had this to say in an interview about Clinton’s record in Haiti:
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“There’s nowhere Clinton had more influence or respect when she became Secretary of State than in Haiti, and it was clear that she planned to use that to make Haiti the proving ground for her vision of American power. By now I’d imagine she was expecting to constantly be pointing to Haiti on the campaign trail as one of the great successes of her diplomatic career. Instead it’s one of her biggest disappointments by nearly any measure, with the wreckage of the Martelly administration she played a larger role than anyone in installing being the biggest and latest example.”
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Manolia Charlotin, a Haitian journalist based in New York, said Clinton’s actions should draw questions as to how Clinton would act should she become president: “What does that mean as to her approach to foreign policy? To have a secretary of state visit a country, to make a stop, and as a result of that meeting, you have an illegal selection of leaders? How does that decision promote the American views of democracy?”
In both Honduras and Haiti, Clinton chose to shy away from letting each country’s voters choose their leaders when the going got tough. American voters, the people of Honduras, the people of Haiti and anyone who cares about democracy and human rights should know whether Clinton as president would be a promoter of such values.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/10/hillary-clinton-needs-to-answer-for-her-actions-in-honduras-and-haiti/?utm_term=.99e73b5cd856
