Aristide and the Battle for Haiti's Political-Economic Future

In 2004, President Jean Bertrand Aristide was removed from executive power in a U.S.-supported coup d'tat. Aristide was kidnapped by U.S. special- forces then flown to a neighbouring location. (Exactly like the coup in Honduras last summer). Since the 2004 coup Lavalas, a mass political party which Aristide created, has been subject to violent repression and censorship at the hands of the Haitian government. Aristide, now living in South Africa, has announced his intention to return back to the country for the on going recovery effort.

"The spirit of Ubuntu that once led Haiti to emerge as the first independent
Black nation in 1804; helped Venezuela, Columbia and Ecuador attain liberty and
inspired our forefathers to shed their blood for the United States independence
cannot die. Today this spirit of solidarity must and will empower all of us to
rebuild Haiti."

The return of Aristide to Haiti will be opposed by Haitian elites and the U.S. government. Haiti is a sovereign nation-state but for decades the U.S. has interfered in its internal economic and political affairs, often relying on violence. Immediately following the earthquake, U.S. right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, began planning a political and economic future for Haiti that could effectively defend U.S. interests there. These interests include new “free” trade deals, economic liberalization and countering the influence of Venezuela, Cuba and other Latin American countries aligned with the Bolivarian Revolution.

President Obama has already implemented many of the ideas coming out of the Heritage Foundation including sending in an overwhelming amount of military, civilian, and government forces to the island and tapping George W. Bush to help Bill Clinton in a "bi-partisan" aid effort. Bush has strong ties to the Heritage Foundation and their ideas will no doubt be represented in U.S. foreign policy in Haiti. Both Bush and the Heritage Foundation were supporters of the 2004 coup. The return of Aristide and a resurgence of popular participation during the political and economic phases of recovery would complicate their agenda.

Perhaps, it is inappropriate to start thinking about long-term political and economic transformation in Haiti given the amount of suffering taking place. But that has not stopped the U.S. State Department, Pentagon or Heritage Foundation. When the media cameras leave in the months ahead that is when the real battle for Haiti's future will begin.

The Limitations of Representative Democracy in Kenya (Africa)

Democracy versus Authoritarianism is one of the major debates in the comparative political economy of development. The conventional view is that representative democratic systems are more responsive to the material demands of citizens than authoritarian systems. For example, development economist Amartya Sen has previously observed that famine only occurs in authoritarian regimes. Democracy, according to Sen was more responsive to citizens needs and thus able to prevent famine from occurring. So what conclusions are we to draw from nominally democratic systems in Africa, that clearly lack the ability to respond to the wishes and opinions of their citizens?

Kenya has a representative, multiparty, electoral democracy and embraces a model of capitalism defined by economic liberalization. Kenya has both a market economy and open society complete with scores of foreign aid agencies, missionaries and non-governmental organizations. The Freedom in the World Report ranks countries according to the amount of political rights and civil liberties, thru which countries are classified as “Free”, “Partly Free” and “Not Free.” According to Freedom House, Kenya is "Partly Free", ranking more favorably than countries like Zimbabwe, Libya, or Eritrea (countries considered authoritarian in the West). While there are still challenges, civil liberties and political rights are relatively well recognized in Kenya. Yet, the East African nation of Kenya is on the verge of an expansive famine that is threatening the lives of millions.

The New York Times reports,

"A devastating drought is sweeping across Kenya, killing livestock, crops and children. It is stirring up tensions in the ramshackle slums where the water taps have run dry, and spawning ethnic conflict in the hinterland as communities fight over the last remaining pieces of fertile grazing land."

The New York Times has stopped short of calling the current drought a famine, but facts on the ground suggest the same characterizing features---extreme scarcity of food. The real culprit in this case is typical of other recent converts to representative democracy in Africa. Politicians in Kenya are more concerned with being elected to representative seats in parliament than performing the necessary duties of public service. Worse yet, voters elect politicians with whom they share ethnic or familial ties instead of choosing candidates on the basis of their competence and vision for the poorest sectors of society. The images of ethnic violence after claims of voter fraud in 2007, were terrifying. Perhaps just as tragic has been the general incompetence and elitism of the resulting power-sharing coalition in Kenya.

Like other young democracies in Africa with significant cultures of nepotism, another of Kenya's great hurtles is the lack of political education among citizens. Very few are aware that as citizens they are entitled to certain basic inalienable rights, not limited to civil liberties only, but also freedom from fear and want. When State institutions fail to deliver social protection, people trend toward ethnic violence rather than organized demands for greater responsiveness from the State.

Kenya is a perfect case-study of the ineffectiveness of State consolidation in parts of Africa after the fall of colonialism, but also the tremendous shortcomings of 21st century identity politics. Kenyan author Ngugi Wa Thiong'o best summarized, in his analysis of the 2007 general elections, the ridiculousness of identity politics in Kenya and the need for a real agenda for development.

"I am not a member of any of the contesting parties. They don’t adequately embody the vision of the unity of the small farmer, the worker, the jobless and landless Kenyans across all the regions of their birth and residence. They don’t seem to recognize sufficiently that Kenya like Africa as a whole has only two tribes: the haves and the have-nots."

The widespread incapability of the State to promote the welfare of citizens in Kenya can not be blamed on the Kenyan government alone. Most recently, Western aid agencies and governments have played directly into the hands of ineffective politicians by perpetuating the myth that the fundamental responsibility to help protect the physical and material well-being of people in need lies with Western NGO's rather than the government. External social engineering in Kenya has subversively redefined the role of government to exclude the provision of basic necessities to focus instead on liberal institutional reforms.

The reason, according to the New York Times, that donors have been slow to assist Kenyan's during the crisis is because of aid conditionalities tied to such reforms!

"Part of the reason may be the growing disappointment with Kenya's leaders.They have been poked and prodded by Western ambassadors---and their own citizens---to overhaul the justice system, the police force and the electoral commission."

In the midst of a human catastrophe, the aid agencies are digging in their heals in the fight against corrupt behavior, but few have addressed the deeper structural issue in Kenya. The inability of the Kenyan State to fulfill its fundamental responsibilities of social protection had left poor Kenyan's without basic provisions of food, health care, housing, education, and meaningful employment well before the current drought. The failure of welfare provision in Kenya is the very reason for the existence of so many external aid agencies there in the first place. No wonder NGO's are slow to address this point. Globalization is no substitute for responsive governance.

In Africa, there are frequent campaigns for regime change against alleged authoritarian strongmen whose exploits lead to economic inefficiencies or social failures. Should the grounds for regime change in cases of authoritarianism apply for nominal democracies in Africa as well? Do Kenyan citizens for example have a legitimate case for regime change in their country when the regime is non-responsive to their needs? The very suggestion would be opposed by most liberals but the search for answers among the popular classes of Kenya is inevitable.

Rural Japanese Voters in Revolt

The upcoming elections in Japan could be a referendum on the nation's development policies over the last 20 years. Rural farmers blame the ruling Liberal Democrat Party for promoting an uneven development model that favored urban centers over smaller towns and cutting social protections for the most vulnerable populations. Now, it is widely expected that the Liberal Democrats could face a thrashing at the ballot box later this month.

According to CBS News, Japanese rural voters are revolting against the status-quo in economic development.

Voters here blame former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a Liberal Democrat, for policies they believe benefited urban centers at the expense of rural Japan. During his five years in office from 2001-2006, Koizumi championed free market reforms to steer the world's second-biggest economy out of its "lost decade" of the 1990s.

He privatized government entities, relaxed trade restrictions on food imports, loosened labor laws, pushed banks to purge bad debt and cut pork-barrel spending. To slash costs, Tokyo ordered smaller villages and municipalities to merge.

Critics point to Koizumi's reforms for exacerbating the urban-rural divide and creating an underclass of temporary workers unprotected during economic downturns.

My Guest Appearance on Radio Show, "Real Talk With Ray Baker"

Below is a recent discussion I joined on "Real Talk With Ray Baker". We reviewed the case of Georgia death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the state of the US-Africa trade relationship. Ray's show is one of my favorite sources for up to date information and he keeps me honest in his questioning. I always learn a lot from being a guest. ( The file may take a second to load)

Austin Thompson On "Real Talk with Ray Baker" by aus10

Neoliberalism on Trial in Zambia

The former president of Zambia, Frederick Chiluba was regrettably acquitted on charges of corruption and stealing public money from the country. The press today has run a series of articles presenting criticism of the decision and the lack of justice for corrupt African heads of state in general. The cruel irony is that the BBC, New York Times and other media outlets conveniently neglect to mention that it was neoliberal policies imposed by western technocrats that facilitated the secrecy and corruption in Zambia during the Chiluba presidency.

I first learned about Frederick Chiluba writing a college research thesis about the development of opposition to privatization amongst civil society organisations, particularly trade unions in Southern Africa from 1991-2001. Chiluba won presidential elections in 1991, unseating socialist president Kenneth Kaunda who had held power since independence from British colonial rule in 1964. Chiluba's victory was heralded as a triumph for multi-party democracy and anti-statism but eventually his administration plunged the country deeper into socio-economic crisis and political corruption.

Like in other African countries, western financial institutions sought to exert their influence on public policy in Zambia by extending liquidity on the grounds that the state adopt anti-social external conditionalities. Chiluba egotistically accepted the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank and IMF cutting price controls, ending public subsidies to various sectors of the economy, and most importantly privatizing public-owned assets like the strategically important mining industry. With the backing of international financial institutions and under the rhetoric of liberal democracy, President Chiluba purposefully ignored the human consequences of his policies on mineworkers, their families and other poor communities---not to mention trampling over basic civil liberties when opposed.

Today, the adverse impacts of neoliberalism in Zambia have made it politically unpopular to ignore the terrible human consequences and economic shortcomings of such policy prescriptions. Despite this fact, other African governments continue to routinely accept unjust external conditionalities on the cash that they receive from foreign investors. Frederick Chiluba may have escaped justice for his crimes against the Zambian people, but the neoliberal prescriptions that facilitated his downfall and ruined the economy should not.

Food Crisis for Thought: Neoliberalism Fails to Deliver Food Security

For decades technocrats and politicians in Washington D.C. have paraded Milton Friedman and Robert Nozick's 'minimal-state' as the undisputed champion of modern political economy---the narrow path to prosperity and increased living standards in post-colonial countries in the developing world. But the Washington Consensus has failed to deliver the most basic human necessities to the poor and the current food crisis in the global South is a text-book example of what Egyptian economist Samir Amin has identified as a "Liberal Virus".

Sky high food prices, climate change, an increasingly nugatory dollar, and Western subsidies towards the production of biofuels have created a "perfect storm" against the poor world-wide. There is no part of the developing world left unblemished by the current food crisis and countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Argentina, Haiti, and Senegal have reported riots and other forms of social upheaval in response.

Facing pressure from their populations, many nations are fasting from vulgar classical economic liberalism to alleviate the effects of global market-failure by protecting their own domestic food industries. In Asia some of the largest rice exporters in the world including India, Cambodia, China and Vietnam, are either dramatically cutting back or have completely banned exports of rice in a last ditch effort to provide some semblance of food security for their citizens.

In Africa however, there is no such option. A food crisis that may be new for some in the global economy has been intrinsic in this continent for decades and has only worsened in recent months. The structural adjustment policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund demanded the whole sale abandonment of large scale domestic agricultural production for a "competitive advantage" in the extraction of cheap natural resources such as oil, diamonds and fish. African nations, dependent on food imports and aid from the West are reeling with social unrest and riots as the poor and middle-classes simply cannot afford enough food for daily consumption. In Sierra Leone the price of food has risen by 300 percent.

The World Bank has been obliged to join the growing chorus of international organizations warning of a deepening global crisis over the rising cost of food. The current head of the World Bank Robert Zoellick has asked rich nations to commit at least $500 million to the UN World Food Program to fight hunger in emergencies. Zoellick said prices of rice have risen a whopping 75 percent over the last two years.

“This is about recognizing a growing emergency, acting and seizing opportunity, too. The world can do this. We can do this. We can have a new deal on global food policy."

The "New Deal", referred to by Zoellick is needless to say a call for agrarian sectors in emerging countries to be more productive and competitive in global markets. But the broken record skipping from zonked Bretton Woods institutions is likely to be cut in the coming months ahead by post-colonial nations in Asia and Latin America looking to avoid political unrest---offering temporary concessions to the poor in the form of price controls and export protections. For the Bush Administration the food crisis will add fuel to a fire of domestic and Latin American hostility to the proposed Colombian-U.S. free-trade deal--- currently stalled for a vote in the Congress by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.