Edgar Leblanc’s Balancing Act Speech at the United Nations

(Français)

The Sep. 26 speech to the UN General Assembly by Edgard Leblanc Fils, the current president of Haiti’s Presidential Transition Council (CPT), did not reflect a political direction aimed at regaining our national sovereignty, dignity, and independence.

Fine, Leblanc denounced the racist campaign against Haitian nationals in the U.S., in particular the racist remarks of the Republican Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and his running mate JD Vance against the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio by pronouncing: “The passions that emerge naturally during an election campaign should in no case serve as a pretext for xenophobia or racism in a country such as the United States, a nation forged by immigrants of all origins and which has established itself as a model of democracy on a global scale.” Of course, most progressives worldwide would ask: “What kind of model is that?”

Leblanc also praised “international solidarity” towards Haiti, despite the duplicity shown by the U.S. and other countries of the “Core Group” that have only maintained the nation’s military occupation over the last 30 years through failed UN missions that the same Edgard Leblanc also criticized in his speech.

The speech’s ambiguity revealed Leblanc’s balancing act. He made careful criticisms without exceeding any limits. A leader who invokes the name of our revolutionary founding father, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, cannot at the same time praise the foreign military forces currently occupying Haiti. Leblanc was simply following U.S. dictates to the letter. It was U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, during his Sep. 5 visit to Haiti, who suggested that the U.S. propose to the United Nations Security Council that the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS), supposedly in Haiti to help the Haitian National Police (PNH) fight against armed “gangs,” be converted into an official UN “peacekeeping” mission, controlled by the Security Council and paid for by the UN peacekeeping budget. Leblanc simply parroted Blinken’s imperial recipe in his speech while recalling the misadventures of previous UN missions in Haiti, specifically those of MINUSTAH (the 2004-2017 UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti).

Fine, he called for the restitution of the “independence debt” on the eve of the second centenary of the 1825 ransom in these terms: “In 1825, barely 21 years after having won its freedom at the cost of an heroic struggle, Haiti was forced to pay a colossal debt to France, the colonizing country, in exchange for the recognition of its independence” and reparations for the 179 years that France carried out slavery and colonization in Haiti. (As a reminder, in 2004, the OPL, Leblanc’s party, undermined Aristide’s call for restitution by joining in the 2004 coup d’état against him, and the coup regime’s de facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue rescinded Aristide’s restitution demand almost immediately.)

as an indigène de service of the ruling classes, Leblanc did not take advantage of the UN General Assembly podium to denounce the maneuvers of U.S. imperialism or the racist practices of the Dominican Republic’s President Luis Abinader.

“My approach is resolutely committed, structured and well documented,” Leblanc said of his desire to win restitution from France. “The National Committee for Restitution and Reparation, in collaboration with the CARICOM Reparations Commission, has already undertaken exhaustive work on this subject.” If this is true, we hope that his approach will be transparent and open to citizen participation for close monitoring. It must not be a symbolic restitution, because it is not a moral debt. It must be a financial restitution of nearly $100 billion dollars. That is what’s at stake.

Also, wasn’t that the precise moment for Leblanc to kill two birds with one stone, to ask the United States to give us back the $500,000 in gold which U.S. Marines stole from the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti (BNRH) on Dec. 17, 1914 in the prelude to their Jul. 28, 1915 military invasion and occupation?

Leblanc did not remind the United Nations that former U.S. President Bill Clinton in 2010 publicly apologized for destroying Haitian rice farming, a serious blow to Haiti’s ability to be self-sufficient. Doing so would have demonstrated how the imperialist powers have brought Haiti to this state of disrepair and as Burkina Faso’s President Ibrahim Traoré recently said so well: “a country that does not develop, that cannot provide food and work for its people, is condemned precisely to violence and banditry.”

Leblanc did not denounce foreign interference in our political affairs nor the imperial domination of the United States over Haiti. He did not denounce the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Dennis Hankins who outrageously meddled in our internal affairs recently by visiting the director of Haiti’s Anti-Corruption Unit (ULCC) to inquire about the status of its investigation into the scandal surrounding the National Credit Bank (BNC) that threatens to discredit three CPT members, this CPT that the U.S. imposed on Haiti in league with its CARICOM vassals.

Fine,  Leblanc demanded respect for the rights of Haitian immigrants throughout the world. But given his class position and his role as an indigène de service of the ruling classes, he did not take advantage of the United Nations General Assembly podium to denounce the maneuvers of U.S. imperialism and also the racist practices of the Dominican Republic’s President Luis Abinader. He did not dare to tell the whole truth so as not to saw off the branch on which his is sitting: an illegal, illegitimate power concocted by his Western bosses.

Leblanc said nothing about the U.S. arms embargo against Haiti, under which Washington tightly controls our nation’s government in the purchasing of weapons and ammunition. Leblanc also did not ask his bosses to close the valve of illegal weapons coming from the United States via the neighboring Dominican Republic. Putting an end to this practice would be a thousand times more effective than invading Haiti with foreign police officers under the pretext of bringing security. All the sources of insecurity that are destroying Haiti come from the United States of America.

The popular masses’ commitment and participation will be necessary to neutralize imperialism’s sneaky maneuvers in concert the CPT that Edgar Leblanc leads, and the government of de facto Prime Minister Garry Conille, Haiti’s most dangerous and powerful strongman.