article en Haïti Liberté, V6 N21.

OpEd in Jamaica Observer

I have a new article titled "Haiti's excluded majority opposes army's re-creation" published in the Jamaica Observer. Read the article here. The full version of the article appears here on the website Upside Down World.

Report on Ex-FAd’H camp near Port-au-Prince (March, 2011)

Ex-FAd'H LT Jeune Aduen Moniteur stands in front of a Duvalierist flag.

(Photos: Jeb Sprague,2011)

In March of 2011, Isabeau Doucet (a journalist writing for the Guardian & the Christian Science Monitor) and I located the ex-FAd’H (Forces armées d'Haïti--Haiti's former military) camp that was recently covered in an article by the Associated Press.  Below I describe some of what I found and related information:

Stealth Duvalierism

Haiti, Michel Martelly, and the Presidential Selection of 2010
Znet and Haiti Liberte

December 20, 2010
By Jeb Sprague

In the media coverage of Haiti's ongoing electoral crisis, presidential candidate Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, whom ruling Unity party candidate Jude Célestin edged out of Haiti's Jan. 16 run-off by less than 1%, has been portrayed as the victim of voting fraud and the leader of a populist upsurge against Haiti’s crooked Provisional Electoral Council (CEP).

Some have questioned his presidential suitability by pointing to his vulgar antics as a konpa musician over the last two decades, where he often made demeaning comments about women and periodically dropped his trousers to bare his backside.

The real problem with Martelly, however, is not his perceived immorality, but his heinous political history and close affi liation with the reactionary “forces of darkness," as they are called in Haiti, which have snuffed out each genuine attempt Haitians have made over the past 20 years to elect a democratic government. Far from a champion of democracy, Martelly has been a cheerleader for, and perhaps even a participant in, bloody coups d'état and military rule.