International election observer

    This weekend I am serving as part of an international election observer delegation working with the Mexican civil society organization “Ni un fraude más". We are investigating electoral processes in the State of Mexico as it undergoes an important gubernatorial election. Here is information in español about our mission, and the institutional and democratic crisis that Mexico faces.

New article with NACLA on the Dominican Republic

I have a new short article published with NACLA, titled "Polyarchy in the Dominican Republic: The Elite Versus the Elite". Read it here. I was also  interviewed on this topic on Latin Pulse.  An expanded version of the article in español appears in the Dominican media-worker cooperative El Grillo.

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.