Tag Archives: character assassination

Nov 19 2010

MANIGAT, MARTELLY, BAKER & LAGUERRE: WAKE UP!

The presidential election in Haiti is only days away, yet JUDE CELESTIN still matters. Something was not done right. I can tell you this much –it is because you guys (MANIGAT, MARTELLY, BAKER and LAGUERRE) did not play right. I would beat up all four of you for your complacencies. You failed to link him to the failed policies of the PREVAL administration.

The man in the White House, RENE PREVAL, said that CELESTIN is his man, what better evidence do you need to destroy or make him insignificant in the race? That’s exactly what you should have been wanting from him, and he delivered it to you “UPS delivery” at your doorsteps. How could you not use that to run an effective character assassination campaign against the man?

We democrats did it here in the US. How you think we literally annihilated McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign and gave Obama the election on a silver platter? We played three smart cards against him.

1. We linked him to the failed policies of the Bush administration –the baseless Iraq War, the recessive economy, the handling of Katrina in New Orleans, big tax cuts for big corporations and the top 2% Americans while neglecting the middle class, etc… 

2. We proved to the American electorate that he was out of touch with reality. On Monday, September 15, 2008, he hand-delivered to us the gift we had long been waiting for. On the campaign trail in Jacksonville, Florida, he declared: “the fundamentals of our economy are strong [despite] tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street.” Mind you, he made such statement right in the middle of the recession, at a time when the economy was bleeding jobs.

 

3. We transformed Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, his pick for vice president, into a laughing stock, a joke, someone not worthy to be taken seriously. By doing so, the McCain candidacy was viewed as a big joke. Her interview with CBS’s own Katie Couric did it for us.

 

We played the three cards so well strategically that before you know it, Senator McCain was already confined in history book. He was a done deal. We slashed him in the polls. So no one can tell me about the effectiveness of a character assassination campaign strategy, for I have seen it used many times in every single election (local and national) here in the United States.

I do not work for your campaigns, nor am I one of your cheerleaders. However, I want to place my country, Haiti, first. In this election, I do not have a fighting dog, which by now you should know. I do not know whom I am for. I do know, however, whom I am against. I am against PREVAL and his protégé JUDE CELESTIN.

Quit all the “kole mouda” with CELESTIN. The clock is ticking. You do not have that much time in front of you. It is time to proceed with PLAN B –CHARACTER ASSASSINATION. You guys need to run ASAP campaign ads on the radio and on TV telling the people that a vote for CELESTIN is a vote for the continuation of the PREVAL administration embodied in the policies that gave us -MINUSTAH, CHOLERA, LACK OF OVERSIGHT, CORRUPTION, MY PALACE COLLAPSED, etc…” Take my check to the bank and cash it. Trust me, it will not bounce.

Oct 27 2010

CHARACTER ASSASSINATION IS NOT A CRIME

Successful politicians do not only know how well to articulate their plans to their constituents, but also how best to assassinate the character of their opponents. How do you assassinate someone’s character? You assassinate someone’s character by using their vulnerabilities to convince the electorate to believe that the person is UNFIT for the position. You don’t know about your opponents’ character flaws by looking and smiling at them. You have to dig and unearth the stinky corpses.   

Here in the United States, we see nothing but that. Character assassination is the essence of American politics. Do not take my words for it. All you have to do is to take a few minutes of your time to watch a few political ads. A very slim portion of them is dedicated to introducing and positioning the candidates. For the most part, they are attack ads, and their sole purpose is to assassinate the character of the challenger.

In the Haitian political landscape, the politicians do not create or raise controversies, which is probably the reason why I have found it to be overtly boring. I barely see a political advertisement introducing a candidate, let alone an attack one. The ones I have come in contact with only tell the electorate what the candidate’s identification number is and where to make the check mark to vote him/her.

These Haitian politicians do not even talk about themselves in the ads; they worry more about putting the illiterate and hungry masses in the streets playing RARA POLITICS. I have seen a few candidates doing this crap, which I think is embarrassing, disparaging, condescending, demeaning, low and outdated.  

Anyhow, let’s go back to the topic. As I was saying, character assassination is the best way to fight political battles. You do not win these kinds of battles simply by presenting and positioning yourself; you do by assassinating the character of your opponents.

Have you ever asked yourself what had stopped Marc Bazin, the leader of the MIDH, from winning the 1990 presidential election in Haiti? That man was unstoppable. He had the persona, the savviness and the money to finance and run a well-structured campaign. But what he failed to realize was that money alone does not win elections. You need to be presenting yourself and your agenda and attacking your opponents. The strategy for his defeat was perfectly crafted that he was politically dead before the news even got to him.

How did his character get assassinated? The Haitian left painted him as an emissary of Washington. That’s exactly what they did, and before you know it, he was powerless with all the money he had.

The framing of the leader of the MIDH as Washington’s emissary worked perfectly because the public sentiment at the time was VERY antagonistic towards Washington. And the left did not spend a dime in presenting their candidate, Jean Bertand Aristide, who had just been relieved of his priesthood duty by Vatican for his revolutionary and leftist ideology of liberation theology. Aristide, as popular and powerful as he was, did not need any introduction to the political scene. With only a few months of campaigning, he could topple Bazin’s chance to win the presidency.  

Other politicians got eliminated from the scene simply by being labeled the M word –MAKOUT. Coming from the brutal dictatorship regime of the Duvalier, the people were highly repulsive of anyone having ties or acquaintances with the regime. So if you are a candidate, once you are framed as a TONTON MAKOUT, the ceremony for your political funeral is inevitable.

In conclusion, character assassination is a great strategy of battle which politicians use to annihilate their challenger. It works wonders. Politics is not supposed to be fair. How could you be fair in playing a game which must be won psychologically? Before you win in the polls, you must win in the minds of the people. So politicians should not be spending money in just presenting themselves and their agendas to the electorate; they should also work just as hard to assassinate the character of their opponents. It is despicable to see in this 21st century these Haitian politicians using the same archaic RARA POLITICS as political tool to get the attention of the electorate. Character assassination is not a punishable offense, so use it.