Journalists are taught in school to avoid euphemisms. When someone dies, they write that she "died" instead of "passed away." But one euphemism that has become a fixture in U.S. news reporting is "the international community." This is generally a substitute for the U.S. government, with or without some input from some of its allies.
Perhaps this is nowhere more true than in Haiti, where Washington has long exercised a veto over the country's most important decisions. But last week the "international community" suffered a rare defeat when Haitians rejected Washington's plans for a deeply flawed presidential runoff election to take place on Sunday, January 24.
How did this happen? Basically, Haitians managed to put Washington in the situation of having to maintain that a runoff election with only one candidate, businessman Jovenel Moïse, would be legitimate, or postpone the election. As late as last Thursday, just three days before the election, U.S. officials were insisting that they would go forward even if the second candidate, engineer Jude Célestin, refused to participate. But he stuck to his boycott, and they backed down.
This op-ed was originally published by Al Jazeera America. Read the rest here.
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