This week in HaitiHaïti Progrès
January 17 - 23 , 2001
Who is threatening whom?
The camouflage of the opposition
After months of making thinly veiled calls for the violent overthrow of President René Préval's government and openly preparing to sabotage the Feb. 7 inauguration of incoming President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Democratic Convergence (CD), Haiti's tiny opposition front, last week sought to cast itself as the victim of its prey.
The opportunity for the charade came after a Jan. 9 press conference by the St. Jean Bosco chapter of the Little Church Community (TKL), a popular organization which claims allegiance to Aristide. The TKL leaders read a fiery communiqué to the press and recited some of the most fearsome war cries of the1804 Haitian revolution. "If [the opposition] plants violence in the midst of the [Haitian] people, who reject them, it is violence they will sow," said TKL leader Paul Raymond who read the statement.
The TKL leaders were responding to the CD's plan to launch a "parallel government" to displace that of incoming President Aristide on Feb. 7. Toward this end, the CD held a Jan. 3 forum at the Montana Hotel in Pétionville (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 18, No. 42, 1/3/2001) where they drew up blueprints for a government called the National Council for Public Salvation (CNSP). Some CD leaders have openly declared that they will occupy the National Palace instead of Aristide, who was elected in a landslide on Nov. 26.
The TKL leaders read a list of over 130 names of politicians, journalists, priests, and other public figures who were nominated, often without the nominee's knowledge, to sit on the "consultative body" for this government. So unilateral was the list's formation that it even included the name of Yvon Neptune, a leading Senator and spokesman for Aristide's party, the Lavalas Family (FL).
The TKL leaders said that those named who did not publicly renounce the CNSP would be branded as collaborators of a "bloody coup d'état, worse than that of Sep. 30, 1991, which [the opposition] is planning to reduce the country to ashes." In their comments, the TKL leaders particularly admonished the Cap-Haïtien bishop Mgr. François Gayot and Radio Kiskeya journalist Lilianne Pierre-Paul.
Two days later, Radio Kiskeya claimed that it barely escaped an arson attack when an unidentified "assailant" allegedly flung two gallons of diesel fuel and gasoline at the station but then fled when the station's guardian appeared. Within minutes, police were on the scene. There was no evidence of who was behind the attack, but a Kiskeya announcer held the St. Jean Bosco TKL leaders responsible and said that their threats "extended now to all stations." Justice Minister Camille Leblanc immediately issued an arrest warrant for TKL leader Raymond.
Most progressive popular organizations and parties, including the FL, have disavowed the St. Jean Bosco TKL's extreme language, while noting the hypocrisy of the mainstream Haitian and foreign media, which have all seized on the TKL's "threats" while ignoring those of the opposition.
"We think that the TKL committed a big mistake which was prompted by their frustrations," said Ben Dupuy of the National Popular Party (PPN). "The problem is that they used the enemy's methods, but in a struggle one shouldn't do that. One should use one's own tactics."
Dupuy also pointed out the irony of how certain mainstream journalists were manufacturing a mythical offensive against the press when previous threats have been ignored. As a co-director of Haïti Progrès, Dupuy was recently the target of a written anonymous right-wing death threat. What was the reaction of Haiti's mainstream press?
"The Association of Haitian Journalists (AJH) didn't say a word about it," Dupuy said. "But now I hear that they have been resuscitated and formed a sort of federation of media directors" to defend Radio Kiskeya and others against the purported offensive of pro-Lavalas popular organizations. "Why do they defend some media and not others?" Dupuy asked. "Why the double standard?"
U.S. Republicans were also quick to make hay from the TKL's outburst. "In speaking at the church of St. Jean Bosco, the men issuing these threats clearly suggested to Haitians that they were speaking for Mr. Jean Bertrand Aristide," said Congressmen Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) and Porter Goss (R-FL) in a joint statement. "Instead of keeping his promises to President Clinton, Mr. Aristide is condoning by his silence thuggish acts of violence in his name."
Of course, the TKL leaders committed no "act." Furthermore, most Haitians attribute recent thuggish acts of violence in Haiti to the Republicans' allies in the Convergence. These acts include a bombing campaign that killed two children in the weeks leading up to the Nov.26 elections, the assassination of several popular organization leaders, and the endemic crime wave carried out, in large part, by death-squads of former soldiers and Duvalierist paramilitaries.
Nor did Gilman or Goss or Sen. Jesse Helms protest when CD leader Evens Paul urged Haitian motorists to run over pro-Lavalas street demonstrators with their cars or when other CD leaders ominously predicted the bombing campaigns which have recently plagued Haiti.
On the contrary, the Republicans have tried to dress up their Haitian counterparts, who mostly supported the 1991 coup, as upstanding citizens. The web-page of the CNSP makes it very clear that the Haitian opposition is almost entirely foreign inflated. The webpage (www.geocities.com/cnsphaiti/) went up on the Internet the day after the CD's Jan. 3 forum and outlines the CNSP's "parallel government" to be established on Feb. 7. The "President" would be Dr. Duvalnord Wisler Marcellus, an unsuccessful candidate for president in 1987 and for the Senate in 1990. The "Vice-President" (a post which doesn't exist under the 1987 Constitution) would go to Leslie Manigat, a perennial politician whom the Haitian military installed briefly and then uninstalled as a puppet president in 1987. Also listed are "Members" comprised of politicians Evans Paul, Hubert DeRonceray, Camille Sylaire, Dejean Bélizaire, Gérard Pierre-Charles, and Turneb Delpé.
The CNSP website, however, is just an appendage of that of a certain "Phoenix New Haiti Millenium Foundation" (PNHMF) whose address is a Washington, DC P.O. box. The two-fold mission of this "foundation" is "1. To install the best qualified individual as President of the Haitian provisional government, the Conseil National de Salut Public (CNSP) to be held February 7, 2001 to fulfill the promise of true political freedom in conducting Haiti's Affairs of State . This choice is Dr. Duvalnord Wisler Marcellus." (Never mind that the Haitian people made another choice on Nov. 26). And "2. To implement a true Economic Reform Plan under his guidance, allowing investors, entrepreneurs and developers free access to Haiti's borders to spur Haiti's economic and social development."
The "Economic Reform Plan" opens with the sentence: "A recent series of Economic Reforms is now opening up Haiti's economic potential to international companies from the United States and all over the world." What follows is a pathetic little paragraph listing completely unexplained reforms and acts to be taken, such as "allowing foreign banks to acquire up to 100 percent of the voting stock of an existing local bank for a limited period."
Only two of the eight listed PNHMF officers and administrators appear to be Haitian, and the website tells the surfer: "Your financial aid is needed in support of the international campaign to install Wisler Marcellus as the President of the Haitian provisional government..." (our emphasis).
Looking a little farther one learns that the "Phoenix New Haiti Millenium Foundation" is "conducted under the auspices of " the National Heritage Foundation (NHF), based just outside Washington in Falls Church, Virginia. Haïti Progrès was unable to reach anyone at the National Heritage Foundation, which is not to be confused with the Heritage Foundation, a much larger right-wing think tank. But the foundation is primarily run by a certain Dr. J.T. Houk and his family members and specializes in spinning off other foundations. "We want to make foundations accessible to everyone," the home page reads. One other NHF tenet: "Government administration of social programs bad economics and worse psychology." Leave it to the churches and private sector. No wonder the NHF has adopted the CNSP.
Meanwhile, Haitian opposition leaders met last week with the ruling Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) in the Dominican border town of Barahona. The ramifications of this meeting were not lost on the Haitian people.
In short, the U.S. and Haitian right-wing, with the aid of some media, are attempting to carry out a coup d'état in the full view of the Haitian people and the world. This is what provoked the outrage and invectives of the St. Jean Bosco TKL, which the opposition has now tried to use as camouflage. But the Haitian people and popular organizations are not the aggressors in Haiti today. They are simply trying to organize themselves and are worried by the vultures they see circling.
**~