This week in HaitiHaïti Progrès
February 7 - 13 2001
Tale of Two Haitis:
One Real, One Virtual
On the eve of President-elect Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Feb. 7 swearing in, Haiti surpassed even its own standards for mysterious and confounding dualities.
Huge festive crowds gathered in the brightly lit square in front of the gleaming white National Palace on the evening before the inauguration. Ice-cream vendors wheeled their carts among hand-holding couples strolling among gushing water fountains, as compas rhythms floated on the air of the soft Caribbean night.
Meanwhile, radio and television air waves breathlessly reported that the country was in the midst of a deep political crisis. The Democratic Convergence (CD), an alliance of 15 opposition parties, announced that it was forming on Feb. 7 a two year "provisional government" headed by Gérard Gourgue, 75, a former presidential candidate in Nov. 1987 elections which were bloodily aborted by the Haitian military.
"We refuse to see a totalitarian hegemonic regime installed, founded on violence and constructed on anarchy, assassinations, crime, and generalized, daily, constant violence," said Paul Denis, a CD spokesman, in a Feb. 6 press conference announcing Gourgue's nomination. The CD contends that Aristide has illegitimately come to power through rigged and flawed elections last year.
But these days it is hard to find a Haitian in the teeming streets of Port-au-Prince who agrees with, or even recognizes, the CD. "The opposition represents absolutely nothing and nobody other than the so-called international community," said Emosthène Philogène, a middle-aged former custodian as he watched a pro-Lavalas march of about 800 pass his house in the Belair section of the capital on Feb. 6. In Haiti, the "international community" is generally understood to mean the U.S. and its allies. "If it weren't for foreigners who support them and the media which keeps covering them, they wouldn't exist. As far as the people are concerned, they don't exist and neither does their so-called government."
The justice of this assessment was brought home by a CD demonstration on the morning of Feb. 5. About 100 people behind a banner marked "No to the Lavalas" marched about one mile from the CD headquarters to the Palace. As they moved down the street yelling "Down with Lavalas" and spray-painting walls with slogans like "Goodbye Aristide," the CD demonstrators were met by looks of quizzical scorn from people who continued about their business. The protestors gained no numbers as they marched.
As the CD demonstrators approached the Palace, about three hundred people who had been watching the construction of inauguration stands spontaneously formed a counter demonstration to meet them. For ten raucous minutes, the two demonstrations, separated by only 30 feet of pavement and a handful of policemen, bellowed at each other as journalists darted back and forth in between them. Eventually, the CD demonstrators retreated, much to the glee of the Lavalas crowd. "You see, there was no violence, no fighting," exulted Bernard Secours, 26, a college student at the state l'Ecole Normale. "They can demonstrate, but so can we, and the people massively overpower them."
On Feb. 3, Aristide met with CD leaders at the Vatican's embassy to kick off two days of negotiations. The next day at the El Rancho hotel in Petionville, the CD presented negotiators from Aristide's Lavalas Family party (FL) with a 17-point proposal under which Aristide's term would be clipped from five years to two, the CD would name the Prime Minister (the real executive power under Haiti's constitution) who would rule by decree, and all elected municipal governments would be replaced by "municipal commissions" jointly appointed by the FL, CD, and "civil society," a euphemism for the bourgeoisie's civic and religious groups. The whole arrangement was to be overseen, like the talks, by ambassadors from the "international community," the United Nations, and the Organization of American States.
Many Haitians were dismayed that the Lavalas even accepted to dialogue with the CD in the days leading up to the inauguration. "The negotiations are a threat to the will of the people," said Gladys Philpot, a Lavalas activist in New York who returned to Haiti like many from the diaspora for the inauguration. "The people voted for their government. That can't be overturned in some back-room talks."
But it never came to that. The negotiations broke down at 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 6. Lavalas negotiators called for them to resume at 9 a.m., but the opposition refused. CD leader Evans Paul predicted that the Haitian people would respond to the opposition's call to "rise up" on Feb. 7 and thwart Aristide's inauguration.
In a Feb. 6 interview with Radio Kiskeya, Gourgue seemed only slightly more in touch with reality. "No confrontation is going to take place," he said, implying that his would be a patient approach. . His "parallel installation" would be "a setting in place which will depend on a certain process."
Still, his goal is to overthrow Aristide, who was elected with 92% of the vote last Nov. 26. "We will enter the National Palace," Gourgue assured his listeners. "The adversary himself faces so many problems and difficulties that practically he will be obliged to remove himself. He has taken power in very negative conditions, so there is a time factor which will come into play."
But lack of popular support is clearly not one of the "negative conditions." Popular organizations, neighborhood groups, and individuals deployed themselves in the days before the inauguration to sweep streets, clean gutters, and paint lamp-posts, street curbs, and walls with fresh coats of red and blue paint. Popular organizations also set up "security barricades" of burning tires on certain roads around the capital in a mostly symbolic gesture to curb would-be trouble-makers. But, mostly, the streets around the capital were remarkably calm.
In last minute preparations on inauguration eve, workers laid a new forest green carpet in the Parliament, varnished a new podium, and installed new sinks and computers. Similar teams applied themselves with hammers, ladders, and brooms to the National Cathedral and Palace.
Certainly, the new Republican administration of George W. Bush in Washington will take Gourgue's "time factor" into account if it launches a campaign of low-intensity warfare against the Aristide government as Bush senior did in 1991. That campaign culminated in the Sep. 30, 1991 coup d'état against Aristide, which sent him into a three-year exile.
Although Taiwan, Cuba, and several other Latin American and Caribbean nations are sending high level delegations, Hipolito Mejia, the president of the neighboring Dominican Republic, is the only head of state attending Aristide's inauguration as of Feb. 6. Furthermore, Mejia reportedly faced strong objections from the Dominican military establishment. All this indicates the extent of the U.S. and European Union's campaign to isolate and vilify Aristide and the Lavalas movement. But it is clear on inauguration eve, that the campaign has not worked in Haiti and, if anything, has strengthened the people's attachment to Aristide and resolve to fight for Haiti's sovereignty.
