Haïti Progrès [HOME]
March 21-27 2001

After months of provocations from Haiti’s oppostion coalition, the Democratic Convergence (CD), pro-Lavalas popular organizations finally rose up this week to demand that the Haitian government arrest key opposition leaders, in particular "parallel president" Gérard Gourgue.

Political tensions escalated after a march two weeks ago by several hundred former soldiers through downtown Port-au-Prince. Then opposition and pro-government demonstrators clashed outside the headquarters of the Organization for American States on Mar. 14. Another confrontation took place in the northern city of Cap Haïtien.

On Saturday, Mar. 17, demonstrations erupted all over the country, but above all in the capital. Burning tires barricades went up all over the city along arteries in Delmas, Lalue, Petion Ville, Canapé Vert, Martissant, and downtown.

"We demand that they arrest Gérard Pierre Charles, Gérard Gourgue, Evans Paul, and Reynold Georges," said one demonstrator, referring to several opposition leaders. "If they don’t arrest them, we will fire the Justice minister."

Gunfire from unidentified assailants wounded at least two people in Delmas on Saturday. Sunday also saw barricades and sporadic violence.

In February, the CD declared that it had formed a "parallel government" headed by educator and former presidential candidate Gourgue. The Constitution expressly forbids the "usurpation of the title of president." But so far, the elected government has demurred from arresting the self-proclaimed one, apparently fearing the wrath of the opposition’s principal backer, Washington. But pressure from the streets is now forcing the issue.

On Monday, Mar. 19, a mobilization gripped the capital. Starting at dawn, there was a buzz throughout the city as the smoke from burning tire barricades curled up into the blue morning sky. Once again, some demonstrations seemed to be infiltrated by provocateurs who broke car windshields, threw rocks at pedestrians, and threatened motorists and passengers of both private cars and public buses. The city was completely blocked by 9 a.m. Four people were wounded that day, three by gunfire. One was a child.

The mobilization continued on Tuesday, Mar. 20, when even more people joined the throngs of popular organizations demanding that the government take action against the CD. In the early morning, barricades went up at many point. By midday, several groups assembled in front of the CD headquarters at Pont Morin in the Bois Verna section of the capital, across from the headquarter of Teleco, the state telephone company.

According to witnesses, people in the CD headquarters started to throw rocks at the demonstrators and the demonstrators riposted. Then shots rang out. "At Pont Morin, there was a clash between the Convergence group and the popular organizations," said police spokesman Jean Dady Siméon on Radio Haiti. "There were 2 people wounded, and the shots came from the Convergence’s compound."

Despite this police statement, at press time the government still had not arrested any opposition leaders or alleged gunmen. Ironically, all during the day on Mar. 20, CD spokesman Sauveur Pierre Etienne told radio listeners that the CD compound was being set ablaze and machine-gunned. But now numerous radio reports corroborate the police version that CD partisans fired on the Lavalas demonstrators.

With the same meddling impropriety as his predecessors, U.S. Ambassador Brian Dean Curran called on "the government and National Police of Haiti to respect and protect the democratic and constitutional rights of all citizens and to allow them to peaceably assemble and express their political opinions." Mr. Curran would do better to address his suggestions to his own government rather than trample diplomatic conventions by opining on Haiti’s internal affairs.

"We note that there are many people who have denounced the comportment of a citizen, in particular Mr. Gérard Gourgue, who was proclaimed provisional president of Haiti," said Information Minister Henri Claude Ménard in a Mar. 20 statement. "We heard demonstrators asking for his arrest. We believe that this denunciation is supported by Articles 217 and 218 of the Penal Code which deals with such an infraction. And we in the Justice and Interior Ministries warn all concerned parties that the public power is obliged to intervene as quickly as possible to avoid all excesses." But they have not intervened quickly enough to avoid excesses: the casualties for Monday and Tuesday are no less than 20 wounded.

"It is time for the government to act courageously and put an end to all the trouble the Convergence is causing in the country," one demonstrator in front of the CD compound declared. "Delaying is just making things worse."
 
 

Commerce Minister Stanley Théard
Charged with Embezzling $4.5 Million

By integrating Duvalierists into his government, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide thought he was making a master stroke. He figured he would please the "international community" by demonstrating his willingness to make overtures to his most right-wing opponents, thereby turning the tables on the opposition groups huddled in the Democratic Convergence coalition. He thought he would beat them at their own game of hypocritical posturing. He couldn’t have been more mistaken.

Washington, Ottawa, and Paris (the big three of the "international community" as far as Haiti is concerned) have continued, without batting an eye, to demand that a deal be struck with the Convergence. Meanwhile, Haiti’s popular sector, which has endured most of the sacrifices necessary to keep the Lavalas movement alive over the past 10 years, has indicated its refusal to accept "reconciliation" with Duvalierists until there is justice and reparations for political and economic crimes committed during the 30-year Duvalier dictatorship (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 18, No. 51, 3/7/2001).

In trying to defend Aristide’s concessions, one pro-Lavalas activist said last week that the inclusion of Duvalierists in the government "is an overture, and even though it has been made with citizens belonging to the previous regime, they don’t have any charges against them." He may have spoken a little too quickly.

In a Mar. 15 press conference, the National Popular Party (PPN) revealed that new Commerce Minister Stanley Théard, who held the same post under "President-for-Life" Jean-Claude Duvalier, was implicated in embezzling. Judging from the audacity of his recent remarks, Théard never suspected that his past might come back to bite him."It is not right that companies must wait six to nine months to be formed," Théard recently declared in the daily Le Nouvelliste. "The country needs new investors and investments. And often the weight of bureaucracy constitutes an impediment to the interests of investors... We are going to look into the possibility of enabling companies to be formed in less than 72 hours.»

"Théard should know what he’s talking about," said PPN general secretary Ben Dupuy in the press conference. "He appears to be past master in the rapid creation of fake companies." The case in point: on May 14, 1983 Théard founded the Corporation for Industrial and Food Production (SOPRINA), of which he was President and General Director. Barely over one month later, on Jun. 27, 1983, Théard landed a juicy contract with the Haitian state represented by Frantz Merceron, then a secretary of state in the Finance Ministry, who went on to become one of Duvalier’s "super-ministers."

According to Article 1 of this contract between Théard and Merceron: "The State commits itself, through a special grant, to pay a sum of 22,500,000 gourdes [$4.5 million US], repayable in finished products from the factory, according to the procedures stipulated in this contract."

According to Articles 2 and 3, SOPRINA had 24 months after the last installment of this sum to furnish pasta to public establishments such as hospitals, dispensaries and soup kitchens.

To sweeten the deal, Article 5 stipulates: "It is expressly agreed between the parties that, notwithstanding the dispositions in Article 3, the delivery of pasta to the State must never compromise the commercial activities of the company or its financial equilibrium." Dupuy noted the unusual character of this clause which gives priority to all SOPRINA’s other clients over the Haitian state, even though the State was SOPRINA’s main investor and creditor.

Even more astounding: Merceron ordered the very next day, Jun. 28, 1983, that the governor of the Bank of the Republic of Haiti (BRH), Jean-Claude Sanon, debit account #2634 of the state flour mill, Minoterie d’Haïti and credit account #100046156 of SOPRINA at the Bank of Boston for a sum of 7,921,543.70 gourdes or $1,584,308.74.

The extraordinary terms of this contract impart its true purpose: a fraud to steal state funds. SOPRINA had only $20,000 in capital and obtained free round-the-clock electricity from the Minoterie.

After Duvalier’s fall in 1986, a Commission of Administrative Inquiry (CEA) was set up by then Justice Minister François Latortue to investigate corruption. The CEA president Elie H. Legagneur wrote on Oct. 15, 1986 to Haiti’s equivalent of the IRS, the General Direction of Taxes (DGI), to obtain SOPRINA’s tax returns from 1983 to 1986. In his response two weeks later, DGI director Raymond Fourreau said that "the DGI has in its records no returns for the designated company during the periods requested."

The CEA had lawyer Alcan Dorméus draw up an "Examination and Analysis of the Jun. 27, 1983 contract" between Haiti and SOPRINA, which later changed its acronym to SPIA. Dorméus concluded that the contract was completely illegal since it "defies all the ordinary rules of the Civil Code" and was a disgrace both "in form and in essence." Dorméus noted that, among other things, the contract lacks notarization, a letterhead, identity numbers, and publication in the government journal Le Moniteur.

"In Article 7 of the contract one reads ‘It can be a debtor in the case of suspension of payments,’" Dorméus wrote. "What does ‘it’ refer to? It cannot be the Haitian state. In saying ‘it,’ can it mean SOPRINA?" Apparently, Merceron and Théard were so imbued in the corrupt and arrogant Duvalierist culture that they did not even feel the need to gussy up their huge swindle or cover their tracks.

"It appears clear that the contract of Jun. 27, 1983 between Mr. Frantz Merceron and the aforementioned company is a phantom contract, a phoney contract which never existed and which was only an excuse to justify the paying out of a value of 22,500,000 gourdes," Dorméus concluded.

There is also no evidence that Stanley Théard’s SOPRINA ever gave any pasta to any public institutions. In the course of its investigations, the CEA "learned that the payrolls of the SPIA operated from a special account 991-12 of Mme. Jacqueline Volel at the Nova Scotia Bank: a) from Jun. 1, 1983 to Jun. 25, 1986, the deposits in this account totaled $1,048,587; b) check #578 dated Apr. 29, 1985 for 500 thousand gourdes or $100,000 came from the operating funds issued to Stanley Théard and endorsed by him to the order of Mme. Jacqueline Volel,» according to its report.

After receiving the report, Justice Minister François Latortue issued the following appeal: «The government of the Republic asks the banks to cooperate with its efforts by refusing until further notice all operations, and any banking transactions made by or in the name of Mme Jacqueline Volel, M. Stanley Théard or Gilbert N. Léger, all charged in embezzling funds from the Republic."

Théard fled the country and was never brought before justice. Jacqueline Volel was briefly incarcerated but later freed by Latortue’s successor, Minister François St Fleur, who wanted to bury the case. At the time, Haïti-Progrès (Vol. 7, No. 13, Jul. 1, 1987) wrote: «As for Jacqueline Volel Brisson, it is very unfortunate that Gérard Pierre-Charles’ book Radiographie d'une dictature (Éditions Nouvelle Optique, Montréal 1973) was dedicated to her as an ‘heroic combattant who has fallen into the hands of the enemy’». In fact, she accepted to collaborate, as we can see, very deeply with the dictatorship. At the end of 1986, she was implicated "in the business of embezzling public funds from the Haitian state at the time of Frantz Merceron» in cahoots with Gilbert N. Léger. The paper notes that «the two aforementioned citizens were given provisional freedom" and then concluded: "In liberating these two citizens, François St. Fleur, the new justice minister, has just allied himself with a part of the bourgeoisie."

Jacqueline Volel displayed particular impudence when she denounced "the unspeakable injustice of M. Latortue» - an «injustice» graciously redressed by François St. Fleur. She even called the way she was treated «neo-macoutism». She would know. She was one of the informers and police attachés affiliated to Casernes Dessalines which was directed at that time by the torturer-colonel Bréton Claude.

So one can see the results of the progressive capitulation of the Lavalas Family: injustice and disgrace. "We demand that the Justice Minister reactivate immediately this case and reexamine Mr. Stanley Théard so that he explains what happened to that $4.5 million," Dupuy declared. "Haiti owes about $800 million, which was siphoned off through just this type of business dealing. They force us, with the knife to our throat, to reimburse $40 million each year. How can we tolerate this individual to be Commerce Minister today? Are wolves our new shepherds?"

Dupuy called on Justice Minister Garry Lissade to "put justice in gear" as he has promised by addressing this question of embezzlement. The opportunity is there for Lissade to put his words into action.

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