This week in Haiti
The Soap Opera Continues...
In this week's episode: President Jean-Bertrand Aristide invites Haiti's opposition front, the Democratic Convergence (CD), and others to meet at the National Palace on May 3. Although non-CD right-wing politicians and businessmen show up, the CD does not, saying that the Palace is not "neutral." So Aristide proposes to meet across the street from the Palace at the Museum of the National Pantheon (MUPANAH) at 8 a.m. on May 9, the very day that Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General César Gaviria is scheduled to arrive in Haiti to broker a deal between the two antagonists. But at the last minute on May 8, the CD says that the MUPANAH is not "neutral" enough. Also Gaviria cancels his delegation's visit and sets no new date.
Hear Evans Paul, one of the CD's leaders say:
"Neutral ground can't be chosen by just one of the parties... Mr. Aristide together with the facilitators, meaning the civil society and the OAS, along with the Convergence must all agree on what is neutral ground."Hear Paul Antoine, coordinator of the Presidential Press Office, respond:
"To the great surprise of all sectors, the Convergence has categorically refused to participate in this [May 9] meeting. This refusal shows once again the Convergence's intransigence and this sector's absence of will to have Haiti escape from this crisis which has already lasted too long."Hear Aristide's Lavalas Family party (FL) spokesman Jonas Petit quip:
"The Convergence lives off the crisis. Asking it to leave it is like asking a fish to leave water."Stay tuned for next week's episode...
In a May 8 press conference, Ben Dupuy of the National Popular Party (PPN) said that Haiti's "so-called crisis, which many people including ourselves call a false crisis, a synthetic crisis, seems more like a soap opera or what we might call a television series."
First Dupuy questioned what representatives of "civil society," supposedly "impartial" mediators, are they doing on the set. "We don't know who gave these so-called representatives of the 'civil society' their mandate," Dupuy said. "Was it in an election? Were they democratically chosen to represent what they call the 'civil society'? Or is it people who have parachuted themselves in as representatives of the so-called 'civil society'"?
He went on to point out that these representatives are mostly businessmen led by the U.S. State Department-supported business association CLED (Center for Free Enterprise and Democracy). The essence of CLED's proposal is to annul the results of May 21 nationwide parliamentary and municipal elections in which 7,633 posts were filled mostly by FL candidates.
Dupuy called the proposed annullment ridiculous, noting that even the head of the OAS election observation mission, Orlando Marville, had pronounced the May 21 elections "acceptable" and "credible." Not until a week later did Marville raise a beef: the calculation method used to determine the winners of 10 Senate seats.
In essence, Dupuy said, the "crisis" is just a power struggle between the Convergence and Lavalas Family, which increasingly resemble each other. "Both have the same boss," Dupuy said referring to Washington. "Both are agreed to apply the death plan, the neoliberal plan."
As for the power struggle, "it is not just for political power," Dupuy said. "As we know in Haiti's case, political power means enrichment. We see a lot of people come into politics without a penny and then - presto - they are building big houses, they have big institutions."
Dupuy pointed out that corruption was being tolerated if not embraced. Haïti Progrès recently revealed that Commerce Minister Stanley Théard, who held the same post under Duvalier, was indicted in 1986 for embezzling $4.5 million from the Haitian treasury in the early 1980s. Aristide's government, which once touted "justice" as one of its principles, has not even commented on the scandal.
"In the Philippines, a president recently lost his job because he embezzled $6 million," Dupuy said. "It seems that if those Philippino politicians want to make money, they would be better off doing politics in Haiti."
While many sincere local elected officials are seeing their posts about to be bargained away, others are being pushed aside as the old regime elbows its way into the new. "We see that more and more those who struggled for the ideals of [Aristide's first election on] Dec. 16, 1990 - Justice, Transparency, and Participation - are increasingly sidelined and replaced by Duvalierists and Tonton Macoutes," Dupuy said.
Dupuy also noted the rise in recent days of the "kagoula" - masked criminals. This week some kagoula kidnapped Senegalese journalist Abdoulay Gedewenge, who was following the investigation of the murder of journalist Jean Dominique last year. Claudy Gassant, the investigating judge in the Dominique case, has also been abandoned by the police who were guarding him. On May 8, he announced the news on the airwaves of Radio Haiti, the station Dominique founded, and threatened to quit the investigation.
"We think that the real crisis in Haiti is a social crisis," Dupuy said, "a structural crisis which has been with us for about 200 years where there is a small elite which exploits the vast majority of the people and is leading the country into a veritable catastrophe today." Unfortunately, "the fundamental problems facing the country are not on the table," Dupuy said. "They are all just focussed on dividing up the cake."
Dupuy assured the Haitian people that the PPN "did not struggle to make Dec. 16, 1990 a reality so that we could return to the same nonsense." The PPN "has always remained true to its word, has always stood by principle, and has never mixed in the disgusting business of back-stabbing." Dupuy assured the people that the PPN would "continue to march with the masses" to mount a true alternative and opposition to this "scuffle to divvy up power, to put their hands in the state coffers, and to fix their business on the backs of the people."
*~