This week in Haiti
OAS "Mediators" Threaten Haiti to Accept Terms
After months of backroom threats, the Organization of American States (OAS) openly began siding this week with Haiti's opposition Democratic Convergence (CD) as "last ditch" talks to force the Haitian government to reverse last year's election results got under way in Port-au-Prince.
OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria and the former Prime Minister of Dominica, Eugenia Charles, who is representing CARICOM, arrived in Haiti on May 29 for three-days of negotiations. During April's Summit of the Americas, Washington and Ottawa managed to have the gathering deputize the two as some sort of "super mediators," since the OAS's Deputy Secretary General, U.S. diplomat Luigi Einaudi, has been unable to broker a deal despite eight visits to Haiti since last August (see Haïti Progrès Vol. 19 No. 6, 4/25/2001).
Einaudi made clear before Gaviria's arrival that the OAS backs the proposal of the U.S. State Department-supported right-wing business association CLED (Center for Free Enterprise and Democracy) to annul the May 21, 2000 legislative and municipal elections, which were swept by candidates from President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas Family party (FL). The CLED and other businessmen have inserted themselves in the negotiations as self-anointed impartial mediators representing "civil society," while in reality, they are merely extensions, if not the puppeteers (along with Washington), of the CD.
"There are a lot of issues but only one that counts and that is doing something about the May 21 elections," Einaudi said.
Ironically, the OAS deemed the nationwide May 21 elections "free and fair," but later challenged the method by which Senate victories were calculated, claiming that 8 seats should have gone to run-off votes. Now all 110 Senate and Deputy seats are being put in question, plus over 7,000 municipal posts.
"There has been talk about the calculation method, that some senators are contested and should have gone to run-offs," said FL Senator Gérald Gilles. "If that is the sacrifice which must be made, we in the Lavalas Family are ready to make it. But we can't talk about the annulment of the May 21 elections. That would simply be contradictory because the OAS has already accepted them as credible and honest with massive participation of the population."
Control of Haiti's parliament is key to controlling Haitian politics. Last year Washington sought to help Haiti's opposition capture the parliament by encouraging the issuing of photo ID voting cards (which were difficult for many peasants and slum-dweller to obtain) and the staggering of legislative and presidential elections, so as to minimize Aristide's coat-tail effect.
But the Haitian people deciphered the strategy and turned out to vote for the FL en masse. Now Washington and the CD are working to turn back the clock and rehold the vote, whose outcome they might, on the second try, more effectively engineer.
Such a reversal might not be so difficult, since Aristide's FL in the last three months has alienated many of its former allies and supporters by placing Duvalierists in key government posts and embracing the neoliberal policies dictated by Washington, thus becoming politically indistinguishable from the CD.
"We see clearly that neither the Convergence nor the Lavalas represent an alternative for the popular movement because neither now champions popular causes," said Marie France Joachim of SOFA (Haitian Women Solidarity), an influential progressive women's group which runs a health clinic in the capital. "The popular movement has to regain its confidence and offer an alternative on the political scene."
Perhaps in a bid to reignite political passions, perhaps in search of a bargaining chip, the Haitian government sent hooded policemen to arrest former dictator Gen. Prosper Avril in a Pétionville restaurant on May 19 during a book-signing for his just released title "The Black Book of Insecurity 1995-2000." Once the "eminence grise" of President for Life Jean-Claude Duvalier, Avril was briefly part of the neo-Duvalierist junta which took power when Baby Doc fled the country in Feb. 1986. He lurked in the background of various juntas until engineering a coup against Gen. Henri Namphy in Sep. 1988. He ruled as "provisional president" until Mar. 1990, when a popular uprising (and U.S. Embassy prudence) forced him from power.
In one particularly vicious Nov. 1989 crackdown, Avril tortured a number of political opponents and paraded three of them (Evans Paul, Marino Etienne, and Jean-Auguste Mesyeux) swollen, bruised, and bloodied on National Television. The attempted intimidation only deepened popular disgust with his rule, accelerating his downfall.
In 1994, the U.S. Southern District Court ordered Avril, then goldenly exiled in Boca Raton, FL, to pay $41 million in damages to six of his torture victims. But the U.S. government helped Avril sell his sumptuous home, evade the court judgement, and flee back to Haiti.
Soon Avril was involved in plots to overthrow the government, according to authorities, but remained free due to U.S. Embassy protection. Avril, who played a guest star role at a CD meeting three weeks ago, was arrested on an outstanding 1996 warrant for plotting a coup. The next day, three of his 1989 victims -- Etienne, Mesyeux, and Patrick Beauchard -- renewed their 1991 complaint suing him for torture.
The CD's Paul Denis called Avril's arrest "persecution" which was only aimed at "intimidating the population."(Ironically, Marino Etienne says that many CD members are his "intimate friends" and "political comrades").
Meanwhile, in the southern city of Cayes, on May 21 police arrested CD-affiliated politician Gabriel Fortuné, a former deputy, after Convergence and Lavalas partisans clashed during a would-be anti-government rally on the anniversary of last year's elections. Four FL partisans were wounded.
Fortuné's lawyer, Yves Jean, was killed in a car accident on the national highway when driving to Cayes to bail out his client. Fortuné's brother, Moïse, a law student who was travelling with Jean but survived the accident, claims that the crash occurred because they were fleeing a white jeep which was following them.
The CD's "parallel" president Gérard Gourgue said last week he would not participate in negotiations with the OAS and FL until Fortuné and imprisoned Haitian soldiers were freed.
The arrests will surely become part of the negotiations. Already the mainstream press has sought to put the Aristide government on the defensive, despite its giant concessions. "The BBC correspondent in the region says President Aristide appears to have done very little to find a solution despite a promise to the United States," the BBC reported, referring to an 8-point list of dictates Aristide accepted from President Bill Clinton.
If the Haitian government does not strike a deal, it will face sanctions, OAS officials say. For sure, some in Washington even are planning another military intervention or contra war. "The [Democratic] Convergence was formed as a broad group with help from the International Republican Institute, an organization that promotes democracy that is closely identified with the U.S. Republican Party," explains the Feb. 2 Washington Post. "(...) The most determined of these men [in the CD], with a promise of anonymity, freely express their desire to see the U.S. military intervene once again, this time to get rid of Aristide and rebuild the disbanded Haitian army. 'That would be the cleanest solution,' said one opposition party leader. Failing that, they say, the CIA should train and equip Haitian officers exiled in the neighboring Dominican Republic so they could stage a comeback themselves."
There are other harbingers of intervention. Eugenia Charles, it will be remembered, was the front-person for the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. Does her presence in this "final" OAS/CARICOM delegation send a message?
At the last two Summits of the Americas in Santiago, Chile (1998) and Quebec last month, Washington has sought to give the OAS executive powers to intervene in countries to protect "democracy."
"Threats to democracy today take many forms," reads the Declaration of Quebec City. "To enhance our ability to respond to these threats, we instruct our Foreign Ministers to prepare, in the framework of the next General Assembly of the OAS, an Inter-American Democratic Charter to reinforce OAS instruments for the active defense of representative democracy." Seeing the interventionist danger of this clause, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez refused to endorse it. Aristide should have been as perspicacious.
Finally, signs from the neighboring Dominican Republic are not encouraging. Last week, President Hipolito Mejia met with members of Haiti's opposition. Repeatedly, he and other Dominican authorities have called on the "international community" to "take into hand the matter of Haiti," which can also be interpreted as calls for intervention.
Finally "at the Radisson Hotel in San Salvador where he is staying, Mejia met with brothers Cesar and Rafael Lopez, Dominican nationals who are working for the US Attorney General's office in a program to help the Salvadoran government restructure its police force," reports "Weekly News Update on the Americas" drawing from the May 26 Dominican daily Hoy. "The Lopez brothers previously worked for the US Special Forces "Delta" unit, based in Panama. Mejia did not confirm or deny rumors that the two might be invited to the Dominican Republic as advisers to help implement a reform process in the National Police." Training police is often a cover for Special Forces, which primarily specialize in insurgencies and counter-insurgencies, which again suggests Haiti. Furthermore, according to Narciso Isa Conde, leader of the Dominican front Fuerza de la Revolucion, Mejia recently renewed an accord with the Washington, originally drawn up during the coup in 1991, whereby U.S. can use any Dominican port, airfield, or territory to launch actions against Haiti.
Whatever deals are made or not made in the next days, the Gaviria mission will report to the OAS General Assembly in Costa Rica from Jun. 3-5, where Haiti promises to be high on the agenda.
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