This week in Haiti
October 15, 2001:
Seven Years After Aristide's Return, the Lavalas
Government Marred by Corruption and Division
Monday, October 15, 2001, marked the seventh anniversary of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's return to power after 36 months in exile following a Sept. 30, 1991 military coup d'état. He was reinstalled in 1994 via a military intervention of 22,000 U.S. soldiers, whose proclaimed mission was to reestablish "democracy" in Haiti.
At the time, progressive sectors within the Lavalas movement vigorously protested Aristide's move to invite foreign intervention and meddling in Haitian internal affairs. "Our mission in Haiti was to stop a revolution, not a coup d'état," wrote former U.S. Special Forces Master Sergeant and "Operation Uphold Democracy" veteran Stan Goff in his memoir of the period, Hideous Dream (Soft Skull Press, 2000).
Once foreign powers were given license to "direct" Haiti down the road to democracy, it would be very difficult to revoke that license, the opponents of intervention argued. It would allow Washington's military-intelligence-media "laboratory" to infiltrate, corrupt, bully, and subvert the Lavalas movement, they said.
The justice of these objections is evident today. Seven years later, the Lavalas regime is infiltrated by Duvalierists, pecked at by "opposition" opportunists, hamstrung by international lenders, pock-marked by corruption, and rent by feuds within its own ranks.
Doubtless, much of this grim scenario is the result of low-intensity war and mischief from Washington. But not all the blame can be placed there. Aristide and other leaders in his party, the Lavalas Family (FL), were blithely ready to "play the game," to accept the helicopter rides and fancy all-terrain vehicles, the clever re-education seminars and ego-stroking backroom meetings. Slapping each other's backs, they foolishly, lazily, and recklessly took the bait, thinking that they could outwit the bait-givers with their "intelligence" and own duplicity. But now they are snarled up in all the strings attached to the gifts, and the Haitian people are losing patience.
Corruption and waste have struck the deepest popular nerve. Several scandals have erupted in recent weeks. Topping the list: the cash-strapped government purchased a mansion-- subsequently declared an official residence -- for Prime Minister Jean Marie Chérestal in Canapé Vert for $1.734 million. Questions have also been raised about the state's purchase of a house for the Haitian Embassy in Italy (hardly a critical post) for about $5 million during the watch of former Foreign Minister Fritz Longchamp (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 18 No. 29, 10/4/2000).
Meanwhile, Lavalas legislators and officials all over Haiti are accusing each other of graft. On the Central Plateau, Senator Michel Renard has accused the mayor of Hinche, Dongo Joseph, of embezzling 400,000 gourdes (US$16,000). Dongo has heatedly denied the accusation, accusing in turn a departmental director of the National Education Ministry, whom he says embezzled money from a governmental project for "universal education." Interior Minister Henri Claude Ménard claims to have sent a commission to Hinche to investigate the matter.
Renard also accused Dongo of hiring a hit-squad to assassinate him when he went to Hinche to investigate. Dongo arranged for a "commando unit from Port-au-Prince" to ambush Renard on Oct. 8 when he left from Hinche to return to the capital at 1:30 a.m., the senator claimed.
Meanwhile, petty wars and power-struggles are breaking out from the lowest state offices to the highest, as well as within Lavalas party ranks. Recently, the police arrested four employees of Interior Minister Ménard with four boxes of flyers denouncing Prime Minister Chérestal. Since then, it has been a war between the two ministers. (Ménard may have Aristide's backing since Chérestal has refrained from firing him.) On walls around Port-au-Prince are spray-painted slogans like "Down with Chérestal, Long Live Ménard as Prime Minister." Several Lavalas-aligned popular organizations, such as the Little Church Community (TKL) of Paul Raymond and the Youth Political Power (JPP) of René Civil, have strongly denounced Chérestal, equating his evil to that of the hated U.S.-backed opposition front Democratic Convergence (CD) and the "international community."
In the Northwest, there is a war between Senator Evalière Beauplan and Jean Rabel's deputy, Dominique Philor. Beauplan has accused Philor of dumping human excrement on the town's courthouse. "He is always talking on the radio," Beauplan charged. "But now he is frustrated because he cannot keep all the promises he made to the people and he can't yet get out of that difficult situation. Now pride has gotten the better of him and he is attacking the police and justice, which is why there was fecal matter in the Jean Rabel courthouse."
One of the most bitter battlegrounds, however, is the Port-au-Prince Mayor's office, which is presently being audited by Haiti's general accounting office. The review, it has been leaked, is not very favorable. Marie-Yves P. Duperval, the lead mayor of the three-person mayoral cartel, is being implicated in "mismanagement," a condition found in many other town halls around Haiti.
In Port-au-Prince, all three mayors are enemies. Each has accused the other of corruption. Each has their own stamp with which to conduct their own business. The cartel never even meets, according to Lionel Bernard, the general accounting office president.
As a result, the most mundane city business has been hobbled. For example, Mayor Duperval recently named the former head of the Front of United Militants (FMR), Eddy Moïse, as the new director of the Port-au-Prince cemetery, replacing Felix Bien-Aimé. But Moïse's Oct. 10 inauguration was stymied by a demonstration and the no-show of the official to do the swearing-in.
Perhaps it is just as well because Félix Bien-Aimé refuses to turn over direction of the cemetery. "No, I am not leaving my post," Bien-Aimé said. "I am remaining in my post. Because the law says that the three mayors must meet together. If the three mayors can't meet together, then two have to meet and take a decision, and then the decision can be implemented. But Madame Duperval took that decision by herself... I am not rebelling, I am simply standing on a legal framework." Bien-Aimé added that Duperval didn't even have the right to fire a security guard given the general accounting office's on-going audit of the mayors' offices.
Some popular organizations like the Support Group to Save Haiti (GOSA), which is close to the Lavalas, condemned the Lavalas internal strife and called upon Aristide to put order in the ranks of his party. "We ask that President Titid, who has the mandate of the people as head of state, take his responsibility in hand before it is too late," they said.
In the face of these crises, Senator Yvon Neptune, president of the Senate and interim national representative of the FL, admitted: "In the Lavalas Family, we recognize that there are some elected officials who do not have a normal conduct in the framework of state administration."
But what sanctions have been taken against them? Is it business as usual?
In fact, the example has been set by the Lavalas leadership itself in the
way it has composed the current cabinet. Commerce Minister Stanley Théard
embezzled $4.5 million during the Duvalier dictatorship, according to a
1986 Haitian government report. Planning Minister Marc Louis Bazin acted
as Prime Minister for the military putschists during the coup. Justice
Minister Garry Lissade was the lead lawyer for coup leaders. Is it any
mystery more and more Lavalas officials figure that crime pays?
LETTERSLast week, we reported that an opposition leader, "Serge Gilles, speaking on Radio Metropole,... reminded the listeners that 'the U.S. Congress voted a law on [Haiti's] May 21st [parliamentary] elections and we are obliged to respect that law.'... [T]he 'U.S. Congress' did not pass a 'law' but a non-binding Concurrent Resolution, sponsored by the arch-conservative Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), which merely expressed the Senate's dismay at the FL's electoral victory (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 18, No. 17, 7/12/00)."
Reader Charles Arthur wrote: "Perhaps the US law to which Gilles refers is the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Act, enacted in November 2000, which stipulates that no U.S. assistance can be made available to Haiti's central government until two conditions are met. One is that the government resolves the continuing dispute over last year's (2000) parliamentary election results. The other is that it fully cooperates with U.S. efforts to interdict illicit drug traffic through Haiti. (see 'Raising the stakes - Haiti: Between Mayhem and Decertification' in NACLA Report on the Americas, July/August 2001).
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