This week in Haiti
LAVALAS VS. CONVERGENCE::
As Crisis Deepens, PPN Calls for a Political Alternative
The verbal gloves came off in Haiti last week following yet another breakdown in talks between President Jean Bertrand Aristide's ruling Lavalas Family party (FL) and the small U.S.-backed opposition coalition, the Democratic Convergence (CD). In dueling declarations, FL officials exchanged biting words with the CD as well as with Paris and Washington.
Negotiations had resumed after a three-month hiatus on Oct. 14 but broke down only two days later, despite the imperious presence of Organization of American States (OAS) deputy secretary general Luigi Einaudi as a supposed last-ditch mediator. The principal stumbling block was the CD's demand to throw out the May 21, 2000 election results for over 7,000 municipal posts which went mostly to the FL. Already the FL had voluntarily withdrawn from seven Senate seats, proposed immediate run-offs for them, and agreed to new parliamentary elections next year. But, predictably, for every concession, the CD and their international backers made a new demand.
Haggling began last year over eight Senate seats captured in the first-round by the FL, victories which the OAS, overstepping its authority, claimed were correctly counted but "miscalculated," requiring run-offs. As for the rest of the May 2000 elections, international observers pronounced them well-attended and "free and fair."
Following the breakdown in negotiations, Haiti's former colonial ruler France, assuming the role of "bad cop," blamed the FL. A spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry solemnly admonished that "there must be concessions from the government and from the opposition parties to arrive at national reconciliation," a truism which obscures that, so far, the FL has made all the concessions and the CD none.
Like the missionary who precedes the conquistador, the Vatican's emissary to Port-au-Prince, Luigi Bonazzi, counseled Aristide to scrub last year's vote and surrender to the CD, which has virtually no following in Haiti. "It is vital to share power," Bonazzi preached. "I believe that this is also the desire of the Haitian people. They want this power to be shared. Therefore, the FL should create all the conditions to allow the sharing of this power, with respect for the will of the people."
Cornered, the FL began lashing out with denunciations, both oblique and pointed. On Oct. 17, the 195th anniversary of the assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the former-slave general who led Haiti to independence in 1804, Aristide gave a speech in which he compared slavery to terrorism, called for reparations, and said "we also are struggling against terrorism... both geopolitical terrorism and economic terrorism," a veiled reference to the Washington-led aid boycott against Haiti and their relentless political machinations.
But the sharpest words came from Senate leader Yvon Neptune, the FL's number two, who lambasted the "laboratory" (short for the Pentagon and CIA) for carrying out the 1991 coup d'état which exiled Aristide for three years and for trying to carry out an "electoral coup d'état" during last year's nationwide elections. "The intelligence of the people thwarted the laboratory and its terrorist apprentices, the lab that controls the OAS, the lab that invented the [current political] crisis, that lab which created the Convergence and the Civil Society Initiative (ISC) [a CD-aligned 'mediating' group], the lab of the coup d'état, the lab which uses negotiations to continue the coup d'état," Neptune said.
CD leaders made no attempt to conceal their pro-imperialist leanings and glee at the FL's declarations. Micha Gaillard, of the CD affiliate Konakom, scolded Aristide for "digging up the past" with "demagogic remarks" and adopting "a pseudo-nationalist attitude but anti-popular interests and anti-national development." "We are living in full globalization," Gaillard said. "We must see how we can use foreign support."
Historically, Aristide's episodes of rebellion have been short-lived, and unfortunately, the FL's combative words may be too little, too late. Uprisings rocked Port-au-Prince's Cité Soleil slum last week, protesting Lavalas government corruption, inefficacy, and in-fighting (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 19, No. 31, 10/17/01). The riots were sparked by the police killings of a 16-year-old boy, a 90-year-old woman, and a pregnant woman. Cops also brutalized and threatened Radio Haiti reporter Jean-Robert Delciné and rampaged through homes, beating dozens of people.
CD leaders are trying to capitalize on the people's deep frustration with the rapidly degenerating Lavalas regime. "This week there was a mobilization which we support in Cité Soleil, Gonaïves, and Cap Haïtien," Gaillard said. "People took to the streets to defend their rights when the police came to kill poor, innocent people. The population stood up and defended their legitimate rights. That is a good thing and we support it."
But in an Oct. 23 press conference, the National Popular Party (PPN) denounced the CD's attempt to coopt the uprisings. "The Convergence better not think that it can get a free-ride off the disillusionment of the people with the Lavalas Family," said PPN Secretary General Ben Dupuy.
Dupuy took note of Neptune's sudden discovery that the "laboratory spawned the Convergence and ISC, controls the OAS, and invented the artificial crisis. For the longest time, the PPN has been trumpeting these truths while the FL pretended that it didn't understand. It sat for over 11 months in negotiations with the OAS, the Convergence, and the ISC. Then on Oct. 19 Neptune says 'On 14 October 2001, it was the laboratory that controls the OAS that put on the negotiating table a chain for the Haitian people to shackle their feet and a rope for the FL to hang itself.' Once the goat has gotten into the garden, the FL cries 'Close the gate.'"
Dupuy rebuked the FL for betraying the original Lavalas principles of justice, transparency, and participation by, among other things, integrating zealous collaborators of the 1991 coup and of the 1957-1986 Duvalier dictatorship into key government posts and ministries.
"Before the election, the Lavalas Family said they were going to invest in people," Dupuy said. "Now the people see clearly that the FL has invested US$1.7 million to buy a house for a Prime Minister which they never see nor hear from. Meanwhile, the coup d'état victims have been marching in a circle on the Champ de Mars for seven years, and they haven't seen a penny. The people of Cité Soleil continue to live in mud like animals. A bucket of water sells for 7 gourdes. How many houses and dispensaries could that vast sum of money have bought?"
Dupuy warned that the "laboratory" and the reactionary forces grouped in the CD were monitoring the FL's declining popularity in the masses and surely planning military attacks from the Dominican Republic like that of Jul. 28 (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 19, No. 20, 8/1/01). "President Aristide, just like Toussaint Louverture, is playing duplicitous games with the new foreign colonists, while the Convergence is playing for time to allow its mercenaries to polish their weapons on the other side of the border so that they can come and get him," Dupuy said.
Faced with the danger that the FL's compromises and corruption could soon facilitate the extreme right's return, Dupuy called for a new political alliance of progressive forces. "The PPN calls on all patriots, all progressive popular organizations, all progressive intellectuals to join it in building an Alternative Front which will stop the reactionary forces which think they can coopt the people's disillusionment with the Lavalas Family and, with the aid of foreign forces, reestablish the same old system which the people rejected in Feb. 1986," when the Duvalier dictatorship fell.
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