Rice Scandal Rocks Aristide's Party

After less than one year in power, the Lavalas Family party (FL) of President Jean Bertrand Aristide is exploding in a series of scandals. FL parliamentarians have been implicated in police drug busts; one parliamentarian’s car was used by "zenglendos" (bandits), some of whom turned out to be on his security squad, to commit a robbery and double murder; corruption scandals have erupted in mayors’ offices nationwide, resulting in several dismissals in the face of popular protests.

The latest uproar involves FL senators and deputies who imported—duty-free -- 70,000 metric tons of rice under the auspices of a fake tax-free "cooperative" spun off from the Aristide Foundation for Democracy. The duty exemption on the 1.385 million sacks of rice meant a loss of over 117 million gourdes ($4.68 million) for the Haitian treasury. 

The pill might not be so hard to swallow if the "peace rice"—as it is labeled -- were being freely distributed, as some sources say it was supposed to be. Parliamentarians were each given a card by the Aristide Foundation to claim 400 sacks of rice to be distributed among their constituencies. The architect of this scheme—whoever it was—may have hoped to "buy" popular allegiance and goodwill for the FL and government, much as missionaries and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have tried to do with their food distribution projects in Haiti over the years. Another supposed purpose of the "peace rice" was to force down the high price of rice, which sells for about 800 gourdes ($32) per 110 lb. sack.

However, the "peace rice" was not being freely distributed but sold by the parliamentarians for 250 gourdes ($10) a sack, according to FL deputy Nahoum Marcellus, who exposed the rice racket two weeks ago. He claims that conflict over this trafficking was behind the forced resignation of the Prime Minister Jean-Marie Chérestal on Jan. 21.

"These guys are so steeped in thieving that they commit the crime today of selling imported rice, when they know that here at home there is rice production," said Charles Souffrant of the peasant organization Kozepep, which is based in the rice-growing Artibonite Valley. "Instead of encouraging national production, they are destroying it! What a shame on this parliament!"

The National Popular Party (PPN) also denounced the rice scandal in a Jan. 29 press conference in Port-au-Prince and revealed the illegality of the importing "cooperative." PPN Secretary General Ben Dupuy recalled that during the 1991-1994 coup d’etat, it was de facto Prime Minister Marc Bazin—presently Planning Minister of the outgoing Chérestal government—who granted the U.S.-based Rice Corporation the monopoly for importing rice, which continues to destroy national production. "There is a real monopoly, we could even call it a rice mafia, which has put the Haitian people through hell in food matters," he said. 

Now Lavalas parliamentarians want to enrich themselves at public expense on the pretext that they are attacking this monopoly to bring down the price of rice on the local market, he explained. They set up a fake cooperative called "For All of Us" ("Pou nou tout"), which the Haitian masses now bitterly refer to as "All For Us" ("Tout pou nou"). 

This cooperative was never legally established and yet received exemption from customs duties and all other taxes, Dupuy revealed. "So here are legislators, who are supposed to be making law, and instead they are the first to pass outside of the law," he said.

In the press conference, Dupuy presented documents gathered in an investigation of the "cooperative" by Haïti-Progrès. For example, according to an Oct. 27, 1960 presidential decree published in the Haitian government’s official journal, Le Moniteur (Nº 103, November 3, 1960): "The National Council of Cooperation [CNC] alone has the power to authorize cooperatives to function by granting them official approval" (Article 3). But when Haïti Progrès visited the CNC, employees there said that they had only heard of the cooperative "Pou nou tout" over the radio, but had no such name in the official register. Moreover, the CNC had no other information about the "Pou nou tout" cooperative even though "all cooperatives must keep a register listing their members, their residences, their kind of activities, the number of shares distributed" (Article 7). 

Furthermore, cooperatives approved by the CNC must be published in Le Moniteur and are to be "politically neutral." But, as Dupuy pointed out, "we know that this cooperative is composed only of members of the Lavalas Family party and thus it is formed on a purely political basis."

In short, the customs duties and tax exemptions granted to this tax-free "cooperative" were fraudulently obtained.

"We think that [the whole scheme of rice distribution] facilitates unfair competition with national production and is a short-sighted, paternalistic policy," Dupuy said. "Ultimately the consequence is the destruction of our national production. Objectively, President Aristide has disassociated himself from the timid land reform and half-hearted gestures of his predecessor toward the peasantry."

After the scandal broke, hundreds of people stormed warehouses at the port authority last week and began making off with sacks of "peace rice." Heavily armed cops of the CIMO, the elite anti-riot unit, broke up the looting but then began expropriating some sacks for themselves, according to radio reports. 

Meanwhile, concerned about their credibility, some senators expressed indignation about the scandal and said they had returned the cards entitling them to withdraw (the remainder of) their rice quota from the port authority warehouse. Knowing the best defense is a good offense, one of those named by Deputy Marcellus, FL senator Prince Sonson Pierre, launched an "investigation" into the scandal. Among the names he cited as "founders" of the "cooperative" were FL Senator Mirlande Libérus (an Aristide Foundation director), Paul Preslet (a former Foundation director, now head of the National Bank of Credit), and Jonas Petit, the FL’s official spokesman.

During the PPN press conference, Dupuy also addressed the resurgence of intolerance and anarchy throughout the country."Each mayor has become a warlord," he said. "They assemble their own armies, make the law, and, most seriously, they then fight among each other... We note what recently happened in St. Raphaël, where a deputy killed a mayor."

He also condemned the growing cult of personality surrounding President Aristide, and his inappropriate largesse. "All day long, I hear it said that all that is done in the country is a gift of the President of the Republic," Dupuy said. "As we watched the Gold Cup on TNH [national television] last week, there was subtitling which said that it was a gift from the President of the Republic which paid to make possible the retransmission of the matches... Today, it is not the State which is spending... It is a personal gift of the President of the Republic. The more things change, the more it is the same thing," Dupuy said, remarking on how the Duvalier father and son dictators also made it a practice to bestow "personal gifts" on the Haitian people.

Dupuy condemned the continued intimidation of journalists and government critics, as well as President Aristide’s sabotage of the investigation into the Apr. 3, 2000 murder of radio journalist Jean Dominique by refusing to renew the mandate of investigating judge Claudy Gassant, who is presently in Florida. 

Dupuy warned the Haitian people not to allow the "opportunists and sharks" of the Democratic Convergence, a front of 15 followingless parties, to use the situation to their advantage. "We say to the people to make sure not to run from the rain only to fall into the lake," Dupuy said. "We all know that the Convergence has the support of the OAS [Organization of American States] and is financed by foreigners. They cry scandal but do not mention that they receive money from abroad to make an alleged opposition in order to return with the Macoute army." Aristide disbanded the Haitian army in 1995.

The PPN called once again for the formation of a popular alternative front to the Lavalas Family and the Convergence."We call on all the still healthy elements of the popular and political organizations, of civil society, of human rights groups, to form a large chain to block the road to intolerance and to reactionaries who ask for the return of the Army or for foreign forces to come put them in power so that they can apply the neoliberal death plan which all the people of world reject and which would only bring us more misery," Dupuy said, "because the Haitian people’s struggle must continue until final victory."