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#1423: Haiti's Aristide unveils party's program (fwd)
From:nozier@tradewind.net
Haiti's Aristide unveils party's program 03:39 p.m Dec 15, 1999 Eastern
By Jennifer Bauduy
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Former Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is expected to run for president next year,
unveiled his party platform on Wednesday, calling for a stronger
partnership between the private and public sectors. ``When the private
sector and the public sector can create a partnership, then I am sure
our country will transform because we will have started where we should
start, with human resource, dialogue and mutual respect,'' Aristide
said. Aristide, a former priest, rose to the presidency as the
candidate of the poor in 1991. His anti-capitalist declarations
were viewed as threatening by Haiti's small moneyed elite and fuelled
Aristide's overthrow by the Haitian army seven months after he took
office. Aristide was returned to power by a U.S. led intervention
force of 20,000 troops after three years in exile. He handed over power
to his close friend Rene Preval in 1996 and is widely expected to make
a bid to return to the residency in December 2000 elections.
Haiti will hold legislative and municipal elections in March, its
first national vote in nearly three years. The last, in April
1997, was tainted by allegations of fraud and provoked a lingering
political crisis that virtually paralysed the government. A more
accommodating Aristide spoke on Wednesday before hundreds of
entrepreneurs and Haitian elite at the first national congress of
Aristide's political party, Lavalas Family. Appearing to move away from
his traditional anti-privatisation anti-globalization stance, Aristide
said Haiti must take a ``third path'' approach to globalization.
``Haiti cannot isolate itself from the rest of the world,'' he said.
``The geo-economic reality must provoke a deep reflection -- to
maintain equilibrium, maintain calm, and find a middle way. This is
what we call a partnership between the two sectors, private and
public.'' The gathering was held at an upscale hotel in Petionville, a
hilly suburb of Port-au-Prince, where Aristide presented a 182-page
party platform analysing problems and proposing solutions in
agriculture, education, health, industry, infrastructure and other
areas. The platform was published in French, spoken by a small
percentage of Haitians, but was expected to be translated into Creole,
the language of Haiti's poor majority, according to Aristide.
As Lavalas Family sought to build bridges with Haiti's private
sector, relations with the party's grass-roots partisans appeared
aggravated recently in Port-au-Prince, the northern city of
Cap-Haitien, and in the southeastern town of Jacmel. Party members
publicly protested the leadership's move to bypass candidates chosen at
the grass-roots level in order to designate candidates chosen by party
leaders to register recently for the legislative and municipal elections
scheduled for March 19. Some Lavalas Family members blocked a
Port-au-Prince street and threw rocks in angry protest last week.