5342 Yvon Neptune at Oct. 23rd Fanmi Lavalas press conference (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Basepromo@aol.com

Yvon Neptune at Fanmi Lavalas press conference held on Oct. 23, 2000 at the 
Aristide Foundation for Democracy:

Many declarations were made a long time before this dialogue started.  The 
opposition said clearly that they are not going to participate in the 
November 26th elections.  

They said clearly that President Preval cannot organize any credible 
elections.  The opposition also stated that the electoral counsel must be 
shut down.  This means for us clearly, even before the opposition asked for a 
dialogue, even before the opposition sat and pretended that they wanted to 
dialogue, they had already taken their position.  Their position is to shut 
down the electoral counsel, dismiss the vote of May 21st and also to throw 
out the government of Lavalas and President Preval.  

This is the word of the opposition that we are repeating.  It was not the 
supporters of the opposition who said those words.  Those are the persons who 
claim that they are the leaders of the opposition who made those statements 
right in front of the press.  You press that are here you are live witnesses 
because all of those statements went out through your press.  Those are not 
the inventions of Fanmi Lavalas.  

Today, after all the efforts of Fanmi Lavalas and the engagements that Fanmi 
Lavalas has taken to sit down to dialogue -- this dialogue which we 
absolutely had no obligation to make in the question of the elections of May 
21st, or the elections of November 26th because there are no political 
organizations that have the responsibility to organize or hold elections or 
to control elections like the power in place.

We, together with the comprehension that we know the Haitian people have and 
the intelligence we know they have when they open their eyes and open their 
ears to listen -- we are going to continue to encourage and we are going to 
continue to invite the people of Haiti to continue to mobilize so that the 
presidential elections can happen on November 26th.  

We also encourage the business sector, the economically elite and the 
intellectually elite and those who are really interested in elections -- who 
recognize that the 1987 Constitution mandates that they be held -- to take 
all steps to assure that  this election take place in a way that the Haitian 
people can enjoy their Constitutional rights based on the 1987 Constitution 
that they voted in.  

We received a document from the Undersecretary [of the OAS] which did not 
mention the presence of Aristide but had only mentioned the presence of a 
delegation!  That was all!

If there are some people who have their political interests to try to fit 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide in some plot they are making to block the will of the 
people -- the head of Fanmi Lavalas will never be taken in by those plots.  
Even when he spent three years in exile after the military coup d'etat with 
all the attempts that they made for the electoral coup and the electoral coup 
did not work and they have other strategies they are using.  They are trying 
other steps to make this electoral coup, the economic coup and a political 
coup in the throats of the people.