9781: BBC: Haiti: Convergence spokesman says Aristide is seeking scapegoat for his failure (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Robert Benodin <r.benodin@worldnet.att.net>

Haiti: Convergence spokesman says Aristide is seeking scapegoat for his
failure
BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Nov 28, 2001


The Democratic Convergence considers the demonstrations against Prime
Minister Jean-Marie Cherestal to be a manoeuvre by the head of the Lavalas
Family [FL] to distract the populace from its real problems. The real
problem comes in the first place from [President] Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
who is looking for a scapegoat to hide his failure. Paul Denis spoke as
follows:
[Denis - recording, in Creole] All those movements are aimed at diverting
the attention of the people from the situation of misery in which they are
living. There is only one person responsible for this situation and his name
is Jean-Bertrand Aristide. All the other things are aimed at diverting the
attention of the population from the true person responsible for the
situation. There is only one head of the country and that is Aristide.
Everybody knows that the de facto prime minister does not have the authority
or the real power. If he does have some power, then it was given to him by
Aristide. And Aristide gives power only to do what he asks you to do.
Aristide plays the role of prime minister, minister, director-general and
head of the police. Aristide is responsible for whatever is taking place in
this country.
The only thing is, he had promised that the year 2001 would be good indeed
and, since that is not so, then he is holding other people responsible for
that. He blames it on economic terrorism. I think it is just demagogy. These
words do not correspond to any reality. These men have mismanaged the
country. They have led the country to a catastrophe. They ran down the
meagre resources of the state, and now they are holding other people
responsible for what they did. Now they are holding Cherestal and the
international community responsible for what they did.
One thing that the country ought to know is that the IADB [Inter-American
Development Bank] has for a long time made about 160m dollars available for
this government. This money is not blocked. It is only waiting for Haiti to
meet its commitments to the IADB and to conform to the procedures in effect
for the release of the funds.
These blokes are a bunch of incompetent and incapable people. Instead of
doing what they should, instead of respecting their commitments to the IADB
they prefer to complain and point to the Convergence and the international
community as the ones responsible for their own misfortune and that of the
country.
Source: Radio Metropole, Port-au-Prince, in French 1145 gmt 23 Nov 01
/BBC Monitoring/ © BBC.
Haiti: OP leaders Civil and Raymond