13856: Lemieux: Reuters: Haitian Opposition Vows new Protests (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

November 28, 2002
Haitian Opposition Vows New Protests to Force Aristide to
Resign
By REUTERS



PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Nov. 27 (Reuters) — Opponents
stepped up the pressure on President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
of Haiti today, saying they planned to hold continuous
nationwide protests until he resigned.

As thousands of students marched in the northern city of
Cap Haitien, one of Aristide's major political foes, Evans
Paul, the former mayor of Port-au-Prince, announced in the
capital that opposition parties would begin a new round of
large demonstrations on Thursday.

"We must combat and prevent the establishment of an
Aristide dictatorship in Haiti," said Mr. Paul, secretary
general of the Konfederasyon Inite Demokratik party, which
is associated with the opposition coalition Democratic
Convergence. "We will continue with our peaceful national
mobilization until we free the country from Lavalas
control."

Mr. Aristide, whose Lavalas Family party controls
Parliament, has faced increasingly violent demonstrations
in the past two weeks over Haiti's faltering economy and
perceptions that his government is interfering with the
school system.

His supporters have mounted large and noisy
counterdemonstrations.

The protest today in Cap Haitien, Haiti's second-largest
city, echoed one on Nov. 17 in which an estimated 10,000
people took part, the private Radio Vision 2000 reported.

Protests were also reported in the provincial cities of
Petit-Gôave and Gonaïves, where eight people have been shot
in political violence since Monday.

On Tuesday, unidentified gunmen in Gonaïves fired on a
marked car belonging to the Organization of American
States, local news media said. No one was reported injured.

The organization is trying to broker a political truce in
Haiti, and this week it criticized Mr. Aristide's
government for its handling of the recent demonstrations.

"The acts are provocations by the opposition," said Mario
Dupuy, secretary of state for communications. "We are
committed to tracking down those responsible for violence."

A former Roman Catholic priest who rallied Haiti's poor
masses to overthrow a 30-year dictatorship in the
mid-1980's, Mr. Aristide has been hamstrung since he took
office in February 2001 by a dispute with Democratic
Convergence over contested May 2000 legislative elections.

The deadlock has stalled over $500 million in desperately
needed aid to eight million people in Haiti, the poorest
country in the Americas.

Haiti's currency, the gourde, has lost 40 percent of its
value, and inflation is up 16 percent in the last year.


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com