14176: Benodin: The Solution of wisdom By Leslie Manigat (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

The Solution of wisdom
By Leslie Manigat
To my friend, Rene Depestre, by choice and also by “harsh necessity”
Haitian, by birth mind, writings, and heart, of noble speech, idealistic and
flamboyant, this brotherly contribution to his need for renewal as a
Haitian, where the dream of 1804 is transformed into the nightmare of 2002,
and where the beast of the last half-century holds sway over the angel of
our childhood.

With the painful deliverance of the end of a reign, we are experiencing one
of those delicate conjunctures—let us utter the word “truly difficult”—in
our history nonetheless fecund in easy government overthrows.  However, we
must seize and understand the specificity and even the uniqueness of the
present moment due to the nature and methods of the regime in question, the
particular circumstances of its evolution towards its fall, the crowd of
persons implicated in the debates that preceded and will follow it, the
machiavellian confused and ambiguous games that the national and
international actors are ready to play, the combats which are at the heart
of political competition in a mutating country like ours, and the
perspectives it opens and must be grasped if  we really want to “finally
change the life” of misery and oppression in our land in the desired
direction of  democratization and modernization .  I never cease repeating
that history does not oblige; thus, it is not a perpetual recommencing, but
it has its constants.  The year 1991, less its murders, recalls 1950 in a
way, although it is also so different, and especially 2002 recalls 1995 so
much that the former could be mistaken for the latter, in spite of the
dissimilarities to the extent that one sees the possibility of repeating
February 1986 otherwise.  We are experiencing precisely one of those
constants in today’s new situation with respect to yesterday, when it was
question of a turbulent departure, resisted and never convulsed, of a regime
not only contested everywhere, I spite of a residual popularity, which can
no longer impress, but which is already condemned by the verdict of the
people’s frank and great rejection, as Vertieres has shown eloquently.  We
must raise ourselves about our daily practice of “zincs,” which the people’s
culture is fond of and which nourishes the useful improvisation of
communiqués issued continually by our governing politicians who make the
daily events, to see the outlines of national destiny well delineated,
visible in the evolution itself of the conjuncture, although the outcome is
still imbued with incertitude masked by the impossible illusion of one side
as well as of the other, for too many minds o the run are in too much of a
hurry to sell the bearskin  before having killed the bear.   Holding on to
power is a reflex even among the losers, even more.  They are irrational;
and, resistance, intend of yielding I time, rather than putting off the
fatal outcome, can accelerate it but in any case, does not obviate it, even
while making it more costly in the long run.  The time if thus ripe for a
wise solution.

1.  A reminder of some originalities of Aristidian anarcho-populism.

The fist originality arises from the very nature of the regime that we have
baptized “anarcho-populist,” from the time that it defined itself and showed
in its words and acts that it was significantly “Lavalassian” (from
“Lavalasse,” the avalanche created by an impetuous torrent).  This
mythification and that mystification of the masses’ will were to deceive
many people for a log time, for the mantle of populism covers the legitimate
aspirations of the greatest number for a well-being which has been refused
them up to that time.  My thesis of the massification necessary but
unprepared explains the misadventures of populism in an environment of
misery and ignorance, while waiting for a social reparation long overdue and
for which those privileged to have possessions and knowledge are perceived
as responsible.  How revealing of anarcho-populism is the  Aristidian
expression “to make stones till then comfortable and cool in the river’s
waters, feel the harsh dryness of the life of stones lying under the blazing
sun.”  A man truly smitten with social justice and not resentment would have
said that it is high time that the stones in the sun took their turn and
benefited from the water’s coolness, up to then reserved only for the stones
in the water.  The thesis of Gino Germani about the political exploitation
of the availability of the masses for a revolutionary change by populism
retains all its truth and opens the eyes of a populace fanaticized by the
delirious wait for a messiah of the poor requires the experience of living
beyond theoretical lucidity, for the people’s credulity in this type of
regime is tough up to the inevitable deception which will be transformed
later into discontent and finally rejection as today.  This is the classic
destiny of populisms, but if certain of them, like Peronism, had the time to
be fertile before disillusion to leave room for hope of life to the species,
are not rare those that are sterile from the outset, generally because, from
the beginning they are incompetent and corrupt and cannot by virtue of this
fact guarantee the “panem et circenses” (bread and games) for the multitude.
The second originality of Aristidian anarcho-populism arises from the
process of mutation currently taking place in traditional Haitian society
caught between resistance of tradition to the aspiration for change,
resulting in the paralysis of the system in an unending crisis, stuck
between the old which is dying and the new which is knocking at the door
without being able to enter, the classic crisis, described by Gramsci.  Al
that emerges is the production of new people “promoted” by the system, but
which are “bad mutants.”  This is the most notorious phenomenon of the
profiteers of Lavalassism, the head one included.  They are authentic “bad
mutants” of the worst sort, greedier for illegal gain than the traditional
bourgeoisie that they are intent upon replacing, the seed bearing the
fertility of the womb of the fascist beast of Berthold Brecht.  Nothing
resembles more a violator endowed with human rights of the right than a
rapacious violator of human rights of the left, with the same contempt of
human life.
The third originality of Aristidian anarcho-populism is its ambivalence.  As
I like to say, it is “ambi” in everything (at one and the same time
bourgeois and anti-bourgeois, religious and satanic, pro-American and
anti-American, ambidextrous in order to steal better, etc.), thus by nature
lying and deceitful because of its original sin not only in the divorce
between what is said and what is done, which is its second nature, but also
in its intrinsically perverse duplicity; moreover, this “ambi” nature is
truly universal, even in its morals.  One may even go so far as to see in it
the personification of absolute evil.
A fourth originality of Aristidian anarcho-populism is its uncommon mastery
of international opportunities: idealistic (the generosity of liberal
American Catholics and European Protestants), materialistic ( Latin-American
“liberation theology”), and realistic (the funds of the Haitian public
treasury made available to Aristide during his exile by the Americans of the
Clinton administration without his having to make an accounting, funds for
aid and international assistance, the use of resources of the Haitian state
to pay for influential lobbyists at his service). That is the first time
that international efficiency has been taken advantage of to such a degree,
on the right and on the left at the same time, for personal ends inn the
life of the Haitian political system.
A fifth originality of Aristidian anacharcho-populism is interested
tolerance, or even contriving tolerance in certain cases, that it benefited
from ideologically, being the consenting pawn of “American imperialism” and
the partisan of Castro communism, the authorized orthodox “politically
correct” representative of big corporate interests of the USA in the
framework of privatization of companies and the destroyer of capitalist
ideas of the globalizing west in the name of a unique thought of a Third
Worldism heavily tinged with race.    This is all a hodgepodge of verbal and
mental obsolete things that the dazzling progress of the neighboring
Dominican Republic reduces to the museums of old fashioned things, but which
our people is still paying the price for by its martyrs’ flesh, still
sensitive to the bites of the past because it is still more a conservatory
than a laboratory.
A sixth originality of Aristidian anarcho-populism is the bulimia to destroy
and the pruritus to denigrate in the name of the revolution sweeping in an
avalanche which carries away everything in its passage.  This negativity
strikes out with one pen stroke what remained that was valuable in the
Haitian effort of quality and highlights mediocrity as a measuring stick of
Haitianity leveled from the bottom.  The other said that when one spoke of
culture, he took out his revolver.  I have the impression that for Lavalas,
when one speaks of the quality that should bring the quantity for the
promotion of all, someone, somewhere, takes out his Katchanikoff.  We must
undertake the rehabilitation of values yesterday aristocratic monopolized by
what I called a culture of imported samples, but we must today democratize
and Haitianize with respect to what they have that is good for the benefit
of the greatest number.  That is part of our program of organization of the
after-Aristide, launched more than a year ago, at the conference of the RDNP
at the Maison des Polytechniciens, at Paris.
A seventh originality of Aristidian anarcho-populism is its binary rhythm
characterized by a cyclothemia of the group dynamic which makes highs follow
lows.  It is said that this can be a collective illness, but it is above all
its social nature which makes the exaggerated euphoric hyperexcitement
alternate with depression.  One should check with scientists to see if there
is a collective unconscious prone to be pathological, more precisely
cyclo-themic, a collective manic-depressive psychosis. Such a pathological
nature could be coupled with an intense mysticism, which confers on the
irrational the possibility of a schizophrenic episode. Excesses can result
from this, whose control by lithium, it is said, can limit the damage.  Some
time ago, there was a best seller whose title was These Great Sick People
Who Govern Us.  That book dealt with “social pathology,” which has been
investigated by a group of Piaget’s followers.  There are illnesses of
power.  Anarcho-populism is one of these, and the obsession in maintaining
and exercising power absolutely is a characteristic that can constitute
mental illness. Emperor Caligula wanted to make his horse a “Cesar Augustus”
in the delirious logic of “I want; I can” of the other.  Before him,
Duvalier pere had said, “I am a giant able to eclipse the sun.”

II.  To confront the fatal deadline, a wise solution is still possible.

                “Quos vult perdere Jovis.”  Jupiter makes those he wants to
lose crazy.  The country has finally realized that the anarcho-populist
remedy was worse than the illness, so the fake Lavalassian graft has been
rejected.  Lavalas, not used to having people resist it, is getting worked
up, threatening, cracking down, and panicking.  It does not have any
reflexes of moderation any more.  Or, when it has them, they come too late.
Example?  The student crisis concerning university autonomy.  A few months
ago, during the successful program of Gary Pierre Paul Charles, “Impasse
Quelle issue?,” when I was asked what I would do differently if in power, I
had answered spontaneously and publicly, “yield in time.”  It was right,
reasonable, and equitable, and that would have allowed the regime to move
towards a legitimate counteroffensive in showing the lapses of the
departments in putting order into the disorder and to demand the preparation
of a law that had been waited for in vain for 15 years.  The regime did it
too late, and as a “gwo ponyet,” which today amounts to an insincere
capitulation during which the Minister of Education, committed if not
subservient, was made to serve as a fuse.   The elections of 2000?  Was it
already totally excluded that Lavalas could not have the chance to win 60 to
40, if they had been correctly carried out, in view of the great control of
the means that it wrongfully had at its disposal?  Today, none.  They only
have to complain among themselves about such incompetence due to a lack of
seriousness, too absorbed by the thirst for easy money extorted from others
and by the abuse arbitrarily inflicted on others, believing that impunity
had been granted to them forever.  The crisis of cooperatives denounced the
lack of foresight of the leaders and their greed in swiping funds that were
accumulating in order to show that they could not care less vis-à-vis the
perhaps duping investors who were, above all, duped, to whom those in power
offered to put the debt of heavy liabilities on the swine of the payers of
the taxpayers to the public treasury.  The loss in value and the collapse of
the gourde were the irresponsibility of disastrous economic management and a
monetary policy without vision played by ear, and, what is more, corrupting
and corrupted.  Competence?  One is not surprised to find any.  Corruption?
The bad mutants are too greedy, starting from their initial destitution, not
to have to any to spare as the nouveaux riches that they quickly became.
Criminal cruelty?  That is the reflex of those who tasted power but about
which they had no idea of responsibility, If not the enjoyment that they
were going to derive from it, as long as it lasted.  And they were ready to
do anything, even commit crimes, so that it would last.  But intelligence?
How could they lack it to such a degree?  Friday, they paralyzed the capital
to show their muscles of leaders in power?  So be it, but they gave if not
the idea at least the example, the way, and the incentive to the citizens to
paralyze in their turn the capital and the country when their day comes!
They furnished the precedent of a handful of thugs taking the initiative to
force the inhabitants of Port-au-Prince to stay at home, while they had
underestimated the ability of the majority of citizens to one day learn
their lesson about to organize a strike as a nonviolent method, while
waiting for the future panoply of civil disobedience.  I made a remark to a
Lavalassian, a young doctor, who reacted badly to my expressing my right to
want to made the current regime leave by active nonviolent means, the
current regime which is not harmful for the country, that he himself was
doubtlessly obsessed by the brutal violence of coups d’etat and conspiracies
against the security of the State, which he wanted to accuse me of as being
the only model that came to mind, whereas there is a large panoply of the
peaceful use of law, of the force of ideas for persuasion, of the
psychological force of determination, of political force for mobilization,
of moral and spiritual force, which are however effective weapons in
political combat to overcome even brutal adversaries.  One has the strength
of one’s morals.
However, now, after Vertieres 2002, ipokrit yo sezi!  Unity emerged from the
breasts of thousands of marchers, as a patriotic protest, the people’s
express will for the departure of those currently in power, which is the
mobilizing slogan of “The Patriotic Union,” and which makes things go faster
in the citizens’ conscience.  The dynamic of history on the move is
accelerating. Some realignment s in the group of parties are expected and
will be welcome if they go inn the direction of the national majority, some
correction in position within the “group of five” are being imposed and will
be announced, aided I that without a doubt by the evolution of the “band of
four” linked to the Diaspora, and above all by the example of a tutelary
Uncle Sam which shows a greater firmness without indulgent tolerance
vis-a-vis a power recognized as delinquent.  The generalization of a
watchword for a political change of the head of the country shows that the
standard of efficiency is acting even while remaining an ethic which what
must appear unclear and contradictory for mere mortals in the hidden
negotiations behind the rumors and the lies.  The departure, a civic
obligation for a more reasonable power (Is it? Is becoming a political
imperative for the opposition and the country, which can no longer count on
the business of stalling and prevaricating tactics.  The deadlines are
becoming clear.  Time was bought in vain for the deadline for the ultimatum
of November 4th.  Time was bought in vain at the approach and passing of
that of November 19.  However, the fatal hour of the deadline, the final
one, will come.  Any attempt to resort to violent repression would be
suicidal, since in fact an international court of justice exists, in
addition to the traditional public condemnation.  A “Great Responsible
 Voice” is being heard once more in this tumultuous and dangerous
conjuncture, in the name of reason, morality, law, and political
opportunity, and a moderate patriotic voice, “the alternative of the third
way,” calls upon, through my organization, citizens’ consciences and the
powers that be themselves, for the imperative of departure before it is too
late.  An automobile driver knows how to drive around a curve.  A head of
state who is lucid, even illegitimate, must know how to effect a departure
without damage, and, keeping part of the stolen millions, has interest to do
it, and his collaborators, more lucid than he, should make him do it.  This
is perhaps not the only solution, but it is the wise solution.