14555: (Chamberlain) Haiti groups call for one-day general strike (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Michael Deibert

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 20 (Reuters) - A coalition of 184 groups
representing Haiti's private sector, labor unions and civil organizations
called for a general strike for Friday, saying the government had ignored
their concerns about political violence and a deteriorating economy.
     Leaders of the coalition, however, said they were not using the strike
as a means of forcing out President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, unlike the
seven-week-old opposition strike in Venezuela aimed at pressing President
Hugo Chavez to resign.
     The coalition announced plans for Friday's one-day strike at a news
conference on Monday. Union leader Marie Denise St. Clair, reading from a
statement at the news conference, said:
     "As a result of choking off the right to free expression and plunging
the country into a terrible climate of insecurity by the politicization of
the police and use of armed gangs to attack citizens trying to exercise
their legitimate constitutional rights, we are forced to conclude the
government possesses no political good will."
     The group had given Aristide's government a Jan. 15 deadline to
address concerns they voiced in December ranging from the disarmament of
gangs and freedom of expression to economic policy.
     "In Venezuela, the private sector is demanding the departure of
Chavez," said Maurice Lafortune, president of the Haitian National Chamber
of Commerce. "In Haiti we are not yet demanding the departure of Aristide."
     Haiti has been hit by a series of strikes over the last two months as
critics of the Aristide government have protested increases in the cost of
living and what they charge is Aristide's increasingly violent and corrupt
rule. At least a dozen people have been killed.
     Last week, bus and taxi drivers held a strike for a second time this
month to protest spiraling fuel costs caused by an end to government
subsidies. Haiti's public school teachers walked out in a two-day work
stoppage to demand higher wages.
     Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest serving his second term as
president of the poor Caribbean country, has been locked in a political
dispute over the results of May 2000 parliamentary elections, which
opposition parties allege were calculated to favor Aristide's Lavalas
Family party.
     Aristide has said he will hold new elections for the disputed seats in
the first half of 2003, but opposition groups have questioned whether
elections could be fair.
     "The present conditions make it impossible to have free, transparent
and credible elections," said Rosny Desroches, a former education minister
and head of the conservative Civil Society Initiative.
     A Lavalas spokesman, however, focused on new elections.
     "Everybody needs to be part of the solution to Haiti's current
problems," said spokesman Jonas Petit. "What they are demanding is exactly
what we are trying to address. To improve things we must work together
through elections, and we must respect the vote of the majority in those
elections."