14663: Simidor: There is more to Apaid than his skin color (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel Simidor <karioka9@mail.arczip.com>


Earlier this week, I sat down informally with a well-known Haitian
intellectual who wanted “to hear everybody’s input” about a new
"Social Contract" that he and a committee of his peers are
drafting for the 184 Group. The idea of a progressive new social
contract being put forward by the likes of Andre Apaid, Rosny
Desroches and Marie-Claude Baillard (ADIH’s president) was quite
entertaining. The well-known intellectual insisted,
pince-sans-rire, that alongside social conservatives like Mr.
Apaid, there were serious grassroots radicals within the 184 Group
-- a notion I also found entertaining for some reason. I in turn
sought to entertain my interlocutor with the equally absurd
prospect that his "Social Contract" could address such issues as
public health, education, a living wage, the protection of Haiti's
patrimony, etc.  We parted on good terms.

Later on that day, I chatted with a Batay Ouvriye (Workers'
Struggle) activist who told me of an encounter earlier in the day
with Mr. Apaid.  Batay Ouvriye was leafleting at the gate of an
Apaid factory, when Mr. Apaid and some of his associates pulled
out their guns and threatened to shoot the union organizers if
they failed to leave at once.  Any worker found with a copy of the
leaflet inside the factory was fired on the spot.

I have not seen the leaflet in question, but the Batay Ouvriye
organizers assured that it did not call on the workers to seize
control of Mr. Apaid's factory.  Nor did it question Mr. Apaid's
ethnic background or presence in Haiti (this is strictly the
province of silly Prime-Ministers like Yvon Neptune, and of other
Lavalas worthies like Deputé Marcellus.)  The leaflet and the
union activists were agitating instead for a wage increase for the
Apaid workers, and for an adjustment in the minimum wage which
needs to be brought from 36 gourdes to 120 gourdes a day, just to
keep up with the minimum of US$3.00 per day set three decades ago
by Jean-Claude Duvalier.

The Batay Ouvriye organizer made the interesting observation that
Haiti's current workforce is more skilled and better educated than
three decades ago, and is therefore entitled to a wage scale that
allows it to reproduce itself at least on that level.  Will the
"new social contract" envisioned by Mr. Apaid and his 184 Group
take that modest expectation into consideration?  Or, as it is
more likely, will they concern themselves singly with getting rid
of the Lavalas regime, according to the well-known practice of
"Ote-toi que je m'y mette."  La suite prouvera le reste.

Daniel Simidor