15030: Simidor Re: 15017: Du Tuyau (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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


On 5 Mar 2003, Du Tuyau wrote:

>I guess Mister Simidor agree a little too much for veracity of
tou dwat too, when tou dwat say straight on, the truth nothing but
the truth like that in veracity, in post number 14974:<<May I
recall the pipe bombs and the drive by shoooting aimed at the then
typicall lavalas supporter (markets, bus stops...), etc.
>

It’s very nice that Tuyau likes my prose, but I'm not sure I
understand what the fellow is talking about in the above sentence.
 I know that he and some Lavalas types on this list have been on a
campaign to discredit various human rights groups as being biased
on the side of the opposition.  [Isn’t that what human rights
groups are supposed to do in the first place, i.e. monitor how the
government is (mis)treating the opposition?]  Part of that
campaign has  been an attempt to smear the democratic opposition
with the same nasty stuff that Lavalas is known for – impunity,
corruption, political repression, gang killings, etc.

In a situation where Lavalas control all the power – the
executive, the legislature, the judiciary, the police, the gangs,
the streets, the dope – and where the opposition, as its critics
are prompt to say, is just a puny bunch of unpopular, disorganized
and isolated “hypocrites,” the Lavalas apologists want us to
believe that both sides are to be held equally responsible.
That’s just nonsense.

I’m not saying that the opposition is whiter than white, with
fluffy wings down their back.  I am well aware that any group with
enough money and the proper street connections can hire a gang of
chimères for extra-legal work, and that on occasion those armies
of the unemployed have been used to disrupt one’s own rallies (to
make the other side look bad).  I’m also aware that the opposition
is not without clout –  clever operators, privileged status, and
the support of a US administration so obsessed with Iraqi oil that
its Canadian Junior Partner had to step in to put together the
next “International Coalition” that will save Haiti against its
will.  (Before January 2004, folks, that’s the Ottowa Initiative’s
deadline!!!)

The opposition is not without its sins.  But to equate the two
sides is to defy arithmetic, common sense and objective reality,
all at once.

Some of the violence “tou dwat” refers to (drive-by shootings and
pipe bombs) in Cité Soleil had been the results of turf wars
between rival Lavalas gangs (Ronald Cadavre and his brother Franco
v. some upstart malfrats from an adjoining Cité.)  But the Lavalas
gangs worked well together, when it came to chasing the opposition
off the streets and public places before the May 2000 elections.
That stuff is well documented.  Check out your back files from the
Corbett list, or look up the NCHR or the Haiti Democracy Project
archives online.

Lavalas could have won a majority of the votes without that nasty
stuff, but only absolute power would serve their corrupt purposes.
 After running the independent candidates off the streets, Lavalas
clumsily went for the kill.  They contemptuously dumped the ballot
boxes where they were in control, and replaced them with stuffed
one.  With the result that they got close to 98% of the votes –
just below the 99.8% that Papa Doc and Baby Doc used to be so
proud of.  This is democracy, Lavalas-style.  All the cute talk
about “elitocracy” and “mass-ocracy,” and “everybody tout moun
have same right” is just poppycock and fairy-tale.

Again, that stuff is well documented.  Let your fingers do the
walking.

Daniel Simidor