17798: (Arthur) Batay Ouvriye (Workers' Struggle) statement (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

BATAY OUVRIYE STATEMENT ON THE HAITIAN SITUATION TODAY  - December 20th, 2003

For us at Batay Ouvriye in the framework of our everyday struggles as members of the working class, workers of all sorts, and among the popular masses in general, it has already become quite clear that the Lavalas leadership, by contributing to the destruction of all the popular components of the large
1984-1990 mass movement, had been directing a totally anti-popular government.

Furthermore, during this evolution, it has become openly reactionary, and as a consequence, necessarily, has become more and more repressive, to the point of being outright criminal. We’ve been facing this for a long time!

Indeed, on large landowner's properties, at the Ministry of Labour, at the Ministry of Justice… always, this government has taken sides against the peoples’ struggles to claim their legitimate rights! All around us too, in its interaction with the poor in urban neighborhoods, with small merchants, drivers,
cooperative shareholders, school and university students, press workers, in fact everywhere, and without exception, the government always has the same objective: to dismantle the peoples’ struggles, and to annihilate free speech! In its
fight against working class interests, and those of poor peasants, workers, and the popular masses in general, the government repression is ever more complete, more ruthless. We’ve been denouncing this since way back!

Nevertheless, as always in this society that we’re living in, only when this government has arrived at the point of also repressing the petty bourgeoisie, civil servants, intellectuals and bourgeois, has this situation become “unacceptable”…!

Today, having managed to repress all these classes and social categories, the political crisis has become general and the heights of repression attained by the government clearly indicates the beginning of its end. Almost the entirety of the democratic space previously won has been abolished, and the whole
population is shouting out its complete disagreement with this state of affairs, and demanding the elimination (or at least changes at the top level) of this government.

*

On the other hand, an understanding based on the people's real interests requires a differentiation between the numerous social classes, categories and protesting sectors. Few of these re-groupings or individuals really represent the interests of the greater popular masses, and we can even say, frankly
speaking, that many of them stand against the popular interest. This renders the situation at once complex and complicated.

We, at BATAY OUVRIYE, have an intimate knowledge of the Haitian bourgeoisie and its profoundly anti-worker, anti-people nature. The daily incidents in factories, workshops, businesses, large and small...It is we, workers, working-class of various types, who endure them! We are those who can testify as to the
breadth of Haitian bourgeoisie's contempt, the humiliations it imposes, its overwhelming domination and repression of Haitian workers in order to establish the unrestrained exploitation which it would like to extend throughout the country, all in perfect class accord with the multinational imperialists.
Similarly, its class representatives (political and intellectual bourgeois) ceaselessly denounce the merest protests, work stoppages, strikes, mobilisations -whatever form they may assume in the demand for workers’ democratic rights -  under
the pretext that this “unrest” results in a loss of income for the “country”!

We are also very clear that it the Lavalas regime that has always guaranteed these classes total impunity in all of their repression and crimes against the working class, poor peasants, workers in general. We’ve always denounced and fought against this impunity, and the political and economic alliances that
underpin it. If, at present, the bourgeoisie is fighting against Lavalas, this is due to the fact that this government, given its chronic inefficiency and archaic contradictions, cannot properly administer the State, nor can it create the conditions for the establishment of a hegemony for a full and whole exploitation. Finally, if it is currently forced to present the issue as a question of personalities, this is due to the dominant classes’ crisis of representativity, to which we have often referred.

Lavalas has pounced upon this approach to try and present itself as the greatest popular government in the world. LIE OF LIES!

1. Lavalas has always granted the bourgeoisie the most wonderful advantages,
not only in conflicts between the bourgeoisie and workers, but also in all of
the country's basic elements of political economy: financial capital (banks
flourishing everywhere), all sorts of big business, the free trade zones, being
the main examples.

2. Lavalas is also bourgeois too, and does business with the largest
monopolists. It just avoids showing it publicly.

3. Lavalas is the main agent of corruption (in government administration,
drug-trafficking, contraband – rice, zinc roofing, cooperatives… all these
scandals).

4. They are the worst thieves and have consequently received the people's
title of Gran Manjè (“Big Eaters”).

5. Lavalas has never tried to satisfy the popular demands,  still less
restructure the government on this basis.

6. With their bourgeois counterparts, the Lavalas government keeps speaking
of “providing work”… But we say, ourselves: during the time of the French
colony of Saint Domingue, the French colonialists, “provided work” too! But in
slavery! To “provide work” is one thing; in what conditions, is another!

7. Lavalas is the greatest destroyer of the State, privatising State
institutions one after another, granting big business (local and foreign) the largest
advantages, making profits out of that which should be guaranteed public
services.

8. Finally, Lavalas is the number one for selling the country! Water, land
boundaries, free trade zones...are neither owned, nor under the control of local
authorities, but rather controlled by the US government, or are under the
Dominican bourgeoisie and army’s strict control.

So we repeat it once again: LAVALAS AND THE BOURGEOIS OPPOSITION ARE TWO ROTTEN BUTTOCKS IN THE SAME TORN PAIR OF TROUSERS!

*

Fortunately within the general protest movement against Lavalas, which is
fundamentally and deeply just, other tendencies than that of the bourgeoisie have
begun to appear, and to bring their influence to bear. Despite the bourgeois
opposition's attempts to recuperate it, this current is trying to define
itself. This conscious initiative should deepen and progress towards a more
concentrated stage so that within the anti-Lavalas mobilisation itself, the bourgeois
orientation can be challenged and even thwarted head-on. (This bourgeois
orientation includes a supposed “state of law” which does not mention challenging
the bosses’ impunity, but which we know perfectly well defines itself as
completely dependent on economic imperialism.)

Organisations or individuals belonging to the true people's camp should,
within the struggle itself, convey the basic demands of the people, that is of the
working class, poor peasants, workers of various sorts, poor school and
university students, and all engaged progressives. The Peoples' Camp should
progressively, build its autonomy, always directed by the true peoples’ interests.

Presently, the ruling class is aiming to confuse the popular masses’
interests by framing the issue as one of a simply technical, abstract and hazy
“democracy”. This is why, even as Lavalas prepares to finish closing the last cracks
of democratic struggle, we must be clearly conscious of the basic differences
of the interests that are aiming to reopen it. Many of them may be extremely
contrary to our interest. We must take into account our experiences made
between 1986 and 1990, when the popular masses were basically recruited and directed
by the bourgeoisie and its representatives, which resulted in the popular
mobilisations being limited and divert.

This is why we endlessly repeat, in this precise movement of high protest:
Within this general movement of struggle, which fundamentally addresses the
fundamental questions of existence and continuous development, the popular masses
and different levels of organisation must develop their concrete autonomy, and
must manage to take their own initiatives, where the popular interests, the
interests of workers, are also clearly defined.

*

As soon as this phase succeeds and we really advance in the defense of our
own true interests, we anticipate a serious and maybe ghastly repression from
the large land-owners and bourgeois under imperialist orders (directly or
through the intermediary of intellectual or political representatives).

It is though in the framework and the development of the struggle itself, as
we organise ourselves independently, that we’ll FORM AND CONSOLIDATE THE
PEOPLES’ CAMP, AND THAT WE’LL TRULY DEFEND OUR OWN INTERESTS AND CONFRONT ALL
THOSE WHO MAY PRESENT THEMSELVES!


DOWN WITH THE BLOOD-THIRSTY LAVALAS THIEVES AND CRIMINALS!

DOWN WITH EXPLOITATION OF ALL FORMS!

LONG LIVE THE INDEPENDENT ORGANISATION AND MOBILISATION OF THE PEOPLES’ CAMP, TO CARRY FORWARD AND DEFEND ITS’ OWN INTERESTS, WITH WORKERS AS THE CENTRE POST AND UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE WORKING CLASS!


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See the Haiti Support Group web site:
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Solidarity with the Haitian people's struggle for justice, participatory
democracy and equitable development, since 1992.
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