18510: (Hermantin) Sun-Sentinel- American-born Haitian businessman leads anti-Aristide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

  American-born Haitian businessman leads anti-Aristide effort

By Tim Collie
Staff Writer
Posted February 12 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- He is a white man in an overwhelmingly black land, a
wealthy businessman in one of the poorest nations on Earth, and a Gandhian
with an armored car.

So what is Andy Apaid Jr. doing at the forefront of a popular movement to
topple Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide?

"I would like to say that this is a moment of hope right now. We don't think
there has ever been another period like this one in Haitian history," said
the 51-year-old industrialist, whose civic coalition, the Group of 184, has
been conducting massive demonstrations calling for Aristide's resignation
since November.

"For so long this country has been polarized by class," said Apaid, who owns
textile and other businesses in a country where the majority of the
population lives on less than $1 a day. "Today…. there is an unbelievable
yearning for conversation between the classes as never before."

Apaid's and other opposition groups plan to demonstrate in Haiti's capital
city today after six days of violent rebellions against Aristide's ruling
Lavalas Party in a dozen towns and cities across the nation.

Sporadic violence continued across the country on Wednesday as Aristide
declared he would not resign. In the port city of St. Marc, police attacked
rebels holed up in a slum, and witnesses said gunmen loyal to Aristide
torched homes, killing two people, as looting and reprisals raged. But
police returned to their ruined outpost, which days ago was in the hands of
a growing anti-government insurgency.

In Gonaïves, rebels set ablaze an accused government hit man and shot
another man. In northern Cap-Haïtien, Haiti's second-largest city, sporadic
gunshots crackled overnight, attackers looted a food warehouse, and Aristide
militants set up blazing barricades to prevent a possible rebel incursion.

At his first news conference since the uprising, Aristide on Wednesday
refused to resign and said he would step down only when his term expires.

"I will leave the palace Feb. 7, 2006," he said, without addressing how he
planned to put down the insurrection that has taken dozens of lives.

If it follows the pattern of previous demonstrations, today's march in the
capital will likely draw tens of thousands of people and possibly spark
violence between marchers, Lavalas partisans and the police.

Apaid and other Port-au-Prince opposition leaders insist they do not support
the militants who have taken over Gonaïves, Haiti's fourth-largest city, as
well as other towns in the northern part of the country. But they do not
entirely dismiss their actions, either.

"These are children in many cases running around with guns," Apaid said.
"Guns that were given to them by Aristide's government to attack its
opponents. They have no hope. They've been induced into this behavior.

nonviolent ideals

"What Haiti is facing now is an insurrection, but calling what we are doing
an insurrection doesn't mean this is a violent movement -- it isn't," Apaid
said. "We believe in the ideas of Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.
There are processes that a country must go through, that when you go through
them you help build a better society. That is what is happening here now."

"We can understand the nervousness of the police in the middle of all that's
going on," Apaid said in an interview with the Sun-Sentinel. "But we believe
if we don't march and if we don't do something, the leverage that our
nonviolent group has will begin to fade, and we need to keep that as a
viable political option."

But while it insists on nonviolence, the group will not compromise on its
central tenet of faith: that Aristide is a corrupt leader who must go. There
can be no negotiations to keep him in power. He has broken numerous
promises, has filled the police and judiciary with corrupt officials, and
has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid.

The Group of 184, named for the number of civic, nongovernmental and
business groups that originally formed the organization, is at the head of a
growing movement of Haitians who have soured on Aristide since his
re-election in 2000. For nearly a year they have been touting a "new social
contract" designed to unite Haitians of all classes and colors behind a
program to improve government, basic services and the economy.

The group, together with the Democratic Convergence, an umbrella group of
small political parties, make up the broad social movement known as the
Democratic Platform. The Group of 184 represents a cross-section of
Haitians: agricultural poor, urban trade unionists and students and more
elite physicians, lawyers and business owners. To date, it has primarily
been an urban elite organization, but there are signs it is penetrating the
countryside where about half of Haiti's 8 million people live.

leaders are few

Apaid is one of about four or five opposition leaders who have emerged since
2000, when a dispute over allegedly crooked legislative elections thrust
Haiti into an international crisis. Among the others are Evans Paul, a
writer who once served as Aristide's campaign manager; Himmler Rebu, a
former army general and coup plotter who owns a health club in Haiti;
Protestant Federation leader Edouard Paultre; and Herve Saintilus, a popular
student leader.

But it is the outspoken Apaid, speaking unaccented English and citing Gandhi
and Dr. Martin Luther King as role models, who has emerged as the public
face of the movement to oust Aristide. That has made him a target of
Aristide partisans, who dismiss him as a sweatshop owner, an American
interloper and an Arab.

A third-generation Haitian of Lebanese ancestry who was born in the United
States, Apaid hails from a prominent family that has long been at the center
of Haitian politics. His father at one point was imprisoned in the notorious
Fort Dimanche prison during the dictatorship of François "Papa Doc"
Duvalier, and the family supported Aristide during his initial climb to
power. As a member of the light-skinned Haitian upper class, often called
"Syrians," Apaid has weathered a number of hostile attacks in Haiti and in
the United States.

In November, he was hauled into court and accused of falsifying his Haitian
passport. Government supporters insisted he was an American, even though his
Haitian passport had been issued and renewed five times over the last three
decades.

"I didn't have these passport problems until I started speaking out against
the government," Apaid said. "I was born in the United States, but I am
Haitian. I was born in Manhattan and lived there just for the first four
months of my life."

When Duvalier's son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, fled the nation in
1986, the Apaid family supported the social movement that was being led by a
young fiery priest named Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

"From 1986 to 1990, we were allies of Aristide," Apaid said. "We sent money
into the country, and we were very sympathetic to his very aggressive
language." But relations with Aristide soured after he launched his
candidacy for president, and the family supported what they viewed as more
moderate candidates, such as Marc Bazin, a former finance minister and World
Bank official who lost the election in 1990 to Aristide with just 12 percent
of the vote.

Many question whether the movement Apaid leads is anything more than the
latest manifestation of control by a thin cadre of elite families that have
ruled Haiti behind the scenes for 200 years. They have long lived a life of
luxury while the vast majority of the country's population has lived in
abject squalor without schools, health care or basic sanitation.

from bad to worse

"Yes, this is a desperately poor country. The vast majority of the
population doesn't have access to public education, hospitals or running
water. We know that very well," said Charles Baker, another leader of the
opposition and Apaid's brother-in-law. "But what has Aristide done with it?
It's gotten worse, not better."

"We're at the point where something has to be done. Environmentally, the
country is severely eroded, and we're all going to be drinking salt water
soon," Baker said. "And from an economic point of view, I'm not a moron. I'm
a businessman. If my business is going to grow, I need more people with
money to buy my goods. And that's only going to come with investment in
Haiti, and with creating jobs here."

Information from wire reports was used to supplement

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