18679: Ives: Re: 18577: Ives responds to Pierre Jean and Simidor (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: K. M. Ives <kives@toast.net>

I'll deal with "Pierre Jean" first, since he is apparently new to the list
and ignorant of the history concerning PPN and Fanmi Lavalas that has been
covered here before.

Pierre Jean writes: "While Aristide was in exile, Dupuy got really pissed
off for having been passed over for some position, I believe, and became his
enemy. (If I recall correctly, Robert Malval wrote something about that in
his book "L'Année de Toutes les Duperies".)"

This is false. Ben Dupuy never got "pissed off for having been passed over
for some position." If Pierre Jean is relying on Malval and other bourgeois
"zin" for his information, it's understandable that he's confused.

Ben Dupuy publicly resigned as Aristide's Itinerant Ambassador in June 1993
because he objected to Aristide, under pressure from the State Department,
requesting that the United Nations (in violation of its charter) involve
itself in Haiti's internal affairs. It was opening the way to foreign
military intervention, Dupuy argued, which of course came to pass. Haiti
Progres criticized Aristide for returning on the shoulders of U.S. troops in
what Pierre Jean calls "extremely violent" (probably he means virulent)
articles.

The PPN (National Popular Party, which sprang from the nation-wide popular
organization, the National Popular Assembly, founded at St. Jean Bosco in
1987) and Fanmi Lavalas reflect two different class forces, which have often
been allied over the past 15 years in the struggle for Haitian democracy.
Their difference: the FL seeks to reconcile Haiti's ruling class with the
exploited masses, that is, to have some wealth redistribution but keep
property relations the same. The PPN proposes that Haiti needs fundamental
social change, like, for example, a real land reform where peasants would
take back the land stolen over decades by the grandons (and receive
fertilizer, irrigation, seeds, government support, etc.). This involves a
change in property relations.

One could write a book (indeed there are lots of them) about the difference
in vision and tactics between reformists and revolutionaries, and this
explains the on-again off-again alliance between the FL and PPN, not petty
personal squabbles.

So Dominique Esser is right to assert that Haiti Progres, which shares the
vision of the PPN, is independent. But for some, anybody or any force which
supports the FL -- or more precisely, the Haitian people's right to choose
their leader -- against the restorationist assault of Washington and the
Haitian bourgeoisie and grandons is an "opportunist" or a "Lavalassian" or
in the pay of Aristide. Let us not be doctrinaire and simplistic or make
charges we can't prove. In this sense, I think my friend Daniel Simidor has
used too broad a brush on both Haiti Progres and Guy Antoine.

Haiti Progres and PPN rallied to the defense of Haiti's constitutional
government in late 2002, when it became clear that Washington was not going
to make any Clintonesque deal with Aristide but rather was hell-bent on his
overthrow via coup d'etat or intervention to re-establish the "ancien
regime" of the coup and late Duvalier years. As PPN wrote of their position
change on Dec. 2, 2002, "No matter what problems we have with how the
Lavalas is leading the ship of state, we will not return to a
macouto-bourgeois dictatorship again."

Hence, PPN's and Haiti Progres' critical support of Aristide. In short,
conserve the democratic gains of the people against attack while trying to
push your allies to go further.

Kim Ives