19081: Pierre Jean: (Haiti Progres, April 20, 2001) - Aristide About-Face Rends His Followers and Allies (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Pierre Jean <pierrejean2004@yahoo.com>

I am sure many Lavalas supporters on this list believe
that my crusade against the lack of transparency under
the Aristide administration is misguided and even
borderline slanderous.

Imagine my surprise when I went back to my archives
and found an article - from Haiti-Progres no less
-that touches on the very same points I am bringing
up. Never mind my beef with PPN, its own lack of
transparency and accountability, and its stunning
reversal on some issues since that article came out.

Note Ben Dupuy's attacks on the enrichment of some
government officials and their subsequent promotions.
The last paragraph says it all.

[Beginning of article by Haiti Progres dated April 20,
2001]

Anger and defiance has begun to erupt from several
quarters of the Lavalas movement in the wake of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's 180 degree
political pivot shortly after his Feb. 7 inauguration.

In press conferences, radio programs, and street
demonstrations, former Aristide allies and even
members of his own party, the Lavalas Family (FL),
have begun to denounce the new government's rightward
swing as a "betrayal" of the democratic, nationalist
ideals formulated a decade ago when the Lavalas
movement was born.

The trouble began last month when Aristide's Prime
Minister Jean-Marie Chérestal packed his cabinet with
former officials and collaborators of the Duvalier
dictatorship (1957-1986) and the most recent military
coup d'état (1991-1994) The nine-member Provisional
Electoral Council (CEP) was also pressured to resign
and a new one was appointed, again filled with
Duvalierists. Haïti Progrès then revealed that
Commerce Minister Stanley Théard had been indicted in
1986 for milking the Haitian treasury of millions of
dollars under Duvalier, but the government has taken
no action nor made any comment. Théard remains smugly
in his post.

Now, around the country, protest is percolating up
from the people who fought and sacrificed to bring
Aristide back to power. "Lavalas Family members
marched through the streets of Jacmel [on Apr. 9] to
make known their frustrations and the problems they
have with many of the political directions that the
Lavalas is taking these days," said FL Senator Pierre
Prince Sonson.

The demonstrators denounced, among other things, that
popular organizations and the masses in general have
been marginalized while former Macoutes (as
Duvalierist henchmen were called) and bourgeois
kingpins are leading figures in the government.

Sen. Sonson has also been a dissenter, not reluctant
to challenge some of his parliamentarian and party
colleagues. For instance, he denounced a move by the
parliament last month to make Sen. Dany Toussaint
immune from appearing before a judge investigating the
murder of radio journalist Jean Dominique.

As a result, Sonson has been vilified as a foreign
agent and traitor by some party members. On the night
of Apr. 13, his home was stoned and fired at with
automatic weapons. "I defy anyone to challenge my
commitment to the true Lavalas, to the ideals of Dec.
16, 1990," Sen. Sonson said, referring the date when
Aristide was first elected president on a platform of
justice, transparency, and participation. "I will
continue to work in the Senate to find justice for the
people and to chase out the drug-dealers and the
corrupted."

On Apr. 10, several dozen pro-Lavalas demonstrators
rallied in front of the National Palace to denounce
Duclos Bénissoit, a director of the Lavalas-affiliated
Service Plus bus line, for corruption and to demand
his removal. He, too, remains in his post.

Meanwhile, Kozepèp, a pro-Lavalas Artibonite
Valley-based peasant organization, revealed this week
that it is once again the target of threats from "a
sector of the Lavalas." Kozepèp leaders had previously
been intimidated by Lavalas sectors last September
when they sought to organize a political meeting in
Mirogoâne and just weeks ago when they were mobilizing
for the Apr. 3 anniversary of Dominique's death.
Kozepèp leader Charles Suffrard said that certain FL
leaders were conducting themselves as Duvalierists
once did, with brutality and arrogance. "When a guy
does whatever he wants, perhaps a crime, corruption,
or even theft, one feels afraid to ask him what is
going on," Suffrard said.

Some of the sharpest criticism has come from the
National Popular Party (PPN), which had been a close
FL ally in the struggles leading up to Aristide's
inauguration. In an Apr. 2 press conference, PPN
secretary general Ben Dupuy charged the FL with
"betrayal of the ideals of Dec. 16, 1990."

Transparency? Dupuy asked. "We see a number of people
in the government now... who came to power without a
penny and today they have lots of capital, huge
palaces, and big institutions," Dupuy said. "Nobody
knows where that money came from and they have never
abided by the Constitutional requirements" of filing a
financial disclosure statement on entering and leaving
office.

Participation? "If there is participation, it is only
for the Macoutes and bourgeois whom they used to
qualify as 'pocket patriots'," Dupuy said.

Justice? "Until now, we see that the justice system is
blocked," Dupuy said. From the Duvalier years, the
post-Duvalier dictatorships, the coup, and recent
times, Dupuy pointed out that there are still no
results in the prosecution of political crimes, like
the assassinations of Jean Dominique, Antoine Izméry,
Jean-Marie Vincent, and Father Jean Pierre Louis.
Furthermore, no action has been taken to prosecute
those accused in the Truth and Justice Commission
report of coup crimes, which was hand-delivered to
Aristide on Feb. 5, 1996, Dupuy remarked.

Meanwhile, economic crimes, like the Théard's
corruption scandal, are also being swept under the
rug. Dupuy referred to a thick dossier which he
secured in 1987 detailing how Jean-Claude Duvalier and
his clique embezzled over $510 million from public
coffers. "In 1987, I personally gave this
documentation to Aristide who in turn gave it to then
Justice Minister [Vincent] Bayard," Dupuy said. "Since
that time, zilch has happened." Those who plundered
state funds are not being prosecuted, they are being
rewarded with government posts, he said.

On top of all this, the PPN and a number of other
groups have remarked that, with former World Bank
economist, Duvalierist Finance minister, and putschist
prime minister Marc Bazin as Planning Minister today,
the Aristide/Chérestal government has embraced
Washington's long-prescribed "structural adjustment"
policies. "It is the complete application of the
neoliberal plan," Dupuy said, "what they used to call
'the death plan,' 'the American plan,' and which the
Lavalas swore that it was never going to apply."

This week the Aristide government was seen skipping
ever more merrily toward the neoliberal rainbow as it
expressed delight to be participating in the "Summit
of the Americas" being held in Quebec City on Apr. 20,
where thousands of anti-neoliberal demonstrators are
expected to protest. Aristide also requested that the
United Nations restation its political overseers in
Haiti, a mission which ended on Feb. 6. Meanwhile,
Aristide has received at the National Palace figures
like Duvalierist ideologue and broadcaster Serge
Beaulieu, who was jailed for involvement in the Jan.
6, 1991 coup, which sought to thwart Aristide's first
inauguration, who was freed during the Sept. 30 coup,
and who threatened Jean Dominique's life on the
airwaves not long before his murder.

Despite his ever accelerating capitulation and
reversal, Aristide has still tried to summon some
magic from his bag of tricks. On Apr. 10, the
President and First Lady received a few hundred poor
people for lunch at the Palace, a lame replay of the
Feb. 9, 1991 "breakfast for the poor." The invitees
each received a small gift and an envelope containing
1000 gourdes (about US$40) from the President and his
ministers. "I don't want misery to make you lose
hope," Aristide declared. It was a symbolic event, one
might say. But also symbolic and significant was the
number of poor who were not chosen at the gate to
partake in the feast and who had to be dispersed by
police. This event alone demonstrates the limitations
of this sort of stagnant populism, which has to resort
to Haiti's age-old device, paternalism.

Most ironic of all is that, while 1000 gourdes might
give someone hope for a few days, what would really
help the poor to survive is more schools, hospitals,
water pumps, and jobs, all of which are now being
prepared for sacrifice on the altar of neoliberalism.



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