20351: Marina: Article pointing to staffing by PM G. Latortue (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Marina <marinawus@yahoo.com>

Original article is at
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/03/1673266.php Print
comments.

S. Florida Haitians assume control of government in
strife-torn nation
by suns Friday, Mar. 12, 2004 at 12:50 PM

Haiti's new prime minister comes from Boca Raton. The
proposed defense minister is from Miami Shores. And
the latest adviser to the new government hails from
Lauderhill.

Louis Noisin, the former president of the Senate, said
he's returning to Haiti today to serve as a consultant
to his friend and television co-host, Prime Minister
Gérard Latortue.











Some experts said tapping the talent of South
Florida's Haitians might only be the beginning. They
think the appointment of Latortue sent a signal to
other Haitians living abroad that they, too, can
participate in rebuilding the country.

"Right now, I think the diaspora needs to become more
visible, and people who have been away for 25 and 30
years ... need to think about how they can help the
country move forward," said Marc Prou, executive
director of the Haitian Studies Association, a
Boston-based organization of researchers. "I think
there's a bankruptcy of ideas and know-how in the
country. We have to become the driving force, bring
some of the skills back home."

Latortue arrived in the country Wednesday accompanied
by retired Gen. Herard Abraham, a Miami Shores
resident whom he plans to make minister of defense.
Latortue has said he wants his Cabinet to include
Smarck Michel, a prime minister under former President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Both Abraham and Michel were
contenders for Latortue's position.

Noisin, 77, previously served in the government of
President Leslie Manigat but fled in a 1988 coup
d'état.

"All of us, we have one dream, and that is to take
back the country and make it reborn of its ashes,"
said Noisin, who teaches about Haiti's culture and
politics at Florida International University. "The
country was in the wrong hands at the wrong time."

Another South Florida resident whose name has been
floating in the Haitian community as a contender for
chief of staff is Robert Ulysse of Boca Raton. Neither
Latortue nor Ulysse could be reached late Thursday to
confirm.

Haiti lost much of its intellectual talent under the
Duvalier regimes. Claude Louissant, a Broward County
human services regional coordinator and Haitian
lecturer, said many of those people are now retired
professionals who have a lot to offer the country.

"When you talk about Latortue and Noisin, you're
talking about an older generation who, before they
die, would like to make a contribution," he said. "To
me, these guys are heroes for wanting to do that.
Haiti has everything to gain by having people like
[them] return to the country."

It wouldn't be the first time that Latortue, Noisin
and Ulysse have worked together.

As recently as Sunday, they were co-hosts of a weekly
program, Revue de la Semaine, on the Haitian
Television Network of America. The show is a weekly
review of the events in Haiti and around the world.

Noisin said they have also been working together on a
book called Plan of Modernization of Haiti, to be
published by a Palm Beach County company.

He said the group didn't plan to be involved in the
new government, it just happened.

"It's not a thing where Gérard said he wanted to be
prime minister. His name just came about, and a lot of
people backed him," he said. Latortue, a former
Haitian foreign minister and United Nations executive,
is surrounding himself with people he knows and
trusts, Noisin said.

He said their wives, who will remain in South Florida,
are nervous.

"For the moment all of the wives are shaking for their
husbands," he said. "My wife would not want me to be
in danger. But I tried to convince her that a man
doesn't know when he came to life, and he doesn't have
to know when he's going to die. So if I have to die
trying to save my country, that's a good death."

He disregarded criticism by some that people like him
have been away too long to understand the needs of the
country.

"We're Haitians first, and wherever we live doesn't
matter," he said. "We know the country, we're from the
country, we study the country, and we teach about the
country. We don't need to physically be somewhere to
know what we are talking about."

Noisin, a native of Cap-Haïtien, has spent most of his
adult life abroad.

He left during the dictatorship of François "Papa Doc"
Duvalier, traveling the world on behalf of the United
Nations and teaching at universities. He returned to
Haiti in 1980, nine years after the death of Papa Doc,
to build a private university in Cap-Haïtien. With the
1986 fall of Duvalier's son and successor, Jean Claude
"Baby Doc" Duvalier, Noisin thought a new era had
begun for Haiti.

He helped develop the country's constitution and
became president of the Haitian Senate in 1988.
President Manigat's government was overthrown four
months later, and Noisin and his wife, Denise, fled
the country.

But this time he thinks things will be different.

He said it has been 500 years since black people
arrived to Ayiti [as it was called by the Indians]
and, like the phoenix, which lived for 500 years and
then was reborn from its ashes, it's time for Haiti to
live again.

"2004 is the rebirth of Ayiti," he said. "And I will
be part of it."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-cnoisinmar12,0,7601538.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines



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