21626: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Rebels prepare to work with ballots, not bullets (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Fri, Apr. 30, 2004

Rebels prepare to work with ballots, not bullets

BY JOE MOZINGO

jmozingo@herald.com


HAITI

The rebels who helped oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide now say it is
time to put down their weapons and turn to politics and policy making.

The rebels who swept through Haiti and helped oust President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide plan to put down their weapons and form a political party, leader
Guy Philippe told The Herald on Thursday.

Philippe -- whose boyish charisma made him a wildly popular figure in Haiti
despite allegations of drug trafficking -- said the group has yet to decide
if he would be the new party's candidate for president in elections expected
in 2005.

''We have to do a poll and see who has the advantage,'' he said. ``If the
poll says I am the person, I will be the person.''

WILL SURRENDER GUNS

The rebels will turn their weapons over to police next month at a meeting in
Gonaives, Philippe said in an interview at the Ibolele Hotel, high in the
verdant mountains above the capital. At that point they will change
officially from the rebel Front de Resistance to the Front de Reconstrucion
Nationale, a political party.

''We don't want anything to do with weapons,'' said Philippe, 36, a former
police chief and army officer. ``Now everything is politics.''

U.S. officials say the new party would threaten any chance of progress in
Haiti, because its ranks include military and paramilitary leaders who
allegedly terrorized political opponents in the early 1990s.

''It's a very scary thought,'' said one U.S. official who asked to remain
anonymous. ``It's all the same guys. Talk about taking one step forward and
two steps back.''

Among the rebels: Jean-Pierre Baptiste, freed in a jail break while serving
a life sentence for his role in a 1994 massacre of civilians in Gonaives,
and Louis-Jodel Chamblain, convicted in absentia of taking part in the same
massacre. Last week, Chamblain turned himself in to police.

Philippe insists he and his colleagues have been wrongfully accused.

``I'm sorry, but Chamblain is a hero. A lot of people love him here. He
offered his life for his countrymen.''

Philippe also bristles at the allegation that he helped drug traffickers
move cocaine through the country while he was serving with the police in
northern Haiti. U.S. officials have repeatedly told reporters this, but have
yet to go on record with evidence to back it up.

''Where's the evidence?'' he said.

Regardless of the accusation, there is no doubt that Philippe's role in the
insurrection that brought down Aristide also launched him onto the political
stage with a momentum not unlike Aristide's in his early days of public
life.

The former president was a slum priest who stirred the spirits of millions
speaking out against the military regimes of the late 1980s.

POLITICAL VACUUM

Aristide's departure in February left something of a political vacuum. His
Lavalas Family Party still had mass appeal to the poor who make up most of
this nation, but most of its leaders went into hiding. They are just
beginning to meet and regroup.

Their traditional political opponents, meanwhile, are a fractious coalition
of parties -- some with ties to the wealthy families who have maintained a
stark class system in Haiti for 200 years. None has emerged with the support
that either the Lavalas or Philippe have gained.

''I think the only ones that can beat us in fair elections are Lavalas,''
said Philippe. ``They have money, and politics is money.''

PARENTS WERE MAYORS

Philippe was born into politics; both his parents were mayors of their
farming town in the south.

After joining the Army, Philippe went to college in Ecuador on a military
scholarship. He speaks four languages fluently. His wife, an American, left
the country during the upheaval and is living with their two children in
Wisconsin.

Philippe said his party's first objective would be to reinstitute the
Haitian Army, which Aristide abolished in 1995, and give the violent nation
a sense of security. He conceded that the army of the past was corrupt and
brutal.

''This would be a professional army, not the one we had,'' he said. ``You
can't have foreigners invest without security.''

``The next issue would be education, education, education.''

Philippe said he wants his party to represent the poor. For instance, he
said it would try to stop the flow of cheap imported rice that puts peasant
farmers out of business.

Lesley Voltaire, a Lavalas Family Party member and former minister under
Aristide, said he expects the new party to lure the poor with false
promises.

''If they promise to hire soldiers everywhere, of course they will have
popular support,'' said Voltaire. ``They can't do it, but they will
promise.''

Unlike Aristide, the new party would not antagonize the elite. ''They have a
key role in this country,'' Philippe said.

He insists that he has no desire to be the presidential candidate unless he
is called on to do so.

However, he knows he will be a key figure in the party, and is trying to
write a book in case anyone assassinates him.

''They know the only way they can stop me,'' he said, ``is if they kill
me.''

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