21642: Lemieux: Knight Ridder: (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

 Posted on Thu, Apr. 29, 2004





Haitian rebels to lay down weapons, form
political party, leader says

BY JOE MOZINGO

Knight Ridder Newspapers


(KRT) - 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."

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.

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."

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."

---

© 2004, The Miami Herald.







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