23908: Slavin: (news) Aristide is no Mandela ( Mail & Guardian, South Africa 121504) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JPS390@aol.com

Wednesday, December 15 20004 / South Africa

COMMENT & ANALYSIS
>From the Mail & Guardian print edition, South Africa.

Aristide is no Mandela

A noted former Haitian minister and international
filmmaker says South Africa's guest of honour,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was neither priestly nor
presidential and has left a legacy of terror as he
enjoys his Pretoria exile.

Comment & Analysis

Raoul Peck

For two months now, groups describing themselves as
Lavalas Party members and partisans of former Haitian
president Jean-Bertrand Aristide have been wreaking
havoc in a still fragile country. These "militants"
have been burning houses, killing innocent people,
ransacking market stalls and richer businesses. They
mostly operate in hit-and-run actions from their base
in the slum parts of Haiti's capital, making the
people living in these poor neighbourhoods the real
victims of this terror campaign.

Several policemen have been decapitated in macabre
imitation of Iraqi terrorists in recent days. It is as
yet legally difficult to prove the role the former
president is playing in these acts from his haven in
South Africa. Nonetheless, it is a fact that money and
arms have been fuelling these actions. Just a few
weeks ago, a Haitian-Canadian citizen entering
Port-au-Prince's Toussaint Louverture airport was
apprehended with $800 000 in his luggage. According to
the local media, the money was to be channeled to gang
leaders, loyal to Aristide, who have publicly been
threatening a bloodbath.

In the light of these developments, it is hard to
understand why President Thabo Mbeki seems to be
willing to go out of his way to revive Aristide's long
lost legitimacy. I hope with this article to help
bring the truth about Aristide to South Africans.

For those who know him, the chain of violence that has
marred Haiti reflects Aristide's leadership style and
his documented recklessness. During his 13 years in
power, Aristide kept his street habit of confrontation
and provocation, incongruous as it was for an elected
official. As president, he has not been able to accept
the role changes that come with the responsibilities
of being president of all Haitians. He was a stubborn
grassroots activist and stayed so throughout his
tenure. Democracy was never on his agenda.

It has been nine months since he was forced out of
office. Yes, forced to leave, not kidnapped as he
pretended.

He was forced out as a result of:

his errors of judgment in making decisions as a chief
of state;
his blindness in assessing the consistent decline in
his popularity;
his isolation from the key political sectors and
actors that made up the movement that supported his
initial quest for power in 1990;
his apparent overconfidence in the loyalty and
efficacy of his foreign backers and his sabotage of
all goodwill initiatives to bring an end to the crisis
in a non-violent manner; and
his failure to respond to the desperate calls for
change in his handling of the country by his people,
and his local and international allies.

The sad truth for the millions of Haitians who had
placed their destiny in the hands of Father Aristide
in 1990 and again in 1994 is that he left a legacy of
lies, intolerance, corruption, nepotism and conspiracy
to eliminate his rivals and detractors.

We have been hearing loud cries of outrage from some
of the black "elite" in the United States, South
Africa and the Caribbean about a "kidnapping". Let's
be serious!

If there was a coup, it was a coup against the people
of Haiti who, again after 10 long years, were deprived
of their long-overdue victory.

When Aristide was chosen as the compromise candidate,
at the height of the democratic battle 14 years ago,
everybody thought that as a priest from the Salesian
Fathers, he would never conspire for power. But soon
the movement was damaged as Aristide presented himself
as the sole repository of this vast movement. Imagine
Nelson Mandela pretending to be the only victor
against apartheid!

Aristide made it his priority to destroy all
democratic institutions in Haiti. Together with his
hand-picked seat holder, René Préval, they
institutionalised gang control in the slums and used
these gang members, known as chimères, to terrorise
any dissenting voices.

Aristide's followers were placed at the helm of all
state enterprises and systematically plundered them on
his behalf. Between 2001 and 2003, more than 60% of
the national Budget went exclusively to the National
Palace.

The implication of the Aristide regime in the
flourishing drug traffic is not to be denied. Several
of his closest collaborators have been indicted on
drug trafficking charges in Florida. They include
Oriel Jean, Aristide's security chief; Jean Nesly
Lucien, his hand-picked police chief; Evantz Brillant,
chief of Haiti's anti-drug squad; Rudy Therassan,
chief of investigation; Romaine Lestin, a former
Haitian SWAT commander; and Jean-Marie Fourel
Celestin, Aristide's close friend and founding member
of his Lavalas Party appointed Senate president after
the 2000 elections.

This seems too many to be another "Western imperialist
conspiracy".

In his July 23 article in ANC Today, Mbeki described,
with great poetic licence, how slum inhabitants in
Haiti marched on the occasion of Aristide's birthday
on July 15, "singing happy birthday Titid, with empty
plates and spoons". As not all residents of Soweto are
alike and defend the same cause, not all Cité Soleil
residents are Titid's supporters. Actually, the
majority of them are victims of daily extortion and
aggression from gang members who claim to be acting in
Aristide's name.

Large parts of Cité Soleil, Village de Dieu and Bel
Air, the largest slums in Port-au-Prince, are empty
today. Residents are leaving in throngs, fleeing the
Lavalas terror.

No, Mbeki's guest of honour is no Mandela nor a
Toussaint Louverture. The conditions of Aristide's
political demise, as open to discussion as they may
be, do not make him a hero.

What Mbeki must realise is that the situation of my
country is much too precarious and complex for South
Africa to become the centre of a political polemic
with Haiti.

Contrary to what Mbeki is insinuating about those who
fought Aristide and his rule, I, like many of my
countrymen, don't think that the present "occupation"
of my country is acceptable. I don't believe in the
resurrection of the former Haitian army, either. I
don't think that the so-called rebels Mbeki denounced
in his article are freedom fighters. And I condemn
witch-hunts and arbitrary arrests.

In line with his predecessors, Duvalier, Cedras and
René Préval, Aristide is just another painful
parenthesis in the long struggle of the Haitian people
against those with short memories and inconsiderate
ambitions who have tried to take advantage of them.
They, and the civil society, are the true inheritors
of Toussaint Louverture's legacy.

My friends, I urge you not to let disinformation
separate you from your Haitian brothers who need you
to stand with them for peace, democracy and justice.



Raoul Peck is the prize-winning writer and director of
Lumumba. He served as Haiti's culture minister from
1996 to 1997. He received the 2001 Irene Diamond
Lifetime Achievement Award from Human Rights Watch.
He has just completed Sometimes in April, a film on
the Rwandan genocide

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J.P. Slavin
New York
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