24235: Haiti Progres: (news) This Week in Haiti 22:48 2/9/2005 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Haïti Progrès <editor@haiti-progres.com>

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
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                         HAITI PROGRES
            "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                   * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                    February 9 - 15, 2005
                      Vol. 22, No. 48



CARNAVAL 2005:
AS CHAOS GROWS AND THE GOVERNMENT WOBBLES, GUERRILLAS STRIKE

Carnaval got off to a bloody start this year. On just the first day of
the three day festival which ran from Sunday, Feb. 6 to Tuesday, Feb. 8,
four policemen and six civilians were killed.

The policemen were accompanying the musical group Djakout Mizik when men
dressed in camouflage uniforms in a pick-up truck opened fire on them in
the Clairecine district on the Cul-de-sac plain. Witnesses, including
policemen, say the attackers were former soldiers, who have repeatedly
clashed with the police, despite their frequent collaboration.

Later that day, three young women were shot dead near Poste-Marchand.
The General Hospital reported over 20 people wounded and the live
television coverage even captured some of the violence.

Nonetheless, this year's Carnaval attendance was anemic. The stands,
built almost exclusively by government ministries, stood largely empty.
Even the bourgeoisie, the traditional patron of the yearly festivities,
was unwilling to invest in the Carnaval of the illegal government it
helped set in place.

The slogan for this year's Carnaval was "my past belongs to me,"
strangely apt given that the present is manifestly out of Haitian hands.
Washington, working through the Brazilian-administered United Nations
Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH), is calling the shots and running
the show. MINUSTAH forces guarded every intersection and even changed
the traditional route of the Carnaval parade, making the giant floats
leave from the Sylvio Cator stadium instead of City Hall on their way to
the central square of Champs de Mars.

The government of de facto prime minister Gérard Latortue carried out a
partial reshuffling of his cabinet last week, a move troubled Haitian
governments historically make to stave off crisis. But even the
reshuffling went badly.

Marie Claude Bayard, the president of the bourgeoisie's Association of
Industries of Haiti (ADIH), was appointed to replace the unceremoniously
dumped Danielle Saint-Lot as Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism.
But the nomination foundered when it came to light that Bayard was a
U.S. citizen. She was replaced by businessman Fritz Kénol.

Meanwhile, Michel Bernadin, the government delegate for the West
Department, was named as the new Interior Minister, replacing ex-Gen.
Hérard Abraham, the former right-hand man of dictator Gen. Prosper
Avril. Abraham was shifted to the Foreign Minister to replace Yvon
Siméon, who had botched a series of diplomatic matters.

Outcry immediately followed Bernadin's nomination. He is an accused
killer, charged with personal involvement in a 1972 murder during the
Duvalier regime. The charge came not just from democratic activists but
from HaVti Observateur, the paper of de facto Haitian ambassador to
Washington Ray Joseph.

Bernadin's nomination was quickly scuttled and he was replaced by lawyer
Georges MoVse.

Washington has given the de facto government one main mission. "The
organization of elections by the end of the year is the most important
mission of the new Cabinet," declared de facto Prime Minister Latortue.
"The elections are the necessary step to put democracy on track and to
return government institutions to normal and regular operations." Coup
leaders are always calling for a "return" to the "normal operations" of
the elected governments they overthrow.

Now the occupation-supervised election machinery is being put in place.
On Feb. 1, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), MINUSTAH, and
Organization of American States (OAS) met to coordinate their efforts
for holding elections. A day earlier, the CEP announced that local
elections would be held on Oct. 9, while two-rounds of legislative and
presidential elections will be held on Nov. 13 and Dec. 18. But there
are still no dates for voter registration, candidate enrollment, or the
start of campaigning.

De facto Justice Minister Bernard Gousse said that the government will
publish a decree this week after Carnaval announcing "serious changes to
the electoral card."

"It would not be a voter registration card but a digital national
identity card with the fingerprint, photograph and other information of
the voter," Gousse boasted. "Initially, this card will make it possible
to identify all adults through the data collected. Later, it will make
it possible to identify all citizens," including children presumably.

Gousse's "national identity card" sounds like a Haitian version of
convicted felon and Bush administration information czar John Poindexter
's fascist project of Total Information Awareness, a plan to set up a
database to track the movements and activities of U.S. citizens, Big
Brother-style.

Ironically, for the plan to work in Haiti, the de facto government will
have to provide housing to much of the population since most Haitians,
both in the countryside and the city, would have difficulty providing an
address for the tracking system being put in place.

Despite the growing insecurity and violence in the country, the UN
Secretary General's representative to Haiti Juan Gabriel Valdés
announced that "there will be an exemplary electoral process in Haiti."

But growing resistance throughout Haiti suggests otherwise. On Feb. 7,
the anniversary of the 1986 fall of the Duvalier dictatorship, the
National Popular Party (PPN) and the Confederation of Peasant Groups of
Borgne (KGPB) rallied hundreds of protestors from around the countryside
for a 20 kilometer march through rivers and mud from the town of Petit
Bourg au Borgne to the city of Borgne. In Borgne, the KGPB's Marc Lamour
and the PPN's Augustin Edouard gave speeches denouncing the Feb. 29th
coup, the de facto government and the foreign military occupation.

Meanwhile, in the capital, Lavalas popular organizations organized a
march through the popular neighborhoods around Belair. But as the
peaceful demonstrators carrying leafy branches approached the Cathedral,
the police opened fire, scattering them. Black-clad masked policemen
chased many of the demonstrators down alleyways and into homes. They
killed one man near Rue Monseigneur Guilloux, and wounded three others.

"Today we are not at peace, and we see what is happening," said Sanba
Boukman, a popular organization spokesman. "They are trying to destroy
us in the popular neighborhoods, burning our houses, summarily executing
us, disappearing us."

At midnight on Feb. 3, guerrillas of the "Northern Front" of the
Dessalinien Army of National Liberation (ADLN) attacked the police
station in Plaisance, just as the ADLN's "Artibonite Front" did in Gros
Morne on October 24 (see HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 22, No. 35, 11/10/2004).

In a Feb. 5 communique to the press, the ADLN said that the police
station was filled with "former Macoute soldiers, executioners of the
people," whom they ordered "to come out of the front door with their
hands up if they wanted nothing to happen to them."

The police did not come out, so the ADLN attacked and entered the
station, according to their communiqué, but the policemen inside
escaped.

"We salute all the fighters [in the cities] resisting the dictatorship
and ask them to stand firm," the communiqué continues. "The day that we
will meet together with them is very close. The year 2005 will be a year
of struggle for national liberation to recover our dignity as a
revolutionary people."

As resistance emerges in the countryside, complementing that in the
cities, the de facto regime's future appears increasingly clouded. This
week's revelers made the point. Many of the rara bands in the Carnaval
changed the refrains of their songs to calls for the return of
constitutional president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and an end to the
foreign military occupation of Haiti.

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED. Please
credit Haiti Progres.

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