#5251: Re: #5228: Ives responds to Legros (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "K. M. Ives" <kives@gateway.net>

The “reply” by Lionel Legros of Columbia University’s l’Heure
Haïtienne radio program is such a litany of epithets, gossip,
imputations, distortions, and falsehoods about Haïti Progrès and
Ben Dupuy that it is beneath response. I will just answer to his last
volley, which occurred in this decade and directly concerned me.
He wrote:

> At last July 29's demonstration against the non-indictment of
the policemen who killed Patrick Dorismond, I was the "master of
ceremony" and Kim Ives was pushing for Pat Chin as the next
speaker.  At one point, I informed Kim Ives that I knew Pat Chin
quite well and that as a matter of fact I had exposed to her
Haiti-Progrès' role in the police recruitment drive of summer
1999.  Kim Ives' response was that it had been a mistake.  I
asked him then when he was going to explain this so-called
mistake to his readers.  Kim again replied that "if we were to
explain any mistake, we would never finish."

The responses Legros puts in my mouth never came out of it. Did
he misunderstand me? Did he imagine it? Did he intentionally
fabricate it? I don’t know. But this should give list members a
notion of how reliable the rest of Legros’ “history” is.

One last note: in a pre-demonstration meeting, Legros had agreed
to take care of the sound equipment generously loaned to us by
Pat Chin’s Workers World Party. He was not appointed “master of
ceremonies.” Nonetheless he assumed that role and proceeded to
block Chin’s speaking, passing others, some virtually unknown to
our Coalition, before her. (Daniel Simidor did the exact same
thing to WWP’s Larry Holmes at our April 20th march.) Why? I
won’t make a “jugement d’intention” as Legros is fond of doing to
Ben. But I ask: Is it because they dislike WWP’s political line?
Or WWP’s fraternal relations with Haiti Progres? Is it not a
petty, vindictive, and thankless attitude? Does such conduct have
any place in coalition politics?

I think Legros’ vitriol would be better expended against his
“various former partners,” such as the putschist Claude Roumain
of the Convergence’s Generation 2004; Max Antoine, Haiti’s former
“minister of impunity;” and Leslie Péan, the prolific Haïti
Observateur columnist, to mention only those. But who knows?
We’re likely to soon hear one of them on Legros’ radio program,
along with the regular OPL commentators, fulminating with him
against the Lavalas.

Kim Ives