6696: This Week in Haiti 18:44 1/17/01 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
newsweekly. For the complete edition with other news in French
and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100,
(fax) 718-434-5551 or e-mail at <editor@haitiprogres.com>.
Also visit our website at <www.haitiprogres.com>.

                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                    January 17 - 23, 2001
                          Vol. 18, No. 44

WHO IS THREATENING WHOM?
THE CAMOUFLAGE OF THE OPPOSITION

After months of making thinly veiled calls for the violent
overthrow of President René Préval’s government and openly
preparing to sabotage the Feb. 7 inauguration of incoming
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Democratic Convergence
(CD), Haiti’s tiny opposition front, last week sought to cast
itself as the victim of its prey.

The opportunity for the charade came after a Jan. 9 press
conference by the St. Jean Bosco chapter of the Little Church
Community (TKL), a popular organization which claims allegiance
to Aristide. The TKL leaders read a fiery communiqué to the press
and recited some of the most fearsome war cries of the1804
Haitian revolution. “If [the opposition] plants violence in the
midst of the [Haitian] people, who reject them, it is violence
they will sow,” said TKL leader Paul Raymond who read the
statement.

The TKL leaders were responding to the CD’s plan to launch a
“parallel government” to displace that of incoming President
Aristide on Feb. 7. Toward this end, the CD held a Jan. 3 forum
at the Montana Hotel in Pétionville (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 18,
No. 42, 1/3/2001) where they drew up blueprints for a government
called the National Council for Public Salvation (CNSP). Some CD
leaders have openly declared that they will occupy the National
Palace instead of Aristide, who was elected in a landslide on
Nov. 26.

The TKL leaders read a list of over 130 names of politicians,
journalists, priests, and other public figures whom the CD
nominated, often without the nominee’s knowledge, to sit on the
“consultative body” for this government. So unilateral was the
list’s formation that it even included the name of Yvon Neptune,
a leading Senator and spokesman for Aristide’s party, the Lavalas
Family (FL).

The TKL leaders said that those named who did not publicly
renounce the CNSP would be branded as collaborators of a “bloody
coup d’état, worse than that of Sep. 30, 1991, which [the
opposition] is planning to reduce the country to ashes.” In their
comments, the TKL leaders particularly admonished the Cap-Haïtien
bishop Mgr. François Gayot and Radio Kiskeya journalist Lilianne
Pierre-Paul.

Two days later, Radio Kiskeya claimed that it barely escaped an
arson attack when an unidentified “assailant” allegedly flung two
gallons of diesel fuel and gasoline at the station but then fled
when the station’s guardian appeared. Within minutes, police were
on the scene. There was no evidence of who was behind the attack,
but a Kiskeya announcer held the St. Jean Bosco TKL leaders
responsible and said that their threats “extended now to all
stations.” Justice Minister Camille Leblanc immediately issued an
arrest warrant for TKL leader Raymond.

Most progressive popular organizations and parties, including the
FL, have disavowed the St. Jean Bosco TKL’s extreme language,
while noting the hypocrisy of the mainstream Haitian and foreign
media, which have all seized on the TKL’s “threats” while
ignoring those of the opposition.

“We think that the TKL committed a big mistake which was prompted
by their frustrations,” said Ben Dupuy of the National Popular
Party (PPN). “The problem is that they used the enemy’s methods,
but in a struggle one shouldn’t do that. One should use one’s own
tactics.”

Dupuy also pointed out the irony of how certain mainstream
journalists were now manufacturing a mythical offensive against
the press when previous threats have been ignored. As a co-
director of Haïti Progrès, Dupuy was recently the target of a
written anonymous right-wing death threat. What was the reaction
of Haiti’s mainstream press?

“The Association of Haitian Journalists (AJH) didn’t say a word
about it,” Dupuy said. “But now I hear that they have been
resuscitated and formed a sort of federation of media directors”
to defend Radio Kiskeya and others against the purported
offensive of pro-Lavalas popular organizations. “Why do they
defend some media and not others?” Dupuy asked. “Why the double
standard?”

U.S. Republicans were also quick to make hay from the TKL’s
outburst. “In speaking at the church of St. Jean Bosco, the men
issuing these threats clearly suggested to Haitians that they
were speaking for Mr. Jean Bertrand Aristide,” said Congressmen
Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) and Porter Goss (R-FL) in a joint
statement. “Instead of keeping his promises to President Clinton,
Mr. Aristide is condoning by his silence thuggish acts of
violence in his name.”

Of course, the TKL leaders committed no “act.” Furthermore, most
Haitians attribute recent thuggish acts of violence in Haiti to
the Republicans’ allies in the Convergence. These acts include a
bombing campaign that killed two children in the weeks leading up
to the Nov.26 elections, the assassination of several popular
organization leaders, and the endemic crime wave carried out, in
large part, by death-squads of former soldiers and Duvalierist
paramilitaries.

Nor did Gilman or Goss or Sen. Jesse Helms protest when CD leader
Evens Paul urged Haitian motorists to run over pro-Lavalas street
demonstrators with their cars or when other CD leaders ominously
predicted the bombing campaigns which have recently plagued
Haiti.

On the contrary, the Republicans have tried to dress up their
Haitian counterparts, who mostly supported the 1991 coup, as
upstanding citizens. The web-page of the CNSP makes it very clear
that the Haitian opposition is almost entirely foreign inflated.
The webpage (www.geocities.com/cnsphaiti/) went up on the
Internet the day after the CD’s Jan. 3 forum and outlines the
CNSP’s “parallel government” to be established on Feb. 7. The
“President” would be Dr. Duvalnord Wisler Marcellus, an
unsuccessful candidate for president in 1987 and for the Senate
in 1990. The “Vice-President” (a post which doesn’t exist under
the 1987 Constitution) would go to Leslie Manigat, a perennial
politician whom the Haitian military installed briefly and then
uninstalled as a puppet president in 1987. Also listed are
“Members” comprised of politicians Evans Paul, Hubert DeRonceray,
Camille Sylaire, Dejean Bélizaire, Gérard Pierre-Charles, and
Turneb Delpé.

The CNSP website, however, is just an appendage of that of a
certain “Phoenix New Haiti Millenium Foundation” (PNHMF) whose
address is a Washington, DC P.O. box. The two-fold mission of
this “foundation” is “1. To install the best qualified individual
as President of the Haitian provisional government... to fulfill
the promise of true political freedom in conducting Haiti's
Affairs of State . This choice is Dr. Duvalnord Wisler
Marcellus.” (Never mind that the Haitian people made another
choice on Nov. 26). And “2. To implement a true Economic Reform
Plan under his guidance, allowing investors, entrepreneurs and
developers free access to Haiti's borders to spur Haiti's
economic and social development.”

The “Economic Reform Plan” opens with the sentence: “A recent
series of Economic Reforms is now opening up Haiti's economic
potential to international companies from the United States and
all over the world.” What follows is a pathetic little paragraph
listing completely unexplained reforms and acts to be taken, such
as “allowing foreign banks to acquire up to 100 percent of the
voting stock of an existing local bank for a limited period.”

Only two of the eight listed PNHMF officers and administrators
appear to be Haitian, and the website tells the surfer: “Your
financial aid is needed in support of the _international campaign_
to install Wisler Marcellus as the President of the Haitian
provisional government...” (our emphasis).

Looking a little farther one learns that the “Phoenix New Haiti
Millenium Foundation” is “conducted under the auspices of “ the
National Heritage Foundation (NHF), based just outside Washington
in Falls Church, Virginia. Haïti Progrès was unable to reach
anyone at the National Heritage Foundation, which is not to be
confused with the Heritage Foundation, a much larger right-wing
think tank. But the foundation is primarily run by a certain Dr.
J.T. Houk and his family members and specializes in spinning off
other foundations. “We want to make foundations accessible to
everyone,” the home page reads. One other NHF tenet: “Government
administration of social programs is bad economics and worse
psychology.” Leave it to the churches and private sector. No
wonder the NHF has adopted the CNSP.

Meanwhile, Haitian opposition leaders met last week with the
ruling Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) in the Dominican
border town of Barahona. The ramifications of this meeting were
not lost on the Haitian people.

In short, the U.S. and Haitian right-wing, with the aid of some
media, are attempting to carry out a coup d’état in the full view
of the Haitian people and the world. This is what provoked the
outrage and invectives of the St. Jean Bosco TKL, which the
opposition has now tried to use as camouflage. But the Haitian
people and popular organizations are not the aggressors in Haiti
today. They are simply trying to organize themselves and keep an
eye on the vultures they see circling.

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

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