7563: Village voice article

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

                               The Village Voice 
 
                             April 3, 2001, Tuesday
 
 
HEADLINE: HAITI'S VIRTUAL GOVERNMENT
 
BYLINE: Jean Jean-Pierre
 
BODY:
 
 
   r We Haitians, among a plethora of firsts, have always prided ourselves on
 being the first country to abolish slavery as well as being the first black
 independent republic. Last month, however, we earned another first of which we
 should not be so proud: We are the first nation to swear in two presidents on
 the same day in the same city. r On the morning of February 7, minutes before
 Jean-Bertrand Aristide was about to become the first Haitian president to be
 democratically reelected, somewhere in Port-au-Prince members of an opposition
 coalition calling themselves the Democratic Convergence were selecting a
 parallel president. r There are many reasons to be worried about Haiti's first
 ''virtual government.'' Foremost is the prospect of civil war. r The key issue
 raised by the opposition is the method of tabulating the vote in the May 21,
 2000, parliamentary elections. In a letter sent to outgoing U.S. president Bill
 Clinton last December, Aristide promised ''rapid rectification of the problems
 associated with the May 21 elections through
 
   runoffs for disputed Senate seats... '': a covenant that was acknowledged by
 Secretary of State--designate Colin Powell during his confirmation hearings and
 endorsed by President Bush in a February 13 letter to Aristide. This was one
 stipulation in an eight-point agreement that is considered a sine qua non for
 the international community to resume financial aid to Haiti.  
 
   Ironically, Aristide's popular Lavalas Party, which would have won runoffs in
 any event, fell victim to our self-destructive amour propre Haitien, digging in
 its heels for more than six months and refusing to accept corrections of
 elections flaws.
 
   The Convergence, an incongruous bevy of some 15 parties whose paltry
 membership is largely composed of the upper middle class, chose Gerard Gourgue,
 an educator and jurist, as its president. In November 1987, Gourgue, now 75, ran
 for president in elections that were aborted by the military when they and their
 paramilitary gangs murdered dozens of people at a polling place in
 Port-au-Prince. Strangely, one of the first promises made by Gourgue was to
 restore the army, which was disbanded by Aristide in 1995, one year after he was
 returned to power by U.S. troops. So it is no coincidence that hundreds of
 former army officers took to the streets three weeks ago to demand the
 reinstatement of that dreaded institution.
 
   Haiti today is reminiscent of Jamaica in the mid '70s, when the U.S.,
 claiming that Castro was getting too chummy with Prime Minister Michael Manley,
 helped arm the partisans of then rival Edward Seaga, practically staging a
 bantam civil war in the country. Dozens of Jamaicans were killed.
 
   While the U.S. forces were in Haiti, responding to requests by the United
 Nations and Aristide to disarm thousands of paramilitary gang members, they
 established a gun buy-back program. The $50 per gun the U.S. was offering did
 not yield much. Today those unretrieved guns and weapons owned by some 7000
 Haitian army officers, many of whom were trained at the notorious School of the
 Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, are being used to commit crimes throughout
 Haiti. 
 
   Against this backdrop, talk of bringing back the military--which in 1991
 staged the bloodiest coup in the country's history--along with a bristling
 underground arms bazaar in Port-au-Prince, represents a chilling prospect. Part
 of the current gun trade is an outgrowth of Colombian drug cartels using Haiti 
 and the Dominican Republic as transshipment hubs, with the result that automatic
 weapons are readily available to anyone for a pittance.
 
   In the wake of the ex-military's brazen performance in the streets, Aristide
 supporters began demonstrating all over Haiti, especially in Port-au-Prince.
 Thick plumes of black smoke from the so familiar tire barricades soon enveloped
 most of the capital. Along with rock throwing, this continued until early last
 week. But around midday on Tuesday, the street protests degenerated into real
 battles, which left three people shot dead and scores injured.
 
   Wednesday evening, in a speech broadcast in New York by Radio Soleil d'Haiti,
 a Brooklyn-based subcarrier that claims 500,000 listeners in the tristate area,
 Aristide asked ''all political parties to keep on expressing political opinions
 without violence...but you cannot have two governments in place.'' As if to warn
 the Convergence, he added, ''To have peace, you have to live by the laws.''
 
   Michael Zarin of the International Republican Institute (IRI), a Washington,
 D.C.--based organization, doesn't hide where his group stands. ''Aristide's acts
 to date,'' Zarin told the Voice, ''are not those of someone seriously committed
 to the cause of democracy. Words are not enough,'' he continued. ''He must act
 to stop the violence.''
 
   Zarin's sentiments reflect the attitude of the Bush State Department. ''The
 U.S.-trained police response has been erratic and slow,'' said spokesman Richard
 Boucher. ''We urge the Aristide government to respond quickly and professionally
 to protect all of the people of Haiti.'' Boucher did not address the anomaly of
 the country having two presidents.
 
   The Convergence, whose main outside support comes from the IRI and Senator
 Jesse Helms, claims that its member parties were prevented from running by
 Lavalas last year. It is no secret that these parties have little in common but
 their hatred of Aristide.
 
   Since the end of the Cold War, Haiti has lost its geopolitical significance
 and therefore its purpose for the United States. Today, instead of cajoling the
 right wing, the U.S. seems primarily interested in having any kind of Haitian
 government that can stem the flow of black refugees to Jeb Bush's Florida.
 Beyond this, Haiti offers a pool of cheap labor and a new market in which to
 dump goods and crops subsidized by American taxpayers.
 
   With so much pressure being wielded on Aristide, the obvious question is why
 he has not reconnected with the diaspora, which was instrumental in bringing him
 back to Haiti in 1994. ''A few months after Aristide's return,'' said a computer
 analyst and former core supporter who did not wish to be identified, ''he
 surrounded himself with people who see the diaspora as Haitians wanting to take
 their jobs away. Today the lines of communication are almost nonexistent.''
 
   Indeed, the once stentorian voice of nearly 1.5 million people, who, from
 1991 to 1994, staged protest after protest in Washington, New York, Paris, and
 elsewhere, is all but mum. ''How can we take to the streets when he Aristide
 does not tell us what he's doing?'' asked another partisan who requested that
 his name not be published.
 
   Yet, in spite of their cooling relationship with Aristide, most Haitians in
 the diaspora believe that even if the U.S. and Europe continue to withhold funds
 from Haiti, any concession by Aristide before Haiti's ''parallel government'' is
 disbanded guarantees that the opposition parties will move further.
 
   Is there any hope? Confronted with the escalating violence, Haiti's first
 ''virtual president,'' Gourgue, told the Associated Press last week: ''Our lives
 are in jeopardy. The government and the police have abandoned the country to
 street thugs.''
 
   Candor or Freudian slip, he was obviously alluding to the Aristide
 government.
 

 
GRAPHIC: Photo: In the shadow of growing violence, "Aristide is the key":
 Pedestrians pass graffiti in Port-au-Prince.
 
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