a1387: This Week in Haiti 20:1 3/20/2002 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"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 *

                        March 20 - 26, 2002
                          Vol. 20, No. 1

NEW GOVERNMENT ROLLED OUT, LOOKING LIKE THE OLD

Scarcely had the rumor begun to circulate that Yvon Neptune might
have naturalized during the years that he lived in New York,
compromising his eligibility to become Haiti's new Prime
Minister, than it was all over. The Parliament, dominated by his
own Lavalas Family party (FL), ratified Neptune on Mar. 12, a
record eight days after being nominated by President Jean-
Bertrand Aristide.

Forty-nine out of 50 deputies, and 15 out of 16 senators, voted
in his favor.

The hearings on Neptune's general policy statement were tediously
salutatory, with the only rancor in FL circles coming from
certain affiliated "popular organizations" who felt they didn't
have enough pull with the new PM to land jobs for their
"militants."

Such complaisance may prove unwise. Neptune's cabinet and stated
goals are little different than those of his predecessor, Jean-
Marie Chérestal, who was indecorously forced to resign after
crises erupted on all fronts due to concessive, laissez-faire,
foreign-reliant policies (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 19, No. 49,
2/20/02).

"My foremost concern will be to encourage a climate of openness
and dialogue so as to arrive at the necessary agreement between
the different sectors of national life," he announced during his
Mar. 15 inauguration. "The watch-words remain: greater openness
and dialogue, desirable and desired understanding, and total
participation."

At the same time, Aristide and Neptune have kicked off the
campaign for parliamentary elections whose date has not even been
set. "I hope that we can settle everything with the opposition
quickly so that the campaign and election can be held in
November, or somewhere between January and July 2003," Aristide
told a crowd in the northeastern town of Fort Liberté, where
controversial "free trade zones" are soon to be opened up along
the border of and in conjunction with the neighboring Dominican
Republic.

But the Washington-backed Democratic Convergence opposition front
(CD) is unlikely to budge from its maximalist call for a "zero
option," i.e. Aristide's overthrow. Even a moderate CD component
like the social democratic KONAKOM chastised Aristide's election
proposal as "dilatory" and aimed at "distracting people from the
country's real problems." KONAKOM said that new elections and
their dates could only be formulated in concert with the
opposition, but the CD shows no real interest in arriving at such
an accord.

While the new government removed two controversial ministers
(Duvalierist embezzler Stanley Théard from Commerce and coup
collaborator Gary Lissade from Justice, replaced by cigarette
magnate Lesly Gouthier and lawyer Jean Baptiste Brown
respectively), Planning Minister Marc Bazin, a prime minister
during the 1991-1994 coup, was recycled as a minister without
portfolio charged with trying to woo the CD into a truce.

Most importantly, Neptune shows no signs of abandoning the
previous Aristide/Chérestal pipe-dream of wresting aid dollars
from multinational banks controlled by an openly hostile Bush
administration. This week, the Haitian government released an
alarming report on the deterioration of Haiti's potable water
supply, which has decreased from100,000 metric cubes daily to
61,410 metric cubes, while the estimated daily need hovers at
about 220,000 metric cubes. A $54 million loan agreement from the
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to improve water treatment
and distribution "was signed by the GOH [Government of Haiti],
the president of the IDB, approved by the Haitian parliament, and
had all its preconditions met," the report reads. "However, to
date it remains blocked for disbursement because of a U.S.-led
embargo aimed at forcing political concessions by the GOH to an
obstructionist political opposition with virtually no support
from the population."

Although the government supplies a steady stream of such tragic
statistics and plaintive exposés, the IDB remains unmoved. In a
Mar. 19 interview on Radio Métropole, Gérard Johnson, the IDB's
representative in Haiti, reiterated the bank's (and Bush
administration's) position that loans will not be released until
"the end of the political impasse created by the controversial
legislative and local elections of May 21, 2000."

Ironically, both the FL and CD share a similar fixation on
Washington's manna, a servility repeatedly criticized by
progressive popular organizations and the National Popular Party
(PPN). The KONAKOM released U.S. Justice Department figures last
week showing that the cash-strapped Haitian government spent
about $329,000 in the first six-months of 2001 for lobbyists,
consultants, and image-buffing in the U.S.. Meanwhile, according
to the Haitian Press Agency, Hubert Deronceray, a neo-Duvalierist
hardliner, admitted last week that the CD spends about $20,000
every month to a Washington lobbying firm to sully the
Haitian government's image.


BROOKLYN: FORUM AND MASS HIGHLIGHT POLICE BRUTALITY

On Mar. 15, about 100 people gathered in a school auditorium in
the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn for a forum denouncing the
Jan. 16 police murder of Georgy Louisgene (see Haïti Progrès,
Vol. 19, No. 45 1/23/2002) and police brutality in general.

In addition to cultural presentations by Kongo and Feet of Rhythm
and a powerful video on police brutality, the evening featured
speakers who outlined the depth of police brutality in working-
class and minority communities throughout New York City.

"We are not fighting a few rogue policemen, we are fighting a
system," said Richie Perez, a Puerto Rican community activist.
"The entire criminal justice system is rotten." With example
after example of how the police have covered up their murder of
youths in New York, Perez  illustrated how the "blue wall of
silence is not just silence but a whole web of agreed upon lies."

The evening's most emotional moment came when the parents of the
many police victims assembled in front of the room, holding
solitary flowers in memory of their lost children: Marie and
André Dorismond for their son Patrick, 26 (killed Mar. 17, 2000);
Milta Calderon for her son Anibal Carrasquillo, Jr., 21 (killed
Jan. 22, 1995); Nicolas Heyward, Sr. for his son Nicolas Heyward,
Jr., 13 (killed Sep. 27, 1994); José and Maria Santos for their
son José Santos Jr., 22 (killed Feb. 9, 1997); Iris Baez for her
son Anthony Baez, 29 (killed Dec. 12, 1994); Juanita Young for
her son Malcolm Ferguson, 23 (killed Mar. 1, 2000); Saikou Diallo
for his son Amadou Diallo, 22 (killed Feb. 4, 1999).

"These are our heros," said Abby Louis Jeune, Georgy Louisgene's
sister, standing with the victims' parents as well as her mother,
father, brother, and sister. "Our group is growing. But we are
also getting stronger. And we are not going to take it anymore!
We will find justice! We will stop police brutality!"

The Georgy Louisgene Justice Committee, made up largely of the
family and friends of Georgy Louisgene, organized the event and
plans to continue fighting for justice in his case. To date, the
district attorney has not charged the two cops from Brooklyn's
67th Precinct who shot Georgy, 23, as he asked them for
protection from men who had beaten him.

The afternoon following the forum, a mass in memory of Patrick
Dorismond was held at Brooklyn's St. Francis Church on Nostrand
Avenue. Patrick's family traveled from Florida to commemorate
their son with hundreds of people of all races and nationalities
who turned out for the mass, which marked his birthday and the
second anniversary of his death (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 18, No.
1, 3/22/00).

A civil trial of the officers who killed Dorismond is expected
this year. "The police tried to block our access to grand jury
testimony and the results of the internal affairs investigation,
arguing that it was privileged information," Derek Sells, the
Dorismond's lawyer, told Haïti Progrès at a reception after the
mass. "Having overcome that obstacle to discovery, we expect to
depose the officers involved in April and hopefully get a trial
by the fall or early winter."

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