8148: Let's hear it for the OPL's new ally - Olivier Nadal (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

Did anyone see this:

<Port-au-Prince, 30 May 2001- (AHP)- A political accord has recently been 
signed in Miami, Florida, between the Organisation of People in Struggle 
(OPL) and Olivier Nadal's Movement of National Unity (MOUN). At the signing 
of this accord, the OPL was represented by its national coordinator, Gérard 
Pierre-Charles and the MOUN by Georges Satti.> (my translation from French)


So, first the OPL gets into bed with the MPSN neo-Duvalierists, then with 
Gerald Dalvius and those who want the return of the Army, then with Prosper 
Avril, and now its Olivier Nadal.

Nadal has yet to face trial on charges of his alleged involvement in the 
peasant massacre at Pilatre, so let's just concentrate on the editorial he 
wrote for the Miami Herald on 30 May 2000.

In this article he condones the bloody military coup of 30 September 1991 by 
describing it in the following way: "the military stepped in to maintain 
order."

He bemoans the September 1994 UN intervention to depose the 1991-94 military 
coup regime that oversaw the murder of around 5,000 people, the rape and 
torture of tens of thousands, and the forced dislocation of hundreds of 
thousands. He writes, 

"The U.S. invasion of Haiti saw peace replaced by chaos. Haiti had more 
economic stability and public order in the 1991-94 period than it has had 
since..."

How about the 1995 Presidential election that has been hailed as the first 
peaceful transition of executive power in Haiti's history? OK, so the turnout 
was low, about the same it is in the United States if I am not mistaken, but 
anyway Nadal saw it differently:

"Haiti's political parties boycotted the elections, but foreign interference 
forced the vote. Aristide-generated violence kept the public terror-stricken. 
Préval became president with less than 2 percent of voters turning out."

What next, oh yeah, the great work done in Haiti by Cuban doctors, 
agricultural and fishing specialists and literacy workers. How does Nadal see 
that?

"Since Préval's "selection,'' Haiti has experienced an influx of Cuban 
"medical and agricultural experts,'' -- a paramilitary force of more than 
20,000."

Finally, ignoring all the evidence of the Haitian military's involvement with 
the Colombian cocaine cartels (and the small matter of the US' 1997 
indictment of Michel Francois for trafficking 33 million tons of cocaine into 
the US between 1991 and 1994), Nadal instead massages the statistics to claim 
that there was little drug trafficking under the military coup regime and 
masses of it after the UN invention restored the democratic government. 

"Yet Drug Enforcement Administration sources say that less than 1 percent of 
the cocaine entering the United States was shipped through Haiti when Lt. 
Gen. Raoul Cedras was in control. Immediately after the official U.S. 
withdrawal in 1996, this accelerated to 6 percent. 

I'll let the words of the OPL's new ally speak for themselves.


Charles Arthur