Haïti: Yvon Neptune a-t-il vendu la mêche?

National 12 Avril 2011

Haïti: Yvon Neptune a-t-il vendu la mêche?

Le Nouvelliste

(Read the original article here)

Yvon Neptune, un des éléphants de Fanmi Lavalas qui s'est dit « exploité », a claqué la porte et remis officiellement sa démission à Jean-Bertrand Aristide, le représentant national. Neptune, sans prendre des gants, a dénoncé le non-respect de la charte du parti, la concentration des pouvoirs entre les mains d'Aristide et les « manipulateurs » déguisés en « apôtres du changement et de l'inclusion de la majorité pauvre ».

L'ex-Premier ministre Yvon Neptune n'est plus membre du Parti Fanmi Lavalas (FL). Il a officiellement coupé les ponts dans une correspondance cinglante, sans langue de bois, à l'ex-président Jean-Bertrand Aristide, représentant national du parti, le 29 mars 2011. M. Neptune, revenant sur sa volonté de contribuer à jeter les bases d'une société plus juste,à l'érection d'un État plus humain en rejoignant (Fanmi Lavalas), a confié qu'il a été « exploité ».

« Mes 14 années de promotion de cette rupture ont été, selon Yvon Neptune, exploitées à d'autres fins par ceux qui ne sont mûs que par leurs bas et manipulateurs instincts de pouvoir et d'argent, tout en se faisant passer, dans leur discours, pour des apôtres du changement et de l'inclusion de la majorité pauvre ».

Sans ménager l'ex-président Jean-Bertrand Aristide pour qui il dit n'avoir cependant ni « sentiment d'animosité » ni « rancune », M. Neptune, dans une interview accordée au journal le mardi 12 avril 2011, a indiqué qu'il est inacceptable que tous les pouvoirs soient concentrés entre les mains de ce dernier.

« Jean-Bertrand Aristide centralise tout le pouvoir. Il n'y a pas de démocratie et de respect des normes au sein de Fanmi Lavalas qui fonctionne à l'image de la rue », a indiqué Yvon Neptune. Le ton posé pour égrener ses paroles, M. Neptune a révélé « qu'il a toujours très clairement dit au représentant national que les structures telles que prévues dans la charte doivent être mises en place ».

Créé en 1996, le parti, jusqu'au départ d'Aristide le 29 février 2004, n'a jamais eu de coordination nationale montée par les coordinations départementales telles que prévues dans la charte, a cité M. Neptune.

Fanmi Lavalas a fait des congrès ! « Comment peut-on avoir des congrès sans l'existence d'une coordination nationale coiffée bien sure par le représentant national? », s'est demandé Yvon Neptune.

Neptune un traitre? « Évidement que les gens qui m'ont accusé de toutes sortes de choses, incluant d'avoir trahi Jean-Bertrand Aristide en 2004, l'ont fait avec l'assentiment de ce dernier. Jean-Bertrand Aristide envoyait des messages à la fin de chaque année. Il aurait pu dire aux gens d'arrêter de dire cela parce que cela ne va pas faire honneur ni à moi ni à lui », a expliqué M. Neptune, avant d'ajouter que « Jean-Bertrand Aristide sait que ce que ces gens racontent est archi-faux ».

29 février 2004 : démission ou kidnapping de Jean-Bertrand Aristide ?

« Ce n'est pas à moi de le dire », a répondu Yvon Neptune, qui indique en revanche avoir choisi de rester au pays et à la primature par respect pour ses propres convictions et les déclarations faites avant le 29 février 2004. « La note signée par Jean-Bertrand Aristide ne m'avait pas été remise par lui. C'est à lui de dire à qui il a remis cette note et dans quelle situation », a ajouté M. Neptune, qui souligne que « M. Aristide, à part de dire qu'il a été kidnappé, n'a jamais nié avoir signé cette note en créole dans laquelle il dit préférer partir afin d'éviter un bain de sang dans le pays ».

« C'est le président de la Cour de cassation, Me Boniface Alexandre, qui est venu à la primature avec l'enveloppe décachetée contenant la note », a révélé plus loin M.Neptune, qui dit avoir eu une conversation téléphonique avec Jean-Bertrand Aristide au lendemain du 29 février 2004 après son arrivée en République Centrafricaine.

Est-ce que Jean-Bertrand Aristide a été victime d'un coup d'Etat ?

« On peut avoir démission et coup d'Etat en même temps. C'est Jean-Bertrand Aristide qui doit réconcilier la question : coup d'Etat ou démission », a expliqué M. Neptune, qui plaide en faveur de l'établissement de la « vérité historique » dans ce dossier. « Je ne peux pas mentir. Je suis comme ça », a-t-il indiqué en confiant par ailleurs qu'il n'a absolument aucun regret d'avoir fait l'expérience de ces 14 dernières années l'ayant conduit à la primature (2002-2004), à la présidence du sénat et de l'Assemblée nationale et en prison.

« Ce sont les expériences qui m'ont formé et me forment aujourd'hui. Je ne peux pas avoir de regret », a-t-il dit, philosophe, en évoquant son avenir politique : « Je considère que toutes les activités que je mène en tant qu'être humain et en tant que citoyen ont un contenu politique, à un niveau ou à un autre (...) Mon avenir, c'est ce que je fais tous les jours », a ajouté cet architecte né à Cavaillon le 8 novembre 1946, candidat malheureux à l'élection présidentielle du 28 novembre 2010 sous la bannière du Parti Ayisyen pou ayiti.

M. Neptune a remis sa démission officiellement moins d'un mois après le retour de l'ex-président et représentant national de Fanmi Lavalas, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, le 18 mars 2011. « En 1804, la Révolution haïtienne a marqué la fin de l'esclavage. Aujourd'hui, nous le peuple haïtien, marquons la fin de l'exil, des coups d'Etat », avait indique Aristide. L'ex-prêtre de Saint-Jean Bosco - qui s'est enfermé depuis dans un total mutisme - avait soutenu qu'il faut, dans ce pays rongé par une misère amplifiée depuis son départ, « faire la transition pacifique de l'exclusion à l'inclusion sociale ». « Le problème, c'est l'exclusion. La solution, c'est l'inclusion », avait-il dit.

La démission et le grand déballage de M. Yvon Neptune permettront-ils d'établir la vérité historique sur les évènements du 29 février 2004 ? L'avenir de nouveaux faits le diront...

Roberson Alphonse

Haiti’s Aristide should be greeted with prosecution, not praise

Haiti’s Aristide should be greeted with prosecution, not praise

By Michael Deibert

The indictment late last year by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of six prominent Kenyans for their roles in violence following that country’s disputed 2007 elections was a welcome sign for those seeking to hold politicians accountable for their crimes. Though the ICC has badly bungled what should have been its showpiece case - against the ruthless Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga - the Kenya indictments nevertheless represented a welcome extension of its continuing mission.

To those of us who have seen Haiti’s political convulsions first-hand over the years, that Caribbean nation makes a compelling case for attention by the ICC as perpetrators of human rights abuses often go unpunished or are even rehabilitated in subsequent governments. With one despotic former ruler (Jean-Claude Duvalier) having recently returned and another (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) announcing his intention to do so, one Haitian case, in particular, would seem tailor-made for the ICC’s attention.

In February 2004, in the midst of a chaotic rebellion against Mr. Aristide's government, the photojournalist Alex Smailes and I found ourselves in the central Haitian city of Saint Marc, at the time the last barrier between Aristide and a motley collection of once-loyal street gangs and former soldiers who were sweeping down from the country's north seeking to oust him.

Several days earlier, on 7 February, an armed anti-Aristide group, the Rassemblement des militants conséquents de Saint Marc (Ramicos), based in the neighborhood of La Scierie, had attempted to drive government forces from the town, seizing the local police station, which they set on fire.

On 9 February, the combined forces of the Police Nationale de Haiti (PNH), the Unité de Sécurité de la Garde du Palais National (USGPN) - a unit directly responsible for the president’s personal security - and a local paramilitary organisation named Bale Wouze (Clean Sweep) retook much of the city. By 11 February, a few days before our arrival, Bale Wouze - headed by a former parliamentary representative of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party named Amanus Mayette - had commenced the battle to retake La Scierie. Often at Mayette’s side was a government employee named Ronald Dauphin, known to residents as "Black Ronald,”often garbed in a police uniform even though he was in no way officially employed by the police.

When Alex and I arrived in the town, we found the USGPN and Bale Wouze patrolling Saint Marc as a single armed unit. Speaking to residents there - amidst a surreal backdrop of burned buildings, the stench of human decay, drunken gang members threatening our lives with firearms and a terrified population - we soon realized that something awful had happened in Saint Marc.

According to multiple residents interviewed during that visit and a subsequent visit that I made to the town in June 2009, after government forces retook the town - and after a press conference there by Yvon Neptune, at the time Aristide’s Prime Minister and also the head of the Conseil Superieur de la Police Nationale d'Haiti - a textbook series of war crimes took place.

Residents spoke of how Kenol St. Gilles, a carpenter with no political affiliation, was shot in each thigh, beaten unconscious by Bale Wouze members and thrown into a burning cement depot, where he died. Unarmed Ramicos member Leroy Joseph was decapitated, while Ramicos second-in-command Nixon François was simply shot. In the ruins of the burned-out commissariat, Bale Wouze members gang raped a 21-year-old woman, while other residents were gunned down by police firing from a helicopter as they tried to flee over a nearby mountain. A local priest told me matter-of-factly at the time of Bale Wouze that “these people don't make arrests, they kill."

According to a member of a Human Rights Watch delegation that visited Saint Marc a month after the killings, at least 27 people were murdered there between Feb. 11 and Aristide’s flight into exile at the end of the month. Her conclusion supported by the research of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, a Haitian human rights organization.

Following Aristide's overthrow, several members of Bale Wouze were lynched, while Yvon Neptune turned himself over to the interim government that ruled Haiti from March 2004 until the inauguration of President René Préval in May 2006.

Held in prison without trial until his May 2006 release on humanitarian grounds, a May 2008 decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found the Haitian state had violated the American Convention on Human Rights in its detention of Neptune, though stressed that it was "not a criminal court in which the criminal responsibility of an individual can be examined.” Neptune ran unsuccessfully for president in Haiti’s recent elections.

After being jailed for three years without trial, Amanus Mayette was freed from prison in April 2007. Arrested in 2004, Ronald Dauphin subsequently escaped from jail, and was re-arrested during the course of an anti-kidnapping raid in Haiti's capital in July 2006. Despite several chaotic public hearings, to date, none of the accused for the killings in La Scierie has ever gone to trial. At the time of writing, Mr. Aristide himself continues to enjoy a gilded exile in South Africa, his luxurious lifestyle and protection package bankrolled by South African taxpayers.

Frustratingly for the people of St. Marc, far from being supported in their calls for justice, the events they experienced have become a political football among international political actors.

The United Nations independent expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet, in a 2005 statement dismissed allegations of a massacre and described what occurred as "a clash", a characterization that seemed unaware of the fact that not all among those victimized had any affiliation with Haiti's political opposition.

The Institute for Justice and Democracy (IJDH), a U.S.-based organization, has lauded Mr. Dauphin as “a Haitian grassroots activist.” The IJDH itself maintains close links with Mr. Aristide’s U.S. attorney, Ira Kurzban, who is listed as one of the group’s founders, serves on the chairman of board of directors and whose law firm, according to U.S. Department of Justice filings, earned nearly $5 million for its lobbying work alone representing the Aristide government during the era of its worst excesses. By comparison, the firm of former U.S. congressmen Ron Dellums received the relatively modest sum of $989,323 over the same period.

When I returned to St. Marc in June of 2009, I found its residents still wondering when someone would be held accountable for the terrible crimes they had been subjected to. Amazil Jean-Baptiste, the mother of Kenol St. Gilles, said simply "I just want justice for my son.” A local victim’s rights group of survivors of the pogrom, the Association des Victimes du Génocide de la Scierie (AVIGES), formed to help advocate on residents’ behalf, but have had precious little success in what passes for Haiti’s justice system, broken and dysfunctional long before January 2010's devastating earthquake.

Though Mr. Aristide remains something of a fading star for a handful of commentators outside of Haiti- most of whom have not spent significant time in the country, cannot speak its language and have never bothered to sit down with the victims of the Aristide government's crimes there - to those of us who have seen a bit of its recent history firsthand, the words of veteran Trinidadian diplomat Reginald Dumas - a man who does know Haiti - seem apt, that Mr. Aristide "[acquired] for himself a reputation at home which did not match the great respect with which he was held abroad.''

The ICC has sometimes been criticized for acting as if war crimes and crimes against humanity are simply African problems, taking place in distant lands. The people of St. Marc, only a 90 minute flight from Miami, know differently. As Mr. Aristide currently loudly voices his desire to return to Haiti from his exile in South Africa, doubtlessly transiting several ICC signatory countries (including South Africa itself) in the process, the case of the victims of St. Marc is one admirably deserving of the ICC’s attention.


Michael Deibert is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University and the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press). He has been visiting and writing about Haiti since 1997.

Photo © Michael Deibert

Aristide avait "démissionné" en 2004, dit son ancien Premier ministre

(For non-French speakers, this article basically says that, in an interview with Haiti's Radio Kiskeya this week, the last Prime Minister of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Yvon Neptune, confirms again the fact that Aristide did indeed resign as he abandoned his followers and fled into exile in February 2004, and that armed gangs were part of the president's power base. Not exactly news to those of us who were on the ground at the time. MD)

Haïti-Politique-Aristide

Aristide avait "démissionné" en 2004, dit son ancien Premier ministre

Outre ce coup de massue asséné à son ex-patron, Yvon Neptune, aujourd’hui candidat à la présidence, confirme la présence de "chimères" dans les rangs de la Police Nationale avant la chute de Lavalas

mercredi 6 octobre 2010,

Radio Kiskeya

(Read the original article here)

Le dernier Premier ministre de Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Yvon Neptune (2002-2004), candidat du parti Ayisyen Pou Ayiti aux présidentielles de novembre, a déclaré mercredi sur Radio Kiskeya que l’ancien Président Lavalas avait bel et bien présenté sa démission avant son départ en exil, le 29 février 2004.

“J’ai eu la copie de la lettre de démission de M. Aristide, elle était authentique”, a lâché Neptune en réponse à une question à l’émission Di m ma di w consacrée aux élections.

Une affirmation qui contraste totalement avec les propos d’Aristide lui-même et de ses partisans selon lesquels l’ancien chef de l’Etat, exilé en Afrique du Sud, aurait été victime d’un "kidnapping moderne" commandité par la France et les Etats-Unis.

Tour à tour porte-parole de la présidence et président du Sénat avant de devenir le Premier ministre d’Aristide, au départ de ce dernier, Yvon Neptune avait assuré la transition et cohabité avec le nouveau Président provisoire d’alors, Me Boniface Alexandre.

Gérard Latortue devait succéder au Premier ministre sortant quelques semaines plus tard.

Dans la même émission, le candidat à la Présidence est allé d’une révélation à une autre en affirmant que des “chimères”, nom des partisans zélés du régime Lavalas, avaient intégré la Police Nationale aux derniers jours de Jean-Bertrand Aristide au pouvoir.

Différents témoignages ont été recueillis sur la présence dans l’Artibonite d’un certain nombre de "faux policiers" venus combattre les rebelles du Front de résistance dont la progression de l’insurrection, couplée aux pressions diplomatiques occidentales, avait pratiquement donné le coup de grâce à un régime déjà fortement ébranlé par des manifestations pacifiques colossales de l’opposition démocratique.

Libéré de prison après plus d’un an d’incarcération pour son implication présumée dans le "massacre de La Scirie" à St-Marc (Artibonite, nord), au cours duquel de plusieurs dizaines de personnes proches de l’opposition auraient été exécutées, Yvon Neptune a, encore une fois, protesté de son innocence. spp/Radio Kiskeya

HAITI: "We Have Never Had Justice"

HAITI: "We Have Never Had Justice"

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

(Read the original article here)

ST. MARC, Jul 21, 2009 (IPS) - Amazil Jean-Baptiste remembers when they came to kill her son.

"They killed my boy and burned my boy," says Jean-Baptiste, a careworn 49-year-old who lives in a dilapidated structure without running water in this bustling port town 80 kilometres north of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. "And I am still suffering."

It was February 2004, and Haiti was in the midst of a chaotic rebellion against the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. North of St. Marc, a formerly loyal street gang known as the Cannibal Army had risen up against the president and, joined by former members of the country's disbanded army, proceeded to overrun police barracks and seize control of towns throughout northern Haiti.

On Feb. 7, a lightly-armed anti-Aristide group, the Rassemblement des militants conséquents de Saint-Marc (Ramicos), based in the neighbourhood of La Scierie where Amazil Jean-Baptiste lived, took advantage of the chaos to drive government forces from the town, seizing the local police station, which they then set on fire.

Two days later, the combined forces of the Police Nationale de Haiti (PNH), the Unité de Sécurité de la Garde du Palais National (USGPN) and a local paramilitary organisation named Bale Wouze ("Clean Sweep") retook much of the city. By Feb. 11, Bale Wouze - headed by a former parliamentary representative of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party named Amanus Mayette- had commenced the battle to retake the La Scierie.

What would follow would raise questions about Haiti's ability to give justice to victims and punish the guilty that persist to this day.

As Amazil Jean-Baptiste returned home, she found her son, Kenol St. Gilles, a 23-year-old carpenter with no political affiliation, groaning with a bullet in each thigh. Taking him to the home of a local pastor for aid, she watched as seven armed men, including three dressed in police uniforms, accused St. Gilles of being a Ramicos militant who had shot at them. He was dragged from the house, beaten unconscious and thrown into a burning cement depot, where he died.

Residents of the town tell of other crimes - the decapitation of unarmed Ramicos member Leroy Joseph, the killing of Ramicos second-in-command Nixon François, the gang rape by Bale Wouze members of a 21-year-old woman in the ruins of the burned-out commissariat - that were allegedly committed during or immediately following the recapture of St. Marc by pro-Aristide forces.

Witnesses recount how several people were slain and tossed into the burning remnants of the Ramicos headquarters, while still others were gunned down by police firing from a helicopter as they tried to flee over a nearby mountain, Morne Calvaire.

"They came here and they massacred people," says resident Marc Ariel Narcisse, 44. "A grenade thrown into my mother's house exploded, and the house caught fire. My cousin, Bob Narcisse, was killed there."

Following those dark days, the victims of the St. Marc killings formed the Association des Victimes du Génocide de la Scierie (AVIGES) to advocate on their behalf. But their struggle has exposed the highly politicised and often unresponsive nature of justice in Haiti, a country struggling to build democratic institutions after decades of dictatorship.

Links between armed pressure groups and the spheres of official power have long been a fact of political life here.

Faustin Soulouque, who crowned himself emperor of Haiti in 1852, was supported by groups of impoverished partisans called zinglins, while the Duvalier family dictatorship that ruled from 1957 until 1986 utilised the Tontons Macoutes, a murderous paramilitary band named after a traditional Haitian boogeyman.

The government of Aristide, who returned to office in 2001 after ruling the country for two periods in the 1990s, allied itself with his own armed partisans, often referred to as chimere after a mythical fire-breathing demon.

Of these latter groups, Bale Wouze had a reputation as one of the fiercest, and, by February 2004, its links with Haiti's National Palace were largely indisputable, especially given the presence in St. Marc of the USGPN, a unit directly responsible for the president's personal security.

On Feb. 9, as St. Marc was retaken by government forces, and as security forces and Bale Wouze members patrolled its streets together, Aristide's prime minister, Yvon Neptune, also serving as the head of the Conseil Superieur de la Police Nationale d'Haiti, flew into the city, giving a press conference during which he stated that "the national police force alone cannot re-establish order".

Witnesses in La Scierie describe how one of Bale Wouze's leading members, a government employee named Ronald Dauphin, known to residents as "Black Ronald", patrolled St. Marc in a police uniform, even though he was in no way affiliated with the police.

When the author of this article visited St. Marc in February 2004, shortly after Bale Wouze's raid into La Scierie, he interviewed USGPN personnel and Bale Wouze members patrolling the city as a single armed unit in tandem the PNH. A local priest told IPS matter-of-factly at the time of Bale Wouze that, "These people don't make arrests, they kill."

Interviewed by the Miami Herald in St. Marc in February 2004, Amanus Mayette was surrounded by Bale Wouze members and proclaimed his affiliation with the organisation.

"Amanus Mayette, Black Ronald, Somoza, these people killed my son," Amazil Jean-Baptiste explains in a trembling voice, listing the names of some of those who she says took part in her son's slaying.

Following Aristide's overthrow later that month, several members of Bale Wouze were lynched as they tried to flee St. Marc, while Yvon Neptune turned himself over to the interim government that ruled Haiti from March 2004 until the inauguration of President René Préval in May 2006.

Held in prison without trial until his May 2006 release on humanitarian grounds, a May 2008 decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found the Haitian state had violated 11 separate provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights in its detention of Neptune, though stressing that it was "not a criminal court in which the criminal responsibility of an individual can be examined".

After being jailed for three years without trial, former Bale Wouze leader Amanus Mayette was freed from prison in April 2007. Arrested in 2004, Ronald Dauphin subsequently escaped from jail, and was re-arrested during the course of an anti-kidnapping raid in Haiti's capital in July 2006. Despite several chaotic public hearings, to date, none of the accused for the killings in La Scierie has ever gone to trial.

"In our system, the criminal becomes a victim because the system doesn't work," laments Pierre Espérance, director of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), which has pushed for criminal prosecutions in the La Scierie case.

Espérance himself survived a 1999 assassination attempt for which no one was ever prosecuted.

"But historically, the authorities here are so involved in corruption and human rights violations they feel very comfortable with impunity," he says.

According to RNDDH figures, nearly 81 percent of Haiti's prisoners are waiting for their cases to be heard before a judge, a situation that some hope may be improved by the re-opening of Haiti's school for magistrates, which recently renewed activities after being shuttered for many years.

Frustratingly for the people of St. Marc, however, the events of February 2004 have become a political football among Haiti's various political actors.

The United Nations independent expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet, in a 2005 statement dismissed allegations of a massacre and described what occurred as "a clash", a characterisation that seemed unaware of the fact that not all among those victimised had any affiliation with Haiti's political opposition.

Conversely, a member of a Human Rights Watch delegation that visited St. Marc a month after the killings concluded that at least 27 people had been murdered by pro-government forces between Feb. 11 and Aristide's flight into exile.

Their claims are treated with shrugging indifference by the Préval government and the United Nations, and the people of La Scierie appear to be resigned that their struggle for justice will be a long, though hopefully not fruitless, one.

"We need justice, we demand justice, because we have never had justice," says Amazil Jean-Baptiste, as another member of AVIGES stands nearby, wearing a t-shirt reading 'We won't forget 11 February 2004' in Haiti's native Kreyol language.

"I just want justice for my son," she says.

Elections : Divisions profondes au sein de Fanmi Lavalas

Haïti-Elections-Lavalas

Elections : Divisions profondes au sein de Fanmi Lavalas

Deux listes de candidats en compétition au nom du même parti

samedi 24 janvier 2009

Radio Kiskeya

(Read the original article here)

Le parti Fanmi Lavalas de l’ex-Président Jean-Bertrand Aristide, dont l’unité est depuis un certain temps menacée par de profondes divergences entre factions rivales, faisait face samedi à un sérieux problème de leadership potentiellement préjudiciable à sa participation aux prochaines sénatoriales.

Au lendemain de la clôture de la période de dépôt des candidatures, deux listes étaient en compétition au nom du même parti pour les douze sièges en jeu. Une situation confuse qui a porté le Conseil électoral provisoire à solliciter du ministère de la justice des précisions sur les représentants légitimes de Fanmi Lavalas dûment enregistrés.

Des propositions de candidature divergentes opposaient principalement dans trois départements deux ailes conduites d’un côté par le Sénateur Rudy Hériveaux et le Dr Maryse Narcisse et de l’autre par l’ancien Premier ministre Yvon Neptune, Annette Auguste (Sò Ann) et l’ex-Député Yves Cristallin.

Le premier groupe avalise la candidature de l’ancien maire de Miragoâne, Serge Gaspard dans les Nippes (sud-ouest), de l’ex-directeur de la DCPJ, Schiller Alouidorl dans l’Ouest et de l’ex-Sénateur Louis Gérald Gilles, dans la Grand’Anse. A contrario, le second groupe soutient l’ancien ministre de l’intérieur Jocelerme Privert dans le département des Nippes, de même que l’ex-Député de Pétion-Ville, Phélito Doran, dans l’Ouest et Larousse Pléteau, dans la Grand’Anse.

Le Sénateur de l’Ouest, Rudy Hériveaux, qui se prévaut d’être le représentant de Fanmi Lavalas auprès du CEP, a écrit une lettre ouverte au président de l’institution électorale Frantz Gérard Verret pour lui confirmer les noms des candidats désignés lors des « primaires du parti ». Le parlementaire a aussi fustigé le comportement de certains qui ont choisi leurs alliés dans d’autres familles politiques.

Le premier tour des élections est fixé au 19 avril en vue de renouveler le tiers du Sénat.

Aristide departs, Marines move in

Aristide departs, Marines move in

UN approves U.S. - led mission to restore peace as fragmented opposition groups in Haiti battle for political influence

BY TINA SUSMAN AND MICHAEL DEIBERT;

Tina Susman is a staff correspondent and Michael Deibert is a special correspondent.

Newsday

March 1, 2004

(Read the original here)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - President Jean-Bertrand Aristide slipped into exile yesterday and left a capital in chaos. Shotgun-wielding loyalists overran the streets and fired at will, looters tore through businesses, and armed men claiming allegiance to a rebel army began marching through neighborhoods.

U.S. Marines took the lead in establishing a multinational force approved last night by the United Nations Security Council for a three-month mission to restore order. The first hundred of what were expected to be several hundred Marines left Camp Lejeune, N.C., yesterday evening and arrived in Port-au-Prince after dark, according to John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the UN.

Hours earlier, Aristide's constitutional successor, Supreme Court Justice Boniface Alexandre, was sworn into office and pleaded for calm. "We need all sons and daughters of the country to work for peace, justice and law," he read from a hand-written statement, a sign of the haste with which the transition was made.

Haiti's first democratically elected president, who in recent years had been accused of corruption, human rights abuses and ineptitude, apparently flew out of the capital undetected about 6:45 a.m. in a U.S.-provided jet after losing the support not only of many Haitians, but of his chief international backers. Once among Aristide's strongest supporters, both the United States and France, Haiti's former colonial ruler, praised his resignation and said it was the only way to halt the carnage.

"The government believes it is essential that Haiti have a hopeful future," President George W. Bush said at the White House as he announced the deployment of Marines, who join 50 sent here last week to protect the U.S. Embassy. France was also expected to contribute troops.

Rumors about the circumstances of Aristide's departure ran wild: that he was bundled onto the plane handcuffed because he refused to quit voluntarily; that Alexandre was roused from bed and informed he was president; that U.S. officials threatened to charge Aristide with drug-trafficking unless he resigned.

No matter what the true circumstances, once news of Aristide's departure spread at about 8 a.m., mania ensued. Some jails were emptied as police abandoned their posts, looters used machetes and sticks to break into shops, and black smoke from burning barricades and torched businesses billowed into the air downtown. Some revelers cheered Aristide's downfall with shouts of "Happy New Year!" Within hours, small groups of armed men claiming to be fighters of rebel leader Guy Philippe, whose insurrection began Feb. 5, appeared in Port-au-Prince.

"We are with Guy Philippe's team, and we are here...to make sure that everything can function normally," said Fautsin Radeux as he marched through the Petionville neighborhood clutching an Uzi submachine gun. Small groups of residents clapped.

More often, though, the scene was ugly as armed gangs known as chimeres, who claimed loyalty to Aristide, unleashed their anger on passersby. "They stopped us. I got out of the car and raised my hands and said I work for a hospital, and if you hurt me you will be hurting a lot of people," said a hospital director stopped at a roadblock.

The gang let him pass, then opened fire and shot out his tires, said the man, who declined to give his name.

Across from his hospital, a group discussed the day's events and warily eyed the few vehicles that passed. "I'm happy, because it's a government of terror that has left the country," said Carl-Henri Dorsainville.

Samuel Pierre, though, said he expected only an increase in the turmoil that had left him unable to find work. "Aristide had been taking care of us....I'm just worried about how I'm going to eat."
Aristide, whose destination was not known, had insisted as late as Saturday that he would not resign, despite increased pressure and the encroaching rebel forces. Scores of people have died since the rebels took up arms, including several in the capital. A letter read by Prime Minister Yvon Neptune at a news conference announcing Aristide's departure said he decided to leave to "avert bloodshed."

"I know it is not what the vast majority of the people ... would have wished to happen," said Neptune, calling the resignation a "great sacrifice" that would let peace "truly blossom."

In Haiti's second-largest city, rebel-held Cap-Haitien, Philippe said his forces would stop fighting. "If we move in Port-au-Prince, it will be to impose security," he told CNN.

Political opposition leaders, meanwhile, who have always claimed to be independent of the armed opposition, gathered to plot strategy. One problem will be how to deal with the armed rebels should they demand roles in a new government. Some, like Louis-Jodel Chamblain, are linked to atrocities in the regimes that ruled Haiti before Aristide's 1990 election. Many are former members of the army, which Aristide disbanded in 1994, three years after a military coup drove him from power.

"These guys are basically military," said one opposition leader, Charles Baker, saying he doubted they would demand a governing role. However, Baker also admitted there was no plan for what to do with the armed resistance since Haiti lacked the money to re-form its army.

Politically, things were equally unclear. The constitution called for Alexandre to take over but said he must be approved by parliament. It was also unclear if Alexandre would serve the remainder of Aristide's term, which was to end in 2006, or if a transitional administration would take over. Whatever happens, "We have to have a government that belongs to the citizens of Haiti," said Baker, a member of the coalition of political groups making up the opposition.

It won't be the first try. The island nation, which became independent from France in 1804, has been ruled by military juntas and civilian dictatorships for most of its history. Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest, was expected to change that in 1990 when he ran for president in Haiti's first free elections. With backing from millions of poor Haitians inspired by his anti-government sermons, Aristide won the vote by a two-thirds majority. A few months later he was ousted and fled into exile, not returning until 1994 when President Bill Clinton flew him home under Marine guard.

After his return, opposition activists began accusing Aristide of having adopted the same dictatorial tendencies as his predecessors, culminating in election boycotts and a cutoff of most international aid following disputed elections in 2000. Human rights groups accused him of ordering killings of political opponents and of involvement in drug trafficking, charges that Aristide denied.

Despite those accusations, Aristide still had the support of many. "Aristide was voted into power. He was supposed to serve until 2006, and he should have had time," said Jean Thermogine, a barbershop owner. "We should have been able to organize a political solution."

In the United States, the Black Congressional Caucus also denounced the Bush administration's decision to press Aristide to resign. "We're just as much a part of this coup d'etat as the rebels, as the looters, or anyone else," said Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem).

Tina Susman is a staff correspondent and Michael Deibert is a special correspondent. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

Haiti's battered faith

Haiti's battered faith

Impoverished, terrorized, their elections corrupted, the country's people still believe in their hero, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
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By Michael Deibert

Salon.com

(Read the original here)

June 27, 2000 Haiti, a country I love and where I lived for months in 1997, seems once again to be drifting, inexorably, toward its own terrible, particular marriage of anarchy and dictatorship. In the run-up to the parliamentary elections that were held May 21 (where former president Jean Bertrand-Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party won 16 of 19 Senate seats outright), the country witnessed a spate of political violence on a level not seen since the dark days of Raul
Cedras' military junta of the early 1990s.

In the space of six months, Jean Dominique, the country's most respected journalist, was gunned down outside his radio station, an opposition campaign director was macheted to death inside his home and the campaign offices of opposition party Espace de Concertation were burned to the ground by a mob chanting pro-Lavalas slogans and calling for the death of Espace's leader, former mayor of Port-au-Prince Evans Paul. Recently, the president of Haiti's electoral council fled to the United States, fearing for his life after he refused to sign off on the election results.

Members of various opposition groups were jailed in advance of last week's announcement of the electoral results. The Lavalas government has given explanations for these "detainments" ranging from the accusation that those arrested were accumulating firearms in preparation for a strike against the government, to saying that the detained were being threatened and that they were taken into protective custody for their own good as a "preventative measure." Meanwhile, the disputed count has Lavalas taking 16 of the 17 available Senate seats and likely to control both houses of Parliament.

While a second round of voting has been indefinitely postponed, the elections so far have been marred by allegations of fraud. The opposition has declared the results invalid, vowing to sit out the runoff elections. People murmur that the Organization of American States (OAS) electoral monitors are trying to shove a sham election down the country's throat just so all the international types can go home feeling that their money was well spent on "democratic" development programs, since some form of democracy was restored in 1994. Although the OAS recently released a statement calling the methodology of the vote tally "incorrect," there are many who think that it is too little, too late.

This situation is all the more troubling because Fanmi Lavalas ("lavalas" means "the flood" in Creole) is a political party whose dominant figure, Jean Bertrand-Aristide, has been the country's most outspoken, fearless champion of democratic rights. He fought for those rights during days when championing such a cause meant death.

Aristide is the preeminent political figure in the country. It was Aristide who spoke out against the Tonton Macoutes and human rights abuses of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier's regimes. Aristide, who continued the democratic struggle under the military regimes of Henri Namphy and Prosper Avril, men who found it politically expedient to massacre voters in 1987 on Ruelle Vaillant at Port-au-Prince, and then again in 1988 at the Cathedral St. Jean-Bosco while Aristide, then a practicing Catholic priest, was celebrating Mass.

It was Aristide and Lavalas, also, who were chased out of the country by a military coup in 1991 (after Aristide had become Haiti's first democratically elected president) and then returned to power by the U.S. Marines in 1994. Barred from serving consecutive terms as president, Aristide reluctantly handed over power to his protege, Rene Preval, and is said to be waiting until he can again run for (and almost certainly win) the presidency of Haiti in 2001.

Haitians, meanwhile, are left wondering whether they will have a heroic, visionary Nelson Mandela or an authoritarian, scapegoating Robert Mugabe (two other third-world leaders who came to power on a tide of popular movements) on their hands come that time.

Sadly, as I found out, the hard facts of Haiti don't make it easy to stay a hero for long.
"These are difficult times in Haiti," said Mirlande Manigat, an unsuccessful candidate for the Senate. Manigat is a member of the Assembly of Progressive National Democrats (RDNP), and a constitutional law professor at the University of Quisqueya in the capital. "The many political parties in Haiti reflect the polarization of Haitian society, and one party wins over 90 percent of the vote? Impossible."

A pleasant, highly educated woman, Manigat is the wife of onetime Haitian president Leslie Manigat. Her husband (whom Haitians had never really warmed to and whose election many regarded as fraudulent itself) was booted out of the post in 1988 in the chaos of post-Duvalier Haiti by Gen. Henri Namphy, a vicious dictator now alleged to be slowly and quietly drinking himself to death in exile in the Dominican Republic.

"My political party doesn't believe in violence or dictatorial force, so we now have no recourse ... We are heading for a gloomy time in Haiti." She looked down at her desk, and then wistfully out the window of her university office. "I didn't expect this for my country, now."

The climate of violence affects everyone here. A shellshocked Reuters correspondent, just arrived from the States, appeared at the house I was staying at in Port-au-Prince to inform us that his car had been detained as a group of young men ran past, smashing bottles and carrying tires under their arms. Word on the street had it that they were angry because Lavalas still hadn't paid them for their "work" during the elections. Zenglendos (armed thugs) stuck a gun in my friend's sister's face as she sat stuck in traffic on a downtown street. Finding notebooks that indicated she was a student, they threw them back at her through the car window as they drove away on their motorcycles.

As a friend of mine, a wealthy progressive mulatto, said, "The security situation here is not good." The fact that the streets of a city of 2 million people are empty at 8 p.m. is testimony enough to that.

I got a taste of how unstable that situation was firsthand when a group of friends and I ventured out one night to a hotel in the affluent suburb of Petionville. We went to see a concert by Sweet Micky, the legendary "president" of compas, Haiti's singularly slinky and sensual popular music. Micky is an unrepentant supporter of the 1991 coup against Aristide, and is as famous for his scabrous double-entendres as for his anti-Lavalas politics. His sweaty, exhilarating shows are known to attract a raucous crowd of ex-secret police, soldiers and gang members.

Sure enough, once we arrived among the massive, dressed-to-kill crowd, the audience scattered over the demurely arranged deck chairs and around a pair of illuminated pools -- not once but three times -- as groups of men drew their guns on one another, spitting invective and threatening violence. After one particularly nasty stampede, where I badly twisted my ankle knocking over a table to get away from any potentially flying bullets, a teenage Haitian boy got up with his girlfriend from their own pile of scattered chairs, looked at me and said simply, "Blan," the Creole world for foreigner. He was doubled over with laughter.

But in the face of such terror, kindness persists. A musician insisted that I partake of his young daughter's first Communion cake. An evangelist minister drove me the whole, hot, long, dusty way from Aristide's foundation at Tabarre to drop me off in downtown Port-au-Prince and then refused to take any payment for his services. A Haitian English teacher in a frayed suit who had lived near my own home in Brooklyn for 14 years began a conversation with me, unsolicited, just to hear what New York was like these days. As we walked down the street, he asked me with a sad shake of his head to tell people "what they [Lavalas] did to these elections."

Cleansing rain showers began in a flash on an afternoon of brilliant sunshine, the city never darkening a bit. These people's kindnesses and the stunning beauty of this place are what make the story of what is happening in Haiti something you must know.

"I came down here in 1985 to research voodoo rhythms," says Richard Morse, a surpassingly tall New York transplant, as he takes a drag off an early morning cigarette. We're in the lobby of the hotel he runs, a space where his group, Ram, also plays regular weekly gigs. The hotel itself is one of the outstanding examples of gingerbread architecture in Port-au-Prince.

"I took over the hotel in 1987, formed a band in 1990 and stopped counting governments in 1996." He remembers a time in the early 1990s when coups and counter-coups gave the country three governments in 12 hours. Morse, a Haitian-American educated at Princeton, is not hopeful about the current state of affairs in his adopted country. He says the lines between the old military regimes and Lavalas are getting fuzzier.

"They're trying to set up a system where there's no opposition, and they're willing to try any methods necessary to attain that," he says. He disagrees with the Organization of American States' qualified approval of the election results. "The OAS is saying, 'There were some discrepancies, but everything's OK.' Well everything's not OK. They're killing people. They're killing people and people are going into hiding."

Lavalas essentially terrorized the opposition into hiding until two weeks before the elections, Morse believes. Then, with a statement from Aristide calling for peaceful elections, the violence miraculously ceased and the opposition was told to field their candidates in what was to be a competitive election.

Morse thinks that the OAS is trying to pretend an election is valid despite obvious fraud and unfair voting practices, as they are currently accused of doing in Peru. Critics say the OAS is lowering the bar for what is acceptable in democratic elections under the philosophy that some movement forward (i.e., the holding of elections at all) is better than no movement forward.
Reiterating Manigat's sentiment, Morse stated flatly: "The precedent has been set that if you want to be involved in politics in this country, you've got to get your guns together ... Nothing's changed, the teams have changed but not the modus operandi."

Before we switched to music and New York, he punctuated our political conversation simply. "You can get killed here for saying the shit I just said."
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Yvon Neptune and I sat around a table inside the house where he keeps his offices in downtown Port-au-Prince. An intense man with his beard and hair going gray around the edges, Neptune is the spokesman for Fanmi Lavalas who recently defeated Manigat to become a senator in the Haitian parliament.

The room was cool and quiet, away from the noise of the street. Cabinets were arranged around the room, lined with books in several languages. A bird chattered away from somewhere in the garden out back.

"The Haitian people are pleased" with the results of the election, he said. "The majority of the voters are pleased, because the elections have been an opportunity for them to state their position on the situation in Haiti."

Over the course of an hour, Neptune spoke of the policy of agrarian reform begun under President Aristide and continued under Preval, and also about encouraging the private sector, local and foreign, to invest in Haiti. He alluded to the pending approval of agreements with the IMF and World Bank by the new parliament, and of the necessity of modernizing the administrative infrastructure of Haiti.

Asked about Lavalas' commitment to democracy, and about the violence preceding the election, Neptune commented that "we continually stated our position on violence in Haiti: denouncing the violence, condemning the violence. We encourage everybody, everybody," he continued, "not to let themselves be intimidated and to come out and vote. And that's exactly what they did."

When questioned about the attacks on the opposition headquarters, specifically the arson of Espace de Concertation's offices, Neptune shifted blame back to that party's leaders, and their supporters, whom he characterized as party "cronies."

"It is difficult to accept the value of the opposition, the weight of that opposition, because it is practically nonexistent except for a few politicians who would use the airwaves to make accusations," he said. "They often commit violent act [sic] or delegate people to commit violent acts and they go as far as posturing as Fanmi Lavalas partisans. It is very easy for them to do that."

The fire, he implied, was probably set by Espace themselves. "That particular organization failed to pay the rent on that building for almost five years."

Again and again, talking to people of various backgrounds and political stripes, I heard of how Aristide's party has been acting recently in ways that are reminiscent of dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. It's hard for many Haitans to forget that Papa Doc came to power on a wave of noirisme, resentment of the elite light-skinned minority. And recently Lavalas members on state-run TV labeled mulattos of any ideological orientation as the "racist bourgeoisie" for the crime of criticizing Fanmi Lavalas (and by extension Aristide).

Dany Toussaint, a close confidant of Aristide and a newly elected senator, dismissively referred to several prominent mulattos including journalist Jean Dominique as "ti wouj" (the little red ones). Dominique had been an advisor to Preval. But he was murdered shortly after Toussaint's comment. That fact, and Dominique's intimations about Toussaint's alleged involvement in drug trafficking, shifted suspicion for the journalist's killing onto Lavalas.

And yet.

One goes downtown in Port-au-Prince to the slums of Bel Air, near the Palais Nacional, the crowded, congested streets of Avenue Jean-Jacques Dessalines, or the dusty, chaotic suburb of Delmas (favored base for the zenglendos) where, as one friend told me, "everyone gets robbed." You go to these neighborhoods and you are struck by the absolute belief that exists there that "Titid" (as Aristide is affectionately known) is the only man capable of solving Haiti's multitude of problems, the only man who has ever stood up for the poor, the only one who ever gave a damn.

The desperate, begging street boys on the Champs Mars dress in rags and sleep on the ground. I talked to young men who have moved from the countryside to the Cite Soleil and La Saline slums who have never found a job and probably never will. Old women sell fritays and fried bananas under the withering noonday sun. "N'ap toujou renme w Titid" (We will always love you Aristide) is scrawled on crumbling walls.

Some words come to mind that Aristide spoke, just days before the coup of 1991 forced him out of office and Cedras and company began an orgy of bloodletting unrivaled even in Papa Doc's time. Aristide, his back to the wall, had been informed of rumors that a plot was about to topple him and perhaps kill him, and that lists of his supporters who were also to be killed were being drawn up. This was the famous "Pere Lebraun" speech, which many in the media never tire of referring to as the moment when Aristide began calling for the "necklacing" of the opposition:

Again, under the flag of pride, under this flag of dignity, under this flag of solidarity, hand in hand, one encouraging the other, [...] each one will pick up the message of respect that I share with you, this message of justice that I share with you, so that the word ceases to be the word and becomes action. [...] it's you who will find what you deserve, according to what the Mother Law of the country declares.
One alone, we are weak, Together we are strong. Together, together.
Together we are the flood (crowd: Frenzy!)
Do you feel proud? (crowd: Yeah!)
Do you feel proud? (crowd: Yeah!)

So true, that there is power in numbers. Whether or not Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas are committed to using their popularity -- and, more important, Aristide's sacred relationship with many in the country -- to push forward a program of real democratic change remains to be seen, but the signs are not encouraging.

If they fail, or succumb to the temptations for a naked power grab that have too long plagued Haiti's rulers, their betrayal of the Haitian people will be doubly bitter, coming as it does on the backs of all who followed Aristide's clarion call for democracy to their graves: the voters at Ruelle Vaillant, the martyrs of St. Jean Bosco and the thousands who died under the junta of 1991-94.

As always in Haiti, only time (and not words) will bear out their true intentions. But they're walking on a razor's edge.

"With a strong government and parliament, and a strong political program," Neptune said to me toward the end of our interview, "we'll spend less time bickering over power, so the majority who represent the people will have enough time to concentrate on their jobs. I think that's what needs to happen. And it is about to happen."

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About the writer
Michael Deibert is a writer living in New York City. He recently completed his first novel.