[A-List] This Week in Haiti 21:17 7/9/2003

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES newsweekly.
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                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                      Jul 9 - 15, 2003
                         Vol. 21, No. 17

EMERGING COALITIONS HINT AT NEW WASHINGTON GAME-PLAN

On June 29, the Broad Center-Right Front (GFCD) was launched at the
Hotel Christopher in Port-au-Prince.

The new political coalition includes elements from the Patriotic
Movement for National Salvation (MPSN), a caucus of right-wing groups in
the Washington-backed Democratic Convergence opposition front, most
notably neo-Duvalierists Hubert De Ronceray, leader of the Mobilization
for National Development (MDN), and Osner Févry, head of one of the
branches of the Haitian Christian Democratic Party (PDCH).

The GFCD also comprises Gérard Mecklembourg, leader of political party
MODEJHA, which supported the bloody 1991 coup d'état; Odenis Joseph
Pierre, spokesman for the Union of Engaged Pastors and Laymen; and Jean
Fenel Jean Baptiste, who claims to represent Haiti's youth.

"We present ourselves as a clear ideological camp," declared De Ronceray
at the inaugural ceremony. "We are of the right."

"Far-right" would have been more accurate. For example, as Social
Affairs Minister of dictator Jean Claude Duvalier in 1979, De Ronceray
orchestrated the selling of some 15,000 Haitian laborers to work as
virtual slaves in the cane fields of the Dominican Republic. The Haitian
dictatorship was paid about $88 per head.

De Ronceray also cracked down on the presentation of "subversive" plays,
such as Debafre by Evans Paul alias Konpè Plim, who is now ironically
one of his Convergence political allies.

This sordid past did not deter the U.S. Embassy from sending a
representative, James Loveland, to the GFCD's coming out party. Also on
hand were other Convergence politicians, representatives from the
Washington-concocted "Group of 184" (a self-described front of civil
society organizations), and a representative from the Haitiano-Dominican
Chamber of Commerce.

Meanwhile, Gérard Pierre-Charles, secretary general of the Struggling
People 's Organization (OPL), announced on July 3 that his party was in
talks with the PANPRA of Serge Gilles and the CONACOM of Victor Benoît
and Micha Gaillard in view of forming a single Haitian social democratic
party. Presently, all three groups are members of the Socialist
International.

Some have speculated that the U.S. State Department is nudging the
discredited hydra-like Democratic Convergence to regroup into distinct
blocks that could vie with each other in U.S.-sponsored elections. The
Washington-based Haitian Democracy Project (HDP), headed by former U.S.
diplomats, spooks, and disaffected Aristide partisans, proposed in a
June 9 letter to the Organization of American States (OAS)  that a
"transitional" government of a "technocratic, non-partisan" nature take
power from the elected government. It would enjoy "a full measure of
material and moral support from the international community -
particularly in matters of public safety and security" and would
"shepherd the country through the next national elections." The HDP
graciously suggests that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide could
"cohabit" with an OAS-imposed government and, like an ornament, "preside
over the commemoration of Haiti's bicentennial" next year.

"Should he prove to be incapable or unwilling to do so," the HDP warns
that Aristide would be risking "rigorous scrutiny of his suitability for
office by both national and international players," code for U.S.
military intervention.

Perfectly understanding the HDP's insinuations, a certain Parnell Gérard
Duverger wrote a letter/article, now posted on the HDP's website, saying
that it is "time for decisive U.S. leadership." Duverger seconds the
HDP's proposal, charging that Haiti is "posing formidable new challenges
to American principles and interests in the Americas.

"Let there be no doubt that we are prepared to commit military force to
the defense of the democratic system of representative government,"
Duverger announces in a presentation that might as well have been
written by Bush administration spokesman Ari Fleischer, "as well as the
defense of American principles and values of decency, fairness, human
rights, individual freedoms, political pluralism, private property, free
economic markets, good governance, justice and equal opportunity, as
this new American century begins to deliver its promises of peace,
stability and economic prosperity to a welcoming world." A "welcoming
world" indeed!

"The United States should take the lead in helping Haitians achieve a
regime change, and facilitate the emergence of a transitional
government, secured by the presence of an international military force,"
Duverger says, concluding that "a serious proposal to that effect has
already been articulated in recent months by the Haiti Democracy
Project."

The HDP welcomed Duverger's endorsement but was slightly embarrassed by
its directness, coyly stating after posting it that "neither the ouster
of Aristide nor the use of U.S. military force were mentioned in our
plan."

It remains to be seen if Washington will take this path. Clearly, the
"zero option," as Convergence groups call Aristide's overthrow, remains
an alternative.

The "San Manman (Motherless) Army" is a Nicaraguan Contra-like military
force based in the Dominican Republic (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 21, No.
2,
3/26/2003) and has been referred to by Haitian government officials as
the "armed wing" of the opposition. Possibly in coordination with other
groups, it has recently stepped up attacks around the country. On June
21, the San Manmans killed four people affiliated to Aristide's Lavalas
Family party
(FL) during one of their regular attacks on the Lascahobas police
station on Haiti's Central Plateau. The next day, a powerful explosion
ripped through the central government's offices in the northern city of
Cap Haïtien, causing great damage. On the day after that, the central
government's representative to the Northwest narrowly escaped being
killed in an ambush near the northwestern town of Jean Rabel.

In a possibly related incident on June 26, individuals driving a stolen
government vehicle shot a policeman dead in Thomassin, near the capital.

CARICOM nations at last week's summit in Montego Bay, Jamaica expressed
sympathy for the Haitian government and plan to send their own
intermediaries to try negotiating a settlement between the Haitian
government and the opposition. But the initiative is not likely to go
far, given the slavish obedience of both the "center right" and "social
democratic" Convergence politicians to Washington's marching orders.

All articles copyrighted Haïti Progrès, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED. Please
credit Haïti Progrès.

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