This is the Justice, Not Charity! Haiti book diary. Allie 123 and I are writing these book diaries because we became shocked by the truth of Haiti’s history and what really is needed to help the Haitians after the earthquake.
"It's as if Aristide was put in charge of a house that was falling apart and was expected to fix it. But then his enemies start setting fire to the back door, they send people with guns to attack the front door, and when these people finally manage to break in they said 'Look! He didn't wash the dishes in the sink! He never repaired the leak in the roof!' They made him spend all his time trying to put out the fire and to protect the door, and then once they got rid of him they said he was pushed out because he'd failed to repair the house." (Damming The Flood, P131)
Chapter 7 of "Damming the Flood" by Peter Hallward is titled 2001-2004: The Winner Loses? It has four main sections: Subversion from within, Scandal and Corruption, The politics of human rights, and Lavalas violence: a new reign of terror? Because of the length and complexity of this chapter, I'm covering it in two diaries. Tonight I want to take up the first two sections.
Subversion From Within
Hallward lists three ways Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas were vulnerable to disruption from within their own government.
The first was simple; Fanmi Lavalas was so overwhelmingly successful at the polls, so popular, and so relatively informal, that it became a magnet for opportunists. It was easy for would-be successful politicians, former Macoutes and army soldiers, and members of criminal gangs to infiltrate the party.
The second was because FL was so successful at the polls, the "democratic opposition" could see their best bet was to undermine from within, especially by compromising the police and security forces. (Hallward doesn't use the scare quotes, but I think the "do" deserves them.)
The special police unit assigned to the presidential palace, the USGPN, was a particular target. Government lawyers pursuing human rights cases kept getting reports of police plotting, especially the USGPN, all through Aristide's second term. Rosny Mandestin, an anti-FL ex-senator, wrote a document circulated by Stanley Lucas of the IRI (remember him? Conservative Haitian fossil) which noted rather gleefully that the USGPN was made up largely of ex-army members, had good unit cohesion, and was no longer trusted by Aristide.
The third problem was that because Aristide and FL did so well at the polls, and were so popular with the people, that this tended to cause some complacency about the "democratic opposition"'s overthrow attmepts. As late as early 2004, when the insurgency came out in the open, FL and Aristide hesitated to use force, and instead kept trying to negotiate with the "democratic opposition".
Scandal and Corruption
Given the initial poverty of FL members and supporters, and the long-standing corrupt example of previous regimes, Aristide's second term provided enough scandal for the propagandists of the "democratic oppostion" to make good use of. While small in comparison to Duvalier piracy, and the whole underpinning of the morally repugnant elite, it still gave the opportunity to paint the Aristide government as just another in a succession of failed corrupt regimes. (Anybody recognize "they do it too!" from our own recent politics?)
Drug charges by the U.S. DEA were used to prosecute several people close to Aristide. (Aristide and Preval gave unprecedented cooperation to the DEA, somehow this was not to their credit.) Some prosecutions were successful, some just became money-laundering charges, some fell through completely. One damaging prosecution was of Oriel Jean, the head of Aristide's personal security; this is one that was reduced to a money laundering charge. A noisier and more successful prosecution was of a man named Ketant, who had ties to several people in Aristide's security. He was convicted shortly before the coup, and was given the opportunity to publicly denounce Aristide as Haiti's biggest druglord. Talk of an indictment for Aristide was one of the elements of the coup that removed him. Once he was gone, the whole indictment fizzled for lack of evidence, and DEA pursuit of Haitian drug-runners became a much more placid and low-key affair. Likewise, talk of Aristide's having corruptly personally enriched himself fell apart due to the former priest's ascetic lifestyle.
The left in Haiti did bring heavy criticism against Aristide for giving in to the neo-liberal economic policies that caused serious hardship in the countryside. Yvon Neptune later said that issues like free trade zones and trade unions were used by the "democratic opposition" to distract and keep Aristide's government off-balance.
More next week!
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Mantra from Aristide's 1990 campaign:
"Alone we are weak, together we are strong; all together we are Lavalas, the flood [yon se`l nou feb, ansanm nou fo, ansanm nou se Lavalas]."
Aristide Damming The Flood, (pg. xxxiv)
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Top Stories: See comments for Today's News Update: |
TOP STORY:
DESPERATE, READY TO RISE UP
Let me describe the situation for you: 1,350 Port-au-Prince families live in white government-issued tents inside an official camp. The residents receive government goods and services, such as food and water and sewage systems and shower facilities. The official camp is fenced and is guarded and patrolled by forces of the United Nations. It is roomy and clean.
On the other side of the fence are thousands of earthquake-rendered homeless families living in unofficial camps in whatever kind of tents they can find on their own and are receiving nothing from the government; they get no services. These families squat near the official camp in the hope that some of the "goodies" from inside the fence will fall on them. But they don’t.
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• The camp dwellers are working people and they need to work. They have had only 30 days of work during the seven months they’ve been in the camp. They are paid 90 gourdes a day for their work and charged 110 gourdes a day to stay in the camp. They were overcharged for beans and other basic foodstuffs, causing the population to go hungry for three months.
• Large numbers of people, especially children, are getting sick from infections and inadequate health services are provided for them. A displaced hair dresser, whose husband worked with computers before the quake, cried as she talked of the inability to get assistance for her chronically ill 3-year-old son.
• The camp lacks adequate security, as the UN forces are selective about the security needs to which they will respond.
The leaders blame their problems on the camp’s operators: World Vision, Organization for International Migration (OIM) and the American Relief Committee (ARC). "But World Vision in the biggest criminal inside the camp," Ferrel said. "These organizations won’t let any other nonprofits come in and try to help," Ferrel said. "They humiliate us; treat us badly and threaten us and the situation will get worse when we demonstrate," Ferrel said. "We want to get out of these tents and we want jobs. We want our homes and our lives back," he added, as tears welled in his eyes.
President Obama should implement the "Most Effective Way" to help Haiti recover
"No congressional act is needed for the president to expedite the handling of these immigration cases," urged the Inquirer. "The sooner he does that, the sooner the Haitians will be able to find employment in this country that allows them to send help home. That aid over time will improve Haiti’s ability to stand on its own legs without as much foreign assistance."
Officials at the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services appear willing to act. But they need White House approval, which is where the Commonwealth’s congressional legislation can play a key role.
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry and Representative Jim McGovern are stalwart champions who have stood by Haiti in the past. Readers are encouraged to contact their offices to ask them to personally call the president’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, to urge the president to instruct DHS Secretary Napolitano to finally go ahead now and promptly parole the 55,000 Haitian approved beneficiaries. They might privately urge the Chief of Staff that if electoral considerations prevent this just now, DHS at least should be instructed to do this right after the November election.
Their prompt parole is the most effective, cost-free way to speed recovery by generating a flow of additional remittances into the indefinite future, and the ongoing Cuban program’s rationale — saving lives at sea and fostering orderly migration – justifies giving similarly-situated Haitians the same treatment.
Readers of this article are there
fore encouraged to ask Senator Kerry, Rep. McGovern, and other Commonwealth legislators to weigh in at the White House to urge the President to instruct DHS Secretary Napolitano to parole the 55,000.
Unfair and Undemocratic
Imagine if the Federal Election Commission in the United States disqualified the Democratic and Republican parties from the 2012 presidential election and declared that only candidates of minor parties could run. No one would consider it a fair election, and certainly the people of the United States would rise up, claiming the election is unconstitutional and undemocratic.
Yet the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in Haiti on Nov. 28 are just that -- unfair, unconstitutional and undemocratic. The country's Provisional Electoral Council, which itself is not constitutionally composed, is refusing to allow the country's majority party -- Famni Lavalas (Lavalas Family) -- to participate in the election. Thirteen other legitimate political parties are also being excluded from parliamentary elections.
Haitian history didn't begin after the earthquake. Kevin Pina/Latin Waves
Konstitisyon se papie, bayonet se fe
(The constitution is paper, bayonets are steel)
"IJDH has changed the way Haitian human rights are viewed, and is helping other organizations to improve their understanding of the noxious synergy between poverty, inequality, and injustice; IJDH has also restored historical memory to a notoriously short-memoried arena. IJDH has been a voice of reason and honesty in the midst of an international attack on popular democracy in Haiti."
— Paul Farmer, Co-Founder, Partners in Health
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