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Ruling Class Factions Elbowing for Power - Haiti Progres, 26 May 2004

Rivalries for posts and power have begun to rend the ruling class alliance that came together three years ago to successfully overturn Haiti's constitutional government.

On one side is Haiti's traditional bourgeoisie, the owners of retail stores, car dealerships, gas stations and assembly plants. On the other are the grandons, Haiti's arch-reactionary big landowning class, whose power has been waning since their glory days during the Duvalier dictatorships (1957-1986). The Duvaliers' dreaded Tonton Macoutes, an armed corps of spies, extortionists, enforcers and executioners, were the armed expression of grandon power.

These two sectors of Haiti's ruling class have struggled between each other for state power throughout most of Haiti's 200 year history, which largely explains the frequency of coups and foreign interventions. But when the Haitian people elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990 and again in 2000, these two ruling groups set aside their differences and came together to oust him.
The National Popular Party (PPN) called it a "Macouto-bourgeois alliance."

Following President Aristide's Feb. 29 kidnapping by U.S. Marines, Washington parachuted in a crew of Haitian "technocrats," most of whom had been living
abroad, to take the reins of government.

Now, recriminations are filling Haiti's airwaves as neo-Duvalierist politicians gripe that the lead "technocrat," de facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue, and his mentors in Washington favor the bourgeoisie (they do) and have largely iced the Macoutes out of power (they have).

But the Macoute sector played a key role in Aristide's ouster.
Neo-Duvalierist soldiers like Guy Philippe and FRAPH death-squad leader Jodel Chamblain led a small number of U.S. and Dominican-backed "rebels" to occupy the northern cities of Gonaïves and Cap Haïtien and create the semblance that the capital was "encircled" (it wasn't) and that civil war loomed (it didn't). This gave Washington the pretext to kidnap Aristide.

The "rebels" assumed they would quickly resurrect the Armed Forces of Haiti (FAdH), to which most of them had belonged and which Aristide disbanded in 1995. A new Army would provide the Macoute sector a decisive counter-weight to the bourgeoisie's economic clout.

However, times have changed since the U.S. relied the Duvalierist military and Macoutes to keep the Haitian people in line. Now Washington and Paris prefer to use economic blackmail, debt leverage, diplomatic bluster, media demonization, and, in a worst case scenario, foreign "peace-keeping" troops to make sure that neo-colonies follow their dictates.

The neo-Duvalierist "rebels" now grouse that Washington and Paris double-crossed them and are starting to posture as super-nationalists. For example, in Gonaïves on May 18, Haiti's flag day, the Resistance Front of Gonaïves, headed by FRAPH leader Jean "Tatoune" Pierre, transformed itself into a political party called the National Reconstruction Front (FRN), with Guy Philippe as secretary-general. Resistant Front leaders Butter Métayer and Winter Etienne are president and coordinator respectively.

Butteur Métayer called the French Foreign Legion's occupation of Gonaïves, where Haitian independence from France was declared 200 years ago, "humiliating" and ended his speech with: "Down with the French occupation! Down with France! The foreigners must go!"

Guy Philippe was more nuanced in his protest. "We do not have a problem with the French themselves or the Americans," he said. "It's a question of principle. Two hundred years after Independence, it is not right that there are foreign soldiers based here on Haitian soil... Three months after Aristide's departure, I would hope to see things changing. When we had fought and risked our life, we thought that the situation could get better. Unfortunately, we saw people who have controlled the country for 200 years call the foreigners to come defend their interests." Philippe was talking to the bourgeoisie.

Nonetheless, Washington is doing its best to not alienate the "rebels." U.S. helicopters flew Latortue to Gonaïves last March where he called the Philippe's neo-Duvalierist corps "freedom fighters." Indeed, the U.S. would like to keep Philippe and his men as a terror army in reserve should indigenous troops ever be needed. Washington is now offering to integrate former soldiers into a "reformed" National Police force after "studying their files." But the former soldiers shun this arrangement and continue to clamor for the army's return.

Now tensions are growing, as illustrated by an episode on May 18 in downtown Port-au-Prince. Tens of thousands marched through the capital that day to call for the return of President Aristide. A group of eight heavily-armed and camouflage-uniformed former Haitian soldiers, including the self-appointed army chief of Hinche, Joseph Jean-Baptiste, arrived in th capital to take on the
demonstrators. But a patrol of U.S. Marines stopped and arrested them. They were then turned over to the Haitian Police and jailed. The following day they were ordered released, but the ex-soldiers demanded their guns back before leaving jail. "They cannot release us without our weapons," Jean-Baptiste said.

De facto Justice Minister Bernard Gousse agreed to give some handguns back, but even this did not satisfy the ex-soldiers. Neo-Duvalierist politician Osner Févry, head of the Haitian Christian Democratic Party (PDCH), was the ex-soldiers' lawyer. "With the complicity of the technocrats who work for them and who were set in place beforehand to be a front for their authority, the American soldiers violated all the provisions of our procedural laws protecting and guaranteeing the basic rights and the personal freedoms of these eight FAdH soldiers and of military institution itself which they have tried to dismantle," Févry said. "Haiti and the FAdH soldiers should have the monopoly on using weapons of war, but the American soldiers of the occupation forces circulate, creating disorder and insecurity throughout the country, with their weapons of war, their armored tanks, going this time as far as arresting and disarming Haitian soldiers."

Last week, Févry, who has already had bitter public disputes with bourgeois leader André Apaid, Jr., came out warned that the bourgeoisie would dominate and control the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) and any future elections.
Latortue decreed the CEP be formed, even though Aristide's Lavalas Family party refused to name their representative to the 9-member body.

In another example of their dismay, on May 5, the Macoute sector organized violent demonstrations to thwart the seating of technocrat-appointed Pierre  Sully as the new director of the revenue-and-bribe-rich National Port Authority in Cap Haïtien, also a "rebel" stronghold.

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Da Haiti Support Group

See the Haiti Support Group web site:
www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org

Solidarity with the Haitian people's struggle for justice, participatory democracy and equitable development, since 1992.


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