Article's Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2003 |
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Violence casts doubt over Lavalas elections |
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Jane Regan Despite international intervention, there is no end in sight to the standoff between President Aristide and his opponents. The violent blocking of an anti-government demonstration has again raised doubts about whether Haiti is ready for the parliamentary and local elections that the government vows to hold later this year, with or without opposition parties and despite disapproval from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United States. The march, called by opposition parties and civic groups for Sept. 14 in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien to demand the resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, had been organized weeks in advance. A few days beforehand, however, the ruling Lavalas Family party announced a counter-march for the same day, the same street and virtually the same hour, saying that if the opposition marched, there would be a "blood bath." Rather than asking the Aristide supporters to choose a different route or time, police allowed the two marches to start about an hour apart at opposite ends of the street. Sept. 14 threatened to turn into a repeat of Nov. 17 2002, when more than 15,000 people took to the same streets with the same slogans: "We are fed up!" and "Aristide must resign!" (LP, Dec. 16, 2002.) As the demonstrators marched down "L Street", their numbers swelled into the thousands. Meanwhile, the pro-government counter-march of several hundred mostly young men approached from the opposite direction. About 40 heavily armed riot police kept the groups apart, but when Aristide supporters began throwing rocks, the police fired pepper gas in all directions. Opposition marchers scattered, while Aristide supporters surrounded houses where opposition leaders had taken cover and set up a burning barricade nearby. A government vehicle delivered fresh Aristide posters and fliers, and for a few hours the agitators controlled L Street. More than a dozen people from both groups suffered slight injuries. OAS representatives, part of a special mission charged with making the police force more professional and brokering a solution to the country’s three-year political crisis, worked with police on plans for the two marches, but did not intervene until the afternoon, when they helped rescue the trapped politicians. "The police and the OAS took an open, pro-government position and authorized what was a terrorist demonstration. It was state-sponsored terrorism," said Evans Paul, former mayor of Port-au-Prince and a leader of the Democratic Convergence opposition coalition, who was among those trapped in a house. The march and the violence from Aristide supporters contradict recent government pledges. While visiting newly installed turbines at the state Electricity of Haiti on September 8, Aristide — a former priest who has not lost his grasp of homiletics — thanked the turbines and the sun for electricity, but added "All of the men and women of Haiti, we are all the light of Haiti," and called for the light to dispel "the darkness of ignorance and violence." Violence persists however, and local and international watchdog groups say the human rights situation also remains serious, with police often blamed for abuses. In August, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) ranked Haiti as the second most dangerous country in the hemisphere for journalists, on a par with Cuba and trailing Colombia. In the past three years, two journalists have been murdered and more than 30 have fled the country (LP, March 26, 2003). Mario Dupuy, Haiti’s secretary of state for communication and director of the state-owned L’Union newspaper, called the CPJ accusation exaggerated and "unfair". "We are in a democratic transition," he said. "All sectors are learning what that means, including the media." There is no end in sight to that transition, however, despite the efforts of the OAS special mission and numerous foreign delegations. The terms of legislators and other elected officials end in January, 2004, but opposition parties — who boycotted the 2000 presidential election over fraud charges (LP, June 12, 2000) — and churches and civil society groups are refusing to participate in elections because of human rights and security concerns. That means that Aristide could soon be ruling by decree. "We are waiting for minimum conditions to be met," Archbishop Hubert Constant, head of the Catholic Church’s Council of Bishops, said earlier in Sept. "That minimum isn’t something we have demanded. It is what the government agreed to in documents signed with the international community." The government counters that it has met almost all the requirements set in OAS Resolution 822 (LP, Nov. 18, 2002), which was meant to end the stalemate, and that the opposition is holding back the process. "Those who are waiting for the application of 822 in its entirety before the formation of the Electoral Council can dream on," Foreign Affairs Minister Joseph Philippe Antonio said in late August. A week later came the government announcement that it would hold elections this year, with or without the opposition and foreign approval. The move comes as Aristide and his Lavalas Family party try to manage dropping popularity amongst a population of nearly 8 million delicately balanced between unrest and despair as they face hunger, unemployment and a deteriorating environment (LP, April 8, 2002). In the past two months, disasters have exacerbated Haiti’s political ills. Twenty-four people were killed and about 3,000 left homeless when a river overflowed its banks on Aug. 30. Twenty-two people died in a plane crash that has been blamed on failure to follow proper procedures, and 40 perished the same day when a bus careened off a cliff. A dozen people, many of them babies, died during a strike at the State University Hospital the first week of September, and on July 21, 15 youths in Leogane were electrocuted when two badly spliced electrical cables fell on a neighborhood basketball game. |