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The sudden Feb. 24
resignation of Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille is just the
latest episode in a sharpening class struggle for political
power between three sectors: Washington, the neo-Duvalierists,
and the Haitian masses.
Conille, a medical doctor and
formerly one of UN Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton’s chiefs
of staff, was imposed as Prime Minister on President Michel
Martelly last October by Washington. He was a “technocrat”
similar to his immediate predecessor, Jean-Max Bellerive, former
President René Préval’s last prime minister. Both men are
knock-offs of Bellerive’s mentor, Marc Bazin, a former World
Bank economist who was imposed as Finance Minister on
Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier in 1982. Washington had
sent Bazin – dubbed at the time “Mr. Clean” – to rein in
rampant Duvalierist corruption, which was siphoning off, into
Swiss bank accounts, millions of dollars from U.S. and
international financial institution (IFI) aid packages sent to
build infrastructure to service North American corporate
interests, principally cheap-labor assembly industries. But,
after only six months of house-cleaning, Bazin was forced to
resign, much like Conille.
Martelly’s clique – whose
chefs de file are Foreign Minister Laurent Lamothe and
Interior Minister Thierry Mayard-Paul – represents a resurgent
neo-Duvalierist sector, which has a different agenda than the
servile technocrats. They seek to establish Haiti as a
sort of chasse gardée for their
business interests and corruption, rejecting oversight by
Washington and the IFIs. This was the model of their fathers,
who were by and large prominent Duvalierists, the political
representatives of Haiti’s grandons, or big landowners.
François “Papa Doc” Duvalier
and his son often had a prickly relationship with Washington
during their 29 year dictatorship (1957-1986), not because of
any progressive tilt, but because their economic base – the
grandon class, as direct exploiters of the peasantry – was
independent of, and to some extent in conflict with, U.S.
capitalist interests.
Although Washington facilitated
Papa Doc’s electoral victory in 1957 (just as it did Martelly’s in 2011), Papa Doc – a student of Machiavelli’s
handbook on political intrigue, The Prince – began to
veer away from Washington’s control soon after coming to power.
In 1962, Washington sent a
small U.S. Marine force to exercise, train, and beef up the
Haitian Army (which had been its proxy since the end of the
1915-1934 U.S. military occupation) in an effort to intimidate
and reassert control over their unruly pawn. Instead, Duvalier
used the military aid to reinforce his Volunteers for National
Security (VSN), better known as the “Tonton Macoutes” or
Uncle Knapsack, a folklore figure who carries off children in
the night. Duvalier subdued the Haitian Army (later Macoutizing
it) and expelled the U.S. troops, earning him the enmity of the
Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
Papa Doc and, to a slightly
lesser extent, his son assumed a faux nationalist stance, in
essence telling Washington that they were in charge of this
neo-colony (although they’d share the spoils for a price) and
would run it as they saw fit. The result was an uneasy alliance,
because Washington needed and valued the Duvaliers’ fierce
anti-communist purges and posture as a bulwark against the
revolution in neighboring Cuba.
Martelly is trying to replay
some of Duvaliers’ tactics, working to re-establish the
Macoutized Army and flirting with the Venezuela-led ALBA
alliance, much as Papa Doc would get his way by threatening
Washington that he might ally with Cuba. (An ALBA meeting is
scheduled to take place in Jacmel on Mar. 2-3).
Washington and its allies
stopped short of publicly scolding Martelly for Conille’s
removal but made their strong disapproval clear. The U.S.
Embassy bemoaned the loss of Conille’s “perspicacity and
energy” which he “devoted to the betterment of the
Haitian people’s living conditions.” Canadian Foreign
Minister John Baird said that “Canada deeply regrets”
Conille’s resignation, which meant the loss of “a competent
leader, a friend of Canada, and a man who embodies hope,”
saying it would “increase instability” in Haiti. UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed “concern” about
the resignation, while the Chilean head of the UN Mission to
Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH) Mariano Fernández Amunátegui said
that “the resignation of Dr. Garry Conille shows,
unfortunately, that rifts have overtaken reconciliation to the
detriment of the country.”
Pastor Edouard Paultre of the
Haitian Council of Non-State Actors (CONHANE) is an unofficial
Haitian mouthpiece of “the international community.” He
expressed more forthrightly what the diplomats did not. “The
Prime Minister resigned because of big cases of corruption,”
he said. “We are faced with a power which does not really
want to fight corruption in the country.”
Meanwhile, the Haitian masses
watch the spectacle of this imperialist/Duvalierist rivalry with
a combination of glee and dread, fearing the repression which
may be unleashed. Haitian grassroots groups have held
demonstrations and press conferences several times weekly to
denounce, among other things, the continuing UN military
occupation of Haiti, the relaunch of the Haitian Army (which is
informally training and rearming in camps nationwide), and
Martelly’s non-prosecution of Baby Doc for crimes against
humanity (the former “President for Life” has been back
in Haiti since January 2011).
On Feb. 17, just before Carnival, students
clashed with pro-Martelly goons when the president crashed an
international conference at the State University’s Ethnology
School. Several students were wounded and arrested, while the
goons smashed car windshields and university property.
The fiercest attacks dogging
Martelly are being led by Senator Moïse Jean-Charles, a
firebrand former peasant organizer allied with former President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas Family. Despite Aristide’s
extremely low public profile since his return from a seven-year
exile last March (he has never even left his home), the party
remains, 16 years after its founding, the foremost political
voice and hope of the Haitian masses.
Moïse, along with a growing
alliance of parliamentarians,
has charged Martelly, his family,
and his clique with a wide array of corrupt practices, from
$20,000 per diem expense accounts on frequent trips to the
brazen embezzlement of funds for phantom projects from the state
bank (see Haïti Liberté, Vol. 5, No. 25, 1/4/2012).
But Moïse’s most persistent,
and politically lethal, charge is that Martelly is (or was) a
U.S. citizen, which, if true, would be a flagrant violation of
the 1987 Haitian Constitution and open the president up for
impeachment.
Last week, Moïse wrested back
control of the Senate Commission investigating Martelly’s
nationality (and that of 39 other high government officials)
from two Martelly allies – Senators Joseph Lambert and Youri
Latortue – who had been impeding the investigation.
Martelly has been infiltrating
former Army officers, policemen, and death-squad paramilitaries
into the state intelligence and security apparatus, while
assembling in Florida a “hit team” to eliminate
troublesome parliamentarians, according to one inside source
(see Haïti Liberté,
Vol. 5, No. 31, 2/15/2012).
The volatility of this
three-way scrimmage was evidenced this week when rumors began on
Feb. 25 that the Martelly government had issued a warrant to
arrest Aristide and eight others on a collection of corruption
and drug trafficking charges that were concocted in 2004 by the
post-coup de facto regime. Popular outrage was swift and loud.
Radio call-in shows were dominated by irate listeners, and the
giant Port-au-Prince slum of Cité Soleil saw hundreds mobilize
on the night of Feb. 27. That same evening, the Justice Ministry
issued a “formal denial” of the “fanciful rumors”
that the government had issued warrants for Aristide’s arrest.
While Washington and the neo-Duvalierists
have their differences, they agree on one thing: the Haitian
masses in general, and the Lavalas Party in particular, must not
hold political power. This is where the danger lies.
If Sen. Moïse and his
parliamentary allies are successful in dislodging Martelly
(which might only push the besieged president to use the
repressive forces he’s arrayed), it might lead to early
elections, which the newly reorganizing Lavalas Family could be
well positioned to win, as they’ve won all electoral contests in
which they’ve ever participated. (The party had been banned from
elections since the 2004 coup.)
Herein lies Washington’s
dilemma: should it help to push out an increasingly mercurial
Martelly if it might set the stage for the Lavalas Family, and
the Haitian masses, from regaining some measure of political
power?
The U.S. may have hoped that
Martelly would publish Haiti’s amended Constitution (as Conille
and Paultre had urged), whereby the Prime Minister would assume
the Presidency in the event of a presidential vacancy (the
Supreme Court head steps in under the 1987 charter). But now
Conille is out of the picture (although he remains acting PM
until his replacement is named). Martelly has proposed three of
his closest aides to fill the post: Lamothe, Mayard-Paul, and
Anne Valérie Timothée Milfort, his appointee to the Interim
Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC). That agency, which was
co-headed by Bill Clinton, saw its mandate expire in October,
and it has not been renewed, another neo-Duvalierist foot-drag
that irks Washington.
Finally, MINUSTAH, the
principal enforcer of Washington’s agenda in this high-stakes
political game, sees its existence threatened. UN officials have
said they need until 2016 to create a “secure and stable
environment” in Haiti. However, the neo-Duvalierists want to
supplant the UN troops with their own Macoutized force, while
the Haitian masses want UN troops out immediately, principally
because in October 2010 UN Nepalese troops inadvertently
imported cholera, starting an epidemic which has now killed over
7,000 and sickened over half a million. There are also almost
monthly cases of UN soldiers sexually assaulting Haitian minors,
all of which have gone unprosecuted.
MINUSTAH’s increasingly tenuous position
and Martelly’s increasingly erratic behavior prompted the entire
UN Security Council to make an unprecedented visit to Haiti
from Feb. 13-16. Tellingly, the delegation was led by U.S.
Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice rather than (as protocol would
dictate) the Council’s President, who during February was the
Togolese Ambassador.
Haiti has seen this troubled
scenario before. In 1986, Washington helped push Baby Doc out of
power, confident that it could buy ensuing elections and insert
their chosen candidate, Marc Bazin, in the presidency.
Untarnished elections couldn’t be held until 1990, when the
technocrat Bazin’s main opponent appeared to be a feared
Duvalierist and former leader of the Tonton Macoutes, Roger Lafontant, who was later disqualified. Washington thought it had
the election in the bag.
But the strategy foundered when
a parish priest from a Haitian slum, Father Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, entered the race at the last minute, winning with 67%
of the vote against Bazin’s 14%, despite being outspent by a
factor of 72 to one.
In short, Washington learned
the hard way the meaning of the Haitian proverb, Ayiti se tè
glise. Haiti is slippery ground. |
