Thousands marched in the
streets of Port-au-Prince on Apr. 15 to demand
that President Michel Martelly step down. The
day before, 50 protestors picketed outside the
military headquarters of the 9,000-soldier
occupation force, the United Nations Mission to
Stabilize Haiti or MINUSTAH, demanding that the
troops leave Haiti by the May 28, 2014 deadline
set by the Haitian Senate one year ago. And on
Apr. 16, hundreds of peasants on the southern
island of Ile à Vache (Cow Island) are planning
to march against the police occupation of their
communities, as well as a government plan to
evict them and turn their island into a tourist
resort.
This is just a
small sampling of the growing daily protests
around Haiti which has many questioning whether
Martelly will be able to serve out his five year
term without resigning.
The flames of
rebellion around Haiti were fanned this week by
Martelly himself when he declared in the
southern city of Aux Cayes: “I’m going to
announce some bad news... We have been doing so
much work around the country, that the state
coffers don’t have a penny.”
Despite
unmistakable signs of massive government
corruption since Martelly came to power in May
2011, the announcement came as a shock to the
Haitian people. Former President René Préval
left about $1.5 billion in the treasury when he
stepped down, according to former Sen. Jean
Hector Anacasis.
On Apr. 2, the
government reshuffled and, ironically, expanded
to 43 ministers and secretaries of state. This
makes it larger than the government cabinets,
for example, in France (16), the United States
(23), and Venezuela (29).
Furthermore,
according to Sen. Moïse Jean-Charles, the
Martelly government has burned through about $3
billion in funds provided to Haiti through its
PetroCaribe Accord with Venezuela, under which
the Haitian state puts 40% of the money paid for
about 20,000 barrels of Caracas-provided oil a
day into a special discretionary fund. The oil
revenues must be paid back to Venezuela in 25
years at 1% interest.
Earlier this
year, the Haitian government announced that 94%
of funding for projects it has undertaken comes
from the PetroCaribe fund.
Meanwhile,
President Martelly has illegally taxed (i.e.
without Parliamentary approval) millions of
international money transfers to Haiti at $1.50
each and international phone calls to and from
Haiti at five cents a minute, which has
generated hundreds of millions over the past
three years. But the press and public don’t know
exactly how much is in this highly resented
mountain of collected fees because it has never
been clearly accounted for. (Government
officials once trumpeted that it was being spent
on education, but with angry unpaid teachers and
unschooled students in the streets every week,
they now admit it wasn’t spent on that.)
Martelly also
drastically hiked fees on passports and other
government documents that Haitians must procure,
generating more bitterness but also revenue
which has only disappeared into a black hole.
"If Martelly
now says the state coffers are empty, what did
he do with what was in there?” asked Mirlande
Manigat, the Secretary General of the Assembly
of Progressive National Democrats (RNDP), who
lost the Washington-rigged Mar. 20, 2011 run-off
election to Martelly. “The public must demand a
clear accounting.”
Economist
Camille Chalmers of the Haitian Platform to
Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA) called
Martelly’s remarks “totally irresponsible” and
predicted they are the precursor to “a chaotic
situation which suggests that the government
cannot meet its obligations.” The desperate
plight of Haiti’s hungry masses is likely to
deepen, Chalmers said, especially in the arid
Northwest which is already in the grips of a
severe food shortage.
“President
Martelly has all but admitted that he had been
stealing money from the Haitian treasury and
that now the public coffers have no more money,”
said Biron Odigé, a leader of the Patriotic
Forces for Respect of the Constitution (FOPARK),
which called for the Apr. 15 march along with
the Patriotic Democratic Movement (MOPOD).
“There are no funds to do anything in the
country. So today, our conviction is reinforced.
More people in this mobilization are becoming
conscious of the struggle being waged today.
There is no alternative: Martelly must step
down.”
Oxygène David,
a leader of the Dessalines Coordination (KOD), a
new party named after Haiti’s founding father,
said that elections now announced for Oct. 26
are impossible under Martelly and the UN
military occupation.
“Martelly has
proven that he is too corrupt to run a
government, to hold Carnaval, or especially to
organize an election,” David said. “But he is
just the hand connected to the imperialist arm,
which is MINUSTAH. Ricardo Seitenfus, the former
OAS [Organization of American States] Ambassador
has made it clear that Washington and its
allies, working through the OAS and UN, put
Martelly in power. They will do the same thing
again in any future elections they oversee.
Therefore, if Haiti is to move forward and hold
free, fair, and sovereign elections, both
Martelly and MINUSTAH must go.”
Since Apr. 7,
KOD has been holding a demonstration outside the
MINUSTAH’s base at the Port-au-Prince airport
every Monday morning. It is part of a larger
coalition effort to mobilize international
pressure to force the UN’s withdrawal from
Haiti.
On Ile à Vache,
the government has not backed down in the face
of massive popular protests there since January.
Following an interview he gave to Haïti
Liberté last month, Kénold Alexis, a leader
of the Organization of Ile à Vache Peasants
(KOPI), came home from teaching in the island’s
school on Mar. 27 to find his home had been
ransacked by agents of the Haitian Police’s
Motorized Intervention Brigade (BIM). Over 100
heavily-armed BIM agents now terrorize the
17-square-mile island, which used to have only two police
officers.
“After the
raid, I found that I was missing $4,000 Haitian
(US$446) from where I had hidden it,” Alexis
told Haïti Liberté. “My wife found she
was also missing $2,500 Haitian (US$279).”
Last week,
Haitian authorities issued an arrest warrant for
Alexis because of his mobilizing against a May
10, 2013 government decree declaring the island
of “public utility,” i.e. to be turned into
hotels, golf courses, and casinos. Delegations
from Port-au-Prince and other parts of Haiti are
traveling to Ile à Vache to march in solidarity
with the island’s 14,000 eviction-threatened
residents in their demonstration planned for
Apr. 16.
“If Haiti were a building, flames
would be popping out from every window right
now,” said Henriot Dorcent, another KOD leader.
“Corruption, repression, impunity, and arrogance
are coalescing to create a perfect storm which
may well send Martelly packing, despite his
well-honed art of buying off people. The next
few months, as the economic and political
scissors close, will prove decisive one way or
the other.” |