[CORBETTLIST] 43699: Haiti Liberte's This Week in Haiti 8:23 12/17/2014 LAMOTHE RESIGNS & WIKILEAKS ON HERIVEAUX
- From: "John Rigdon" <jrigdon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: corbettlist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 19:56:23 -0600
Subject: Haiti Liberte's This Week in Haiti 8:23 12/17/2014 LAMOTHE
RESIGNS & WIKILEAKS ON HERIVEAUX
From: "Kim Ives" <kives@xxxxxxxxx>
"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI LIBERTE newsweekly. For
the complete edition with other news in French and Creole, please contact
the paper at (tel) 718-421-0162, (fax) 718-421-3471 or e-mail at
editor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Also visit our website at
<http://www.haitiliberte.com>.
HAITI LIBERTE
"Justice. Verite. Independance."
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
December 17-23, 2014
Vol. 8, No. 23
AS LAMOTHE RESIGNS:
POLICE AND UN FIRE ON SWELLING DEMONSTRATIONS DEMANDING MARTELLY STEP DOWN
by Kim Ives
Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe resigned at almost midnight on Sat.,
Dec. 13, culminating a tumultuous week of demonstrations, diplomatic
theater, and backroom political maneuvering.
But the move, which some opposition leaders had known was coming for
about two weeks, was too little, too late. Another giant march of
thousands surged through Port-au-Prince on Dec. 16, the 24th
anniversary of the 1990 landslide victory of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, demanding President Michel Martelly's resignation and the
immediate withdrawal of the remaining 6,600 United Nations military
occupation troops deployed in Haiti since June 2004 as the UN Mission
to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH).
"Lamothe was just the smallest part of a trinity holding Haiti down,"
said Oxyg?ne David of the Dessalines Coordination (KOD), a party
formed in February. "The other two elements are Martelly and MINUSTAH.
They also must go for Haiti to have democracy and sovereignty."
Jordanian MINUSTAH soldiers fired leveled weapons at a huge
anti-Martelly demonstration on Dec. 12 in Port-au-Prince, killing one
man, Jean Mario, and wounding several others, including Monvil G?tro,
Vladimir Castry, and Jeanel Pierre. Several videos, which have already
had tens of thousands of views, show UN soldiers pointing and shooting
directly at protestors, who respond with jeering, chanting, and
rock-throwing.
The demonstrations of Operation Burkina Faso, as the uprising is
called, continued in the capital on Dec. 13 but were dispersed by
police gunfire and teargas at the Champ de Mars in downtown
Port-au-Prince. A video by Le Nouvelliste shows the body of a
demonstrator who had been clearly shot through the chest. According to
the Miami Herald, police spokesman Gary Desrosiers said "no one died"
and "there were no great incidents," claiming that police were
investigating the death. He told the Herald it looked like people "put
the body there."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry cancelled his planned Dec. 12 visit
to Haiti due to the unrest and the failure of two State Department
officials, Thomas Shannon and Thomas Adams, to broker a deal during
their visit last week trying to keep the Martelly regime from
crumbling.
Praise for Lamothe from U.S. Ambassador Pamela White and former
President Bill Clinton also helped fan the flames of rebellion. "This
is the most consistent and decisive government I've ever worked with
across a broad range of issues," Clinton told the Herald, enraging
many Haitians.
There were also demonstrations on Dec. 12 and 13 in Cap Ha?tien,
Gona?ves, Ouanaminthe, and Petit Go?ve, where daily demonstrations
block National Road #2 to the south. Martelly partisans such as former
Sen. Youri Latortue in Gona?ves, deputy Kenston Jean-Baptiste in Cap
Ha?tien, and deputy Luckner No?l in Ouanaminthe tried to disperse
demonstrators by firing weapons from official vehicles, wounding
several people. But the uprising is in full swing, and such
repression, like that of the Tonton Macoutes trying to save the
Duvalier dictatorship in early 1986, is just gasoline on the fire.
In his resignation speech, which was broadcast just after 1:30 in the
morning, Lamothe made no mention of the demonstrations rocking the
country but just listed the supposed accomplishments of his 31 months
in office, during which he burned through $5.5 billion in
international aid to Haiti while the population fell deeper into
poverty and hunger. It sounded more like a campaign speech for the
presidential run many expect he will mount in late 2015.
In a Dec. 15 interview with Bloomberg News, Lamothe said that "the
opposition, of course, is never going to want the government to
succeed" and blamed the political crisis on six senators who "have
been sitting on the electoral law for the past nine months... so Haiti
cannot have elections." He also struck a martyr-like pose, saying he
had made the "ultimate sacrifice" to "clear the way forward for
elections" and had no plans "right now" for any presidential bid.
"As I always said, I would never be part of the problem, and I would
always be part of the solution to Haiti's problems," Lamothe said.
"Being Prime Minister for 31 months, actually the longest serving
Prime Minister, it was never about, you know, myself, it was always
about Haiti and about the country moving forward."
(One of the gems of the interview came from the Bloomberg interviewer
herself who asked: "The fact that the opposition party, just as you
said, will never want to see the government succeed, why don't we
focus on that? Shouldn't that be a reason to nullify this opposition
party? Because you need a strong government...")
"Lamothe was in fact one of the links in the chain of catastrophes
which have battered the country since May 14, 2011," when Martelly was
inaugurated, wrote Berthony Dupont in Ha?ti Libert?'s editorial this
week. "But nothing has really been accomplished as long as Martelly
remains in power."
WIKILEAKED DIPLOMATIC CABLES REVEAL:
RUDY H?RIVEAUX IS A "CLOSE CONTACT" OF THE U.S. EMBASSY IN HAITI
by Kim Ives
(First of three articles)
Haiti's current Communications Minister Rudy H?riveaux became a focus
of popular rage in November when, in an editorial, he labeled as
"cockroaches" the thousands of demonstrators now marching almost daily
to demand President Michel Martelly's resignation.
But for at least a decade, H?riveaux has been a regular and trusted
source for the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, according to the secret
diplomatic cables of several U.S. ambassadors and charg?s d'affaires
obtained by the media organization Wikileaks and provided to Ha?ti
Libert?.
The cables paint a picture of a thoroughly unscrupulous self-promoter
- "opportunistic" according to one cable - who attempted to hijack
leadership of the Lavalas Family party of former President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide while the latter was exiled in South Africa
from 2004 to 2011. Although H?riveaux was "a close embassy contact,"
in the words of one cable, U.S. officials gave credence to the
assessment of Sen. Simon Dieuseul Desras that "Senator H?riveaux's
history shows he is not a true Lavalassian and has never been
recognized as such."
Although H?riveaux may soon be out of a job following the Dec. 13
resignation of Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, he nonetheless promises
to continue as an actor on Haiti's political scene since, as the
cables show, his modus operandi appears to be to insert himself into
whatever political current he sees as ascendant.
H?riveaux's Rise
Rudy H?riveaux was first elected in 2000 as a deputy from Trou du Nord
in Haiti's 47th legislature under the Lavalas Family (FL) banner. He
went on to be elected as a Lavalas senator for the West Department in
2006, although the faction of the then-splintered Lavalas Family party
that he represented was in deep conflict with more militant currents,
particularly those led by the late Father G?rard Jean-Juste and
popular organization leader Ren? Civil.
During the 2004-2006 coup d'?tat, H?riveaux was also technically a
member of the FL's "Communications Commission," a sort of directorate
which included former FL interim chairman Jonas Petit, former
Interior Minister Bell Angelot, former Aristide government spokesman
Mario Dupuy, former Aristide advisor Dr. Maryse Narcisse, and former
deputy Gilvert Angervil, although as U.S. Ambassador James Foley noted
in a Mar. 22, 2005 cable, H?riveaux and former Sen. Yvon Feuill? "have
effectively been ostracized by the others."
The reason for this ostracism was because Feuill? and H?riveaux were
part of a breakaway "moderate faction" of Lavalas, Foley explained.
"Those in the moderate faction, more diverse and less vocal, insist
they want to participate in the elections, that they represent the
original spirit of the Lavalas movement, and that FL itself has been
discredited by Aristide and his misgovernance," Foley wrote after
meeting with them.
Seven months later, on Oct. 13, 2005, the U.S. Embassy political
counselor (Polcouns) held a meeting with "moderates" H?riveaux,
Feuill?, former Lavalas Sen. Louis G?rald Gilles, former Lavalas
deputy Sorel Fran?ois, and former Lavalas deputy Jonas Coffy,
according to an Oct. 21, 2005 cable by U.S. Ambassador Timothy Carney.
The group said "that they are confident of a Marc Bazin victory in the
upcoming [presidential] elections," Carney wrote. Marc Bazin was a
former World Bank official who was briefly dictator Jean-Claude
Duvalier's Finance Minister, then Washington's neoliberal candidate
and the principal challenger to Aristide in the Dec. 16, 1990
election, then briefly Prime Minister of the military government that
sent President Aristide into exile from 1991 to 1994, finally to
become the presidential candidate of the "moderate Lavalas" faction in
2006.
"The key to a Bazin victory, according to H?riveaux, is success in the
North and in Port-au-Prince," Carney reported. "Nevertheless, Gilles
said that a Bazin-Sim?us runoff is agreeable to them, and that a Bazin
presidency with Sim?us as Prime Minister would be good for
Haiti." (Dumas Sim?us was a conservative Haitian-American millionaire
businessman living in Texas who in 2005 was Washington's favorite
presidential contender, mostly because he was a U.S. citizen. That
status resulted in his disqualification from the 2006 race because the
1987 Haitian Constitution did not allow dual nationality for high
government officials.)
Nonetheless, H?riveaux worried that the Provisional Electoral Council
(CEP) might rig the vote in favor of the social-democratic party
Fusion, and "H?riveaux implored Polcouns to be vigilant with respect
to the CEP," Carney wrote.
Astonishingly, H?riveaux and the Lavalas "moderates" were begging the
U.S. Embassy to oversee sovereign Haitian elections. This small but
telling episode augured much about Rudy H?riveaux's future.
(To be continued)
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