Defying the Odds in Haiti
CLEAVER, CAROLE
MANIGAT'S GAMBLE Defying the Odds in Haiti BY CAROLE CLEAVER Port-au-Prince These days hardly anyone talks about politics in Haiti. Since the interim military junta installed Leslie F....
...cut $80 million in aid, leaving a considerable hole in the $258 million national budget...
...the red flag no longer flies over his headquarters...
...Tourism is nonexistent...
...The World Bank is doing a survey of Haiti's schools as a prelude to an education loan...
...President Manigat obviously sees himself as a negotiator capable of arriving at the necessary compromises...
...A pragmatic politician of the center, he is self-confident and astute...
...The Ministry of Justice eventually ordered the ship to reload its cargo, but on February 4, on orders from the military commander of the district, Colonel Gambetta Hippolyte, the boat sped away in the middle of the night...
...René Théodore, head of the fledgling Communist Party, is in Havana...
...About 3,000 tons of ash are still on the wharf, covered now with dirt, and a sample has been sent to a European laboratory for testing...
...Born in Haiti 57 years ago, he received a doctorate at the Sorbonne, founded a graduate school of international studies at the University of Haiti, and for several years served in the Foreign Ministry before running afoul of the Duvaliers...
...He prefers to use the French word socialisant to characterize his views, lest someone consider him a doctrinaire socialist...
...This has neatly put the ball back in the court of Lieutenant General Henri Namphy, the interim ruler who is now chief of the Army, and Williams Regala, who has taken an Army leave to serve as Defense Minister...
...What foreign funds exist have been allocated to the purchase of gasoline from Venezuela, for a severe shortage of the vital fuel played an instrumental role in the Duvaliers' downfall...
...The Paul family has become embroiled as well in a scandal involving the dumping of toxic waste...
...President Manigat asserts persuasively that the cutoff of American aid is both "abnormal" and "unjust...
...Undoubtedly the most scholarly and best educated President Haiti has ever had, he speaks forcefully and fluently in English, Spanish and French...
...A spokesman at the American Consulate in Port-au-Prince denies this...
...Yet the President may well be in a Catch-22 situation...
...in fact, the exact opposite...
...Would they sacrifice the Colonel for the sake of American aid...
...He is reportedly seeking a rapprochement with the new government in order to recover family lands confiscated by the Duvaliers 30 years ago...
...On December 31, 1987, Les Eleveurs de l'Ouest, a company run by Antonio and another brother of the Colonel, Felix, accepted the cargo of the ship Khian Sea at the port of Gonaïves...
...Déjoie, who visited the United States and Caribbean nations, urging nonrecognition of whatever government might emerge from the January 17 election, was jailed by the military on his return but released two days later...
...But if a folder of hard evidence were presented to him, the President said, he would act on it...
...Carole Cleaver, a free-lance journalist and former NL contributor, has had a home in Haiti for the past 15 years...
...Inamountainous country like Haiti, he declared, there were no airstrips where planes could land...
...In addition to Manigat's civil liberties record, Congress will surely look at his efforts to stop the drug trade before restoring financial support to Haiti...
...Others believe Washington is aiding Haiti surreptitiously by secretly financing the gasoline purchases...
...The cargo proved to be incinerator ash the city of Philadelphia had consigned to a private disposal company, and it had been floating the seas for 16 months...
...They all seem grateful for a period of respite from the conflict and chaos that marked the two years following the collapse of the Duvalier dictatorship...
...But his somewhat ambiguous articles mention the need for both "authoritarian" and "technological" periods in underdeveloped countries before real democracy can be bom...
...Since the interim military junta installed Leslie F. Manigat as President on February 7, Haitians are more concerned with their personal lives and the precarious state of the economy...
...Attempts are being made at more effective tax collection, too...
...The streets in downtown Port-au-Prince are no longer congested...
...Austerity measures have been imposed...
...The National Bank has recently been authorized to print an extra $20 million in gourdes, without backing, making a further currency devaluation likely...
...It is working with the Haitian Narcotics Bureau of the police, who remain unconstitutionally attached to the military...
...Stories circulate regularly about drug planes and ships stopping here en route from Colombia to Miami...
...Canada and France also finance projects...
...The Colonel's former wife, Marie Mireille Delinois, and his brother, Antonio, were named as co-conspirators...
...All are apparently waiting to see if Manigat will be able to build a power base capable of curbing the military...
...Residential and commercial taxes have also been raised slightly...
...After about 4,000 tons were dumped, the press reported the true nature of the import and the possible health hazard...
...few people have money to shop...
...Scarce U. S. dollars can be exchanged on the black market 20 per cent above the official rate...
...has an office of the Narcotics Enforcement Administration in Port-au-Prince...
...The brothers stated they were importing fertilizer for a cotton plantation in the area...
...aided Jean-Claude Duvalier even though his government was undemocratic, incompetent, corrupt, and uninterested in addressing the needs of the Haitians...
...And he has -by passing the matter along to the military and insisting they deal with their own personnel...
...On March 9, moreover, a Federal grand jury formally indicted Colonel Jean-Claude Paul, commander of the notorious Dessalines Battalion, charging him with providing a "secure airstrip" on his farm for the shipment of some 200 pounds of cocaine to the U.S...
...This has added to the hard times...
...His government has yet to prove its commitment to civil liberties, its honesty or its competence...
...many foreign investors have closed their factories and left the country...
...The U.S...
...The most urgent one is financing, because the economy, always shaky, has slowed to a virtual halt...
...After all, he told me during a lengthy interview, the U.S...
...The Presidential allotment of $10,000 a month has been reduced to $8,000...
...He is not responsible for the actions of the military...
...The U.S...
...Perhaps...
...The new President, elected January 17 in a clearly rigged military-run election, sits behind a modern desk in the elaborate white domed Palace...
...While in exile he was a professor in the United States, Jamaica, Trinidad and Venezuela, and he always espoused a belief in democratic principles...
...His government, he maintains, is a vast improvement...
...He has thrown himself into the breach to play a role that desperately needs to be played...
...and after the November 29 debacle the U.S...
...He is an affable, intelligent man with grave problems...
...Manigat does have attractive personal credentials, however...
...The situation vis-à-vis Panamanian President Eric Arturo Delvalle and General Manuel Antonio Noriega is a frightening paradigm...
...It is speculated that Manigat, who spent the last eight of his 23 years in exile in Venezuela as a political science professor at the Simon Bolivar University, was able to negotiate gasoline contracts through personal contacts...
...That may have been a factor in his rise to power...
...Meanwhile, the population of Gonaïves fears contamination of its air, its water and its marine life...
...A few weeks ago there was an acrossthe-board 10 per cent cut in government and Armed Forces' salaries...
...if, as a condition for that aid, he must turn against the military-investigate the aborted election, or extradite Colonel Paul-he may not survive...
...The four front-runners of the November election-Marc Bazin, Louis Déjoie, Gérard Gourgue, and Sylvio Claude, have issued no statements since Manigat's inauguration...
...Various international nonprofit agencies continue to make contributions to the welfare of Haitian citizens, including CARE and many denominations of missionaries...
...If he does not receive more American aid, he could be financially unable to govern...
...Père Aristide, the fiery young priest who led Leftist youth in street demonstrations last year, has been calm since the attack on his life in the summer...
...The U.S...
...is punishing his administration, he says, for abuses that occurred before he came to power...
...Besides, the aborted balloting last November 29, when 35 people were shot down at the polls, made it clear that guns, not words, still determine political power here...
...As a candidate in the November election, he condemned its destruction by violence...
...Nonetheless, Manigat came to power under the aegis of the military and has been in office very briefly...
...Opposition groups are at present quiet...
...On his political skills he is staking both the future of Haiti and his own life...
...Businessmen who habitually avoided customs duties via a few handouts now find that their Patentes (authorization certificates) have been computerized...
...spends $37.5 million annually here for health care, family planning, reforestation, education and job-training...
...When I interviewed President Manigat two weeks earlier, he dismissed reports of Colonel Paul's impending troubles as inventions of the press...
Vol. 71 • March 1988 • No. 5
