8-18-05,10:13am

The Lavalas Family party (FL) of exiled President Jean Bertrand Aristide has registered to participate in Haiti’s occupation-run nationwide elections scheduled for later this fall, much to the dismay of the party’s popular base.

Former FL parliamentarians Rudy Hériveaux, Louis Gérald Gilles and Yvon Feuillé registered the party at the Port-au-Prince electoral headquarters on the afternoon of Aug. 8, the final day for parties to file. No deadline has yet been set for parties to name their candidates.To date, Aristide has not personally repudiated the outspoken threesome for their entrance into the occupation elections on the party’s behalf. For weeks preceding their registration, the three former parliamentarians repeatedly announced that they would run and claimed to be in touch with Aristide.

“We registered to participate in the election, which we will win, in order to end the political persecutions, arbitrary arrests and detentions and the summary executions our members and sympathizers have been subject to,” Hériveaux told Reuters.

But most of the FL’s “members and sympathizers” targeted by the de facto regime unequivocally reject any participation in the “selections,” as they are called on the street, saying the Washington-promoted polling is just an attempt to consummate and legitimize the Feb. 29, 2004 coup in which U.S. Special Forces soldiers kidnapped and exiled Aristide. In past months, several high-level FL councils have also rejected participation in the occupation elections.

“There are many positions taken by the Lavalas Family, and that of Gilles, Hériveaux and Feuillé is one of the positions,” said Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the National Popular Party (PPN), which along with several FL-affiliated popular organizations has called on the Haitian people to shun the elections and fingerprint-and-photo-bearing electoral cards. “We don’t see how their participation in a farce will lead to the freedom of the political prisoners they claim to champion. The leadership has not set the record clear. Nobody knows who is the real Lavalas. But it is clear that the grassroots, the base, has borne the brunt of the repression, and they stick to the position of demanding a return to constitutional rule and the physical return of President Aristide before any elections. The PPN stands with the victims of repression and not with politicians who are trying make a deal with the occupation forces.” Lavarice Gaudin, a leader of the Miami-based popular organization Veye Yo, also pointed to the FL’s confusing conduct. “The problem is not really with Gilles, Feuillé and Hériveaux, who everyone knows are renegades,” Gaudin said at the weekly Veye Yo meeting in Miami on Aug. 5. “The problem is the rest of the Lavalas leadership which tolerates them. Why are they still in the party? Why can they speak in its name? Is there no discipline? Even look at [former FL senator] Dany Toussaint, who openly called for Aristide’s overthrow. He has never been expelled.”

Since the coup, Haiti has been repressively and disastrously ruled by Washington-selected puppet technocrats and militarily occupied, first by the U.S., France and Canada (the coup’s sponsors) and presently by the Brazilian-led United Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH).

Even according to official figures, the vast majority of Haitians reject the coming elections. The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), whose figures many suspect are inflated, claim that, in the past three months, 1.5 million, scarcely 33%, of Haiti’s 4.5 million eligible voters have registered to vote, despite a vigorous propaganda campaign to convince them. The population has instead heeded the rejectionist call of the PPN and Lavalas base.

“We will not fall into the trap of getting electoral cards, and we will not participate in the election/selections which the occupation forces and the de facto government of [President Boniface] Alexandre and [Prime Ministers Gérard] Latortue want to shove down the people’s throat,” declared the PPN’s Georges Honorat in an Aug. 8 press conference in Port-au-Prince. He denounced the MINUSTAH’s recent distribution of flyers around Haiti vilifying PPN for its stand against the sham elections. “The PPN has always clearly said that it will participate in elections when the conditions are right,” Honorat said. “But today, we will not go to elections under an occupation.” He called the upcoming polling a “mascarade” to put in place a “puppet president and parliament.”

Meanwhile, the CEP said nationwide municipal elections scheduled for Oct. 9 would be postponed until late December. It also moved legislative and presidential elections forward from Nov. 13 to Nov. 6, and run-offs from Dec. 18 to Dec. 11. Most election observers, and even CEP officials, doubt that this timetable can be kept. Voter registration was also extended one month until September 15.

The U.S. and European establishment’s International Crisis Group (ICG) issued an Aug. 3 report which sounded an alarm that the planned elections were in deep trouble. “Massive technical, political and security obstacles must be overcome very quickly or Haiti's elections -- municipal and local in October, parliamentary and presidential in November -- will have to be postponed,” the report opens. Calling Haiti a “failed state,” the ICG acknowledged that occupation authorities might not be able to overcome the obstacles, in which case, “turnout is likely to be unsatisfactory, credibility of the outcome will suffer, and the government's legitimacy will be in question.” The ICG even questioned whether the date targeted by the Bush administration for the new government’s inauguration might not have to be pushed back.

“The constitutionally designated date of 7 February 2006, when the new president and parliament are to be sworn-in, could also be postponed if necessary,” the ICG concluded. “In a country that is slipping every day towards permanent failed state status and whose constitution has been largely ignored for years, keeping a symbolic date must not be the first priority.”

Among the other political parties which have registered for the elections are the National Reconstruction Front (FRN) of former “rebel” leader Guy Philippe, the ADEBAH of former justice minister Camille Leblanc, the MOCHRENA of right-wing Pastor Luc Mésadieu, the Haitian Christian Democratic Party (PDCH) de Marie Denise Claude, the MNP28 of Dejean Bélizaire, the social-democratic Fusion of Serge Gilles, the Great Center Right Front of former Duvalierist minister Hubert Deronceray, the Movement for National Reconstruction (MRN) of Dr. Jean Henold Buteau, the OLAH of former Duvalierist strongman Franck Romain. Even the de facto Prime Minister’s nephew and security chief, Youri Latortue, has registered a contender: the Artibonite in Action party (LAA).

Assembly industry capitalist Charles Henri Baker, the number two of the former Washington-concocted “civil” opposition front “Group of 184,” also announced he will run for president as an independent. He has placed ads on several of the capital’s bourgeois stations soliciting the signatures of 100,000 supporters, which he must present to the CEP by Sep. 10. One wonders why, as the leader of “184 organizations,” he has to resort to radio advertizing to collect the signatures.