*   *   *   HAITI INFO   *   *   *

            News direct from the people and organizations 
             of Haiti's democratic and popular movement

                    1 November 1996, Vol. 4, #25

       ***   HAITI INFO now has photos in every issue   ***

Contents:
                       LAVALAS FACING CHALLENGES
                       POLICE SHOOT PROTESTING CITIZENS
                       JUSTICE AND PEACE AGAINST LAVALAS
                       NATIONAL PRODUCTION: UPDATE
Popular Culture 
    & Struggle:        DEBATE ON CREOLE
Close-up:              CORRUPTION


Stories:
                       LAVALAS FACING CHALLENGES

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov. 1 - A smouldering crisis at the Conseil 
Electoral Provisoire (CEP) which led to its dissolution by 
President Rene Preval has caused political parties to criticize 
the Lavalas government.

Six of the CEP's eight members attempted to resign in October 
after they tried and failed to eject member Jesi Chancy Manigat. 
The CEP, formed in December, 1994, had already seen many personnel 
changes, including the resignation of its first president, and was 
heavily criticized by opposition parties during parliamentary 
elections. It was supposed to organize regional assembly elections 
last summer, but to date has not shown signs of any preparations.

To resolve the crisis, on Oct. 15 Preval  called for the judicial, 
executive and parliamentary branches to designate three new 
members each by Oct. 30. (Only five of the nine names have been 
announced.)

The government was immediately accused of trying to stack the 
body. KONAKOM called the move "a blow to democracy" and said 
Lavalas was after a "one-party" system. More significant, five 
parties - FNCD, Generation 2004, Mouvement de Reconstruction 
Nationale, PANPRA and RDNP - not only broke their silence but 
banded together as "the democratic opposition" (even though most 
of them supported the coup and defacto regimes) and attacked 
Lavalas for unemployment, insecurity, "political repression," 
"institutional crisis" and the "unconstitutional and arbitrary" 
formation of the new CEP.

The government got an additional slap from its arrogant American 
tutors. According to Agence Haitienne de Presse, on Oct. 22, Larry 
Crandall of U.S. AID wrote to CEP ex-President Pierre-Michel 
Sajous to demand the furniture, computers, communication equipment 
and the key to the CEP office. The embassy said AID rented the 
office and provided equipment for the CEP, so if it is dissolved, 
AID wants its items back. Parliamentarians and others have 
expressed their outrage over the U.S. "impertinence." 

(In the meantime, even if coming from its tutor, the Haitian 
government has been pushed too far - to the point of humiliation - 
on the issue of the 160,000 pages of stolen documents. Speaking 
through its Minister of Foreign Affairs, it said: "The Haitian 
government does not think the [U.S.] military had the right to 
remove them," and continues to demand them in their original 
form.)

MANUH Prolongation on the Table

Another issue troubling the Lavalas regime is the Nov. 30 
expiration of the Mission d'Appui des Nations Unies en Haiti 
(MANUH). The Lavalas camp is riven with division: the presidents 
of the Lavalas-dominated Senate and Chamber of Deputies, as well 
as Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, a member of Preval's private cabinet, 
have all said they oppose the extension. Numerous rights, church, 
and popular groups have also taken to the airways to denounce 
MANUH's inaction and question the mission's presence. 

Campaigning hard for the extension, the embassy has said 
repeatedly it wants the troops to stay, and today, almost two 
dozen Haitian-American police arrived "for six months, and maybe 
longer." Both MANUH and the embassy have also been visiting 
provincial cities to lobby locals for the extension, and U.S. 
Undersecretary of State for Interamerican Affairs also stopped by.

So far, Preval has been trying to convince the public that he can 
take his distance from his tutors (although on the fundamental 
issues, he has marched in step to Washington's tune), saying he is 
"studying" the situation. Despite Preval's "hesitation" however, 
one can bet that, one way or another, MANUH will be staying on 
past Nov. 30.

Finally, Lavalas is facing another potential division: this 
weekend in Jacmel, ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide will launch 
a new party, Fanmi Lavalas [Lavalas Family], and open a regional 
Aristide Foundation office. He told Inter Press Service that his 
new party will not "break with other political parties," but 
members of parties in the Lavalas platform say they were not 
invited. Also, Mayor Joseph Emmanuel Charlemagne, a critic of 
Aristide in the past, announced he will be in Jacmel too, giving a 
concert, which has been interpreted as a counter-gathering. 
Charlemagne, in a vague way, has claimed that is not the case. 
Time will tell.

[PHOTO: Sajous. CAPTION: Pierre-Michel Sajous, then president of 
the CEP, reads results of the presidential elections last 
December. [DAMO-Libete]]


               POLICE SHOOT PROTESTING CITIZENS

LA SAVANE, Oct. 23 - At least two people were shot by police in 
this popular neighborhood in Les Cayes yesterday.

The officers, together with a justice of the peace and an 
Electricite d'Haiti (EDH) official, had come to disconnect illegal 
electrical connections, and when people protested, police 
reportedly shot in the air. Then, witnesses say, some people threw 
rocks and shells, and police shot directly at the protestors as 
well as passersby, injuring at least two and possibly four. At one 
rented house, police smashed down the door and arrested an old 
person who was merely a renter. They also arrested a number of 
others, roughing some up before their releases. Angry La Savane 
residents took to the streets and erected burning tire barricades.

"That is the first time this has happened. Even during the defacto 
period, they never came into La Savane and shot people," said one 
man angrily right after the shooting.

"There were not that many people here that they needed to shoot," 
said an outraged woman. Another woman added: "The police do not 
have the right to shoot at people... Us, the people, we are 
lighting tires everywhere and we'll fight back!"

One man said police hit and knocked down his mother, who was 
merely watching. 

"What makes them do this is that people are starting to be 
mobilize," he observed. "Now we are in a democracy and everyone 
wants to live like people."

Two of the people shot were just passing by. One, on his way home 
from visiting his sick father, said ,as he waited for an operation 
to remove the bullet: "They were shooting straight at people. I 
wasn't even involved."

EDH Does Not Serve La Savane

While some La Savane residents say they have a right to the hook-
ups because there are no jobs for them to earn money to pay  
electric bills, others admit it is wrong, but said they are 
outraged with the attack because many have asked EDH to install 
legal hook-ups and have been told they have to buy a 300-gourde 
(US$20) meter base, pay a deposit, buy the cable, and are then 
made to wait for six months to a year.

"When you go, they say, 'We don't have material. The material is 
not here yet.' But can you sit in the darkness? No, you have to 
make a connection to get a little light," said one man who bought 
a base and is still waiting for EDH. 

"We know that there are guys in the country who owe EDH millions 
and never pay. They never arrest them. There are people pillaging 
the state, they never do anything about that, either. Why is it 
the poor, that have been fighting since 1986, that they arrest?" 
said a man who has an illegal hook-up. "I agree I am a thief, but 
the ones doing the arrests are even bigger thieves." 

Like many other residents, he is outraged that Lavalas officials, 
who used to struggle with the people against corruption and 
repression, are now acting like "macoutes."

"It is the same as the de facto regime... They took away the 
defactos and replaced them with Lavalas," said another man.

People Protest, Officials Promise

Today, hundreds took to the streets to demand the release of those 
arrested and that the police be fired and judged. Most schools 
were closed.

Sen. Gelerme Laguerre, president of the Senate Commission of 
Justice and Security and a representative of the South department, 
condemned the police and demanded an investigation, while Mayor 
Frantz Guillite said they should be more calm next time something 
like that happens, Agence Haitienne de Presse reported.

Officials say there will be "an inquiry" to determine which 
officers shot at people. No other concrete steps have been 
announced. 


            JUSTICE AND PEACE AGAINST LAVALAS

FORT LIBERTE, Oct. 20 - Over 120 delegates from eight of the 
country's nine dioceses gathered here for four days at the first 
national congress of Justice et Paix since it was founded 27 years 
ago.

After four days of meetings, prayers and workshops, the delegates 
published a three-page declaration decreeing 1997 "Year of 
Mobilization of Justice and Peace" and listing demands for the 
church, the government and the international community.

In what appeared to be a reference to the church hierarchy, which 
has openly opposed the democratic movement, the delegates said the 
church should not forget its mission of liberation and justice, 
and said: "Organize yourself so that everyone can organize !"

Justice et Paix noted that impunity, corruption and favoritism are 
a "cancer" still infecting Haiti, and called for justice: "We are 
obliged to ask the government: What has it done really to make the 
truth about crimes known, to make victims get justice and 
reparations, to organize another, better, justice system, to fight 
corruption?"

It also criticized the U.N. for never disarming or dismantling the 
paramilitary networks, and for the failure of the U.N. to get the 
FRAPH papers "taken arbitrarily by the U.S.," returned to Haiti: 
"The U.N. does not have a real political will to reestablish peace 
and help the young Haitian democracy."

Finally, the congress condemned the government's structural 
adjustment policy, and demanded that the economic and social 
rights of the country, as guaranteed in U.N. conventions in 1948 
and 1966, be respected. 

"Our congress took place near the Dauphin plantation. That is a 
big symbol. When the U.S. needed sisal during [World War II], they 
stole our land, planted sisal and built a factory. Today, they 
don't need it anymore. The factory is falling apart, the land is 
spent because they sucked out all of its life," it noted. "We ask 
the government, Parliament and civil society associations: What 
economic program do they really have? Do they want to let all 
citizens know about it? What place is there for social justice in 
the equitable redistribution of the country's riches?"

The declaration ended asking people to organize and struggle for a 
better country.


                 NATIONAL PRODUCTION: UPDATE

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov. 1 - Feeling the heat from angry distillers, 
although the government has not budged from its "free trade," 
open-borders policy, it announced some palliative steps to answer 
complaints about clairin made with imported alcohol. 

First, the Ministries of Commerce and Health issued a warning 
against faux clairin, saying it is possibly a health hazard (they 
sent a sample overseas for analysis, they said), and at an Oct. 26 
meeting with over 1,000 planters and distillers, Minister of 
Commerce Fresnel Germain announced police can detain vehicles 
transporting faux clairin. Then, yesterday, the Minister of 
Finance announced that importers (the Mevs Group, Dr. Reginald 
Boulos) who, in order to avoid paying tariffs, told customs their 
imports of alcohol for consummation was "denatured," will be fined 
according to the law.


Popular Culture & Struggle:     DEBATE ON CREOLE

"For centuries they would not let us speak Creole. They shut our 
mouths. They sent us inside ourselves: we did not have the right 
to exist... Today, we need to plan our battle. Creole is weak. It 
took many blows. We must liberate Creole, and while we liberate 
it, improve it and enrich it."

Those were the words of Richard Chateaudegat, not a "creole-ist" 
or a creole "militant," but a communicator in the independence 
movement on his island. Chateaudegat is president of the 
association that oversees Radio APAL (Ase Plere Annou Lite or 
Enough Crying, Let's Fight), the first Creole radio in Martinique, 
founded in 1981 by groups struggling for the island's independence 
from France.

To mark International Day of Creole (Oct. 28), SAKS (Sosyete 
Animate Kominikasyon Sosyal) organized a debate where Chateaudegat 
and Jose Ignacio Lopez Vigil, a Cuban who has worked in Cuba, 
Mexico, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and now in Ecuador, 
spoke about the role of Creole and of indigenous languages in 
general in people's struggles. Ignacio is the Vice President of 
AMARC (World Association of Community Radios) for Latin America. 
Chateaudegat is V.P. for the Caribbean. The two were here at a 
seminar for the country's community radio stations organized by 
SAKS.

Repression of Creole 

"In Martinique there are two languages... One is on top rung of 
the ladder. French is used in school, in all institutional 
communication. It is the language of 'civilized people', 
intellectuals 'who study Greek,' of people who are 'people'... The 
other language is on the bottom rung. That language cannot get 
into the places French does. It cannot get into schools, the 
media," Chateaudegat said in a Creole slightly different from 
Haitian Creole in its pronunciation and vocabulary.

Chateaudegat said that ever since the French colonization of his 
island (although now an "Overseas Department," it is still 
essentially a colony), French and Creole have been in 
confrontation with one another, with intellectuals "doing 
everything they can to crush the Creole language"

"But in reality, the French language in our society is less a 
means of communication than a way of appearing." With French, one 
has access to certain levels of society, privileges, political 
posts, "and you become a person." The power structure does not 
want Creole to be considered equal,  "because the day Creole is 
equal, French will lose its privilege and everyone will be 'a 
person.'" 

While growing up, although his mother, a peasant, did not speak a 
word of French, Chateaudegat was forbidden to use Creole.

"We can understand why," he said. "Colonialism really destroyed us 
in our heads. It made us ashamed of what we are. Ashamed of our 
color, our skin, our race. Ashamed of our culture, of our music. 
Ashamed of our language. It's what I could call the 'vye neg' 
(literally, 'man who is no good,' like an unsophisticated bumpkin) 
complex... [It] followed us since 1635, when the colonists came 
and installed us as slaves... because we were 'savages,' because 
we did not have 'culture.'" 

Chateaudegat also said people's desire that their children read 
and write French is also the result of a valid, but misplaced, 
struggle against privilege and inequality.

Over the past two decades, there have been advances for Creole, as 
a result of the nationalist movement and the birth of a national 
conscience. Now, of the 30 radio stations, four broadcast 
primarily in Creole. Creole is also now in the schools and the 
university. 

Today, although 90 percent of the island can speak French, "at 
that very moment, people use French less and Creole more to 
communicate, and that shows again that French is not a means of 
communication." 

"For me, the colonialist plan, which was to assimilate the 
population 'outre-mer'... to make us French, is a plan that 
definitively failed. If they were not able to make us French 
before, they cannot do it now," Chateaudegat continued, but added 
that the struggle to value and proliferate the use of Creole needs 
to continue, "and the first combat is against ourselves," not only 
in Martinique but in Haiti, where he was shocked to see and hear 
so much French.

"Haiti has been independent for almost two centuries, but the vye 
neg complex has been following you even after independence!" 

"As long as Creole is not allowed into  places reserved for 
French, we have not yet won," he ended. "Creole should have the 
right to be used, without asking 'please,' everywhere people 
speak. When we reach that, the two languages can live together."

Language and Voice

Ignacio, who said he is "illiterate in Creole" and spoke French, 
talked more broadly, about the importance of indigenous languages 
in Latin America, where two other colonial languages - Spanish and 
Portuguese - dominate. But before one can even discuss what 
language to use, Ignacio pointed out, one has to have access to 
the media:

"What is at stake here and all over Latin America is the question: 
who has a right to the 'public voice,' the right to speak?"

In Mexico, home to 85 million people, nine families own all of the 
radio and television stations. In Uruguay, three families, mixed 
with the military (the Defense Ministry gives out frequencies 
there) have all the radio frequencies. In Latin America, he said, 
90% of radio frequencies are controlled by the private sector, 5% 
by the state, and only 4-5% percent in the hands of "the third 
sector," which he called "civil society." 

"So it is not only a question of language. It is a question of 
having the means of communications in the hands of civil society," 
he said. "That is a strategic battle." 

Ignacio said millions of Latin Americans speak indigenous tongues, 
and that "the story  of Martinique is the story of all over. The 
dictator outlaws the language, because language is communication. 
Language is force."

Ignacio concluded by posing a question to the audience, made up of 
members of popular media as well as representatives of 18 
community radios: What kind of language should be used? "Pure" 
Creole? A Creole that has French or English words in it? 

Debate from Radio Members

The audience immediately opened the discussion, journalists 
criticizing Creole that is "not Creole" because it has French 
construction, or incorporates French words, and others 
disagreeing, pointing out that Creole differs according to the 
region of the country, and the social class and education of the 
speaker. Willard Vancol of Radyo Vwa Klodi Mizo added that 
language is not frozen, and picks up the words it needs. 

"Our identity is not frozen," Chateaudegat agreed. "It is not in a 
book or inside a can of film. It is not a frozen thing... but it 
should resist." He noted that the current U.N. occupation will 
certainly leave traces.

Ignacio said that community radio stations should operate in the 
exact language or languages their listeners use to communicate, 
not in Spanish or French, or in a "pure" version of the indigenous 
tongue.

Gotson Pierre of CRAD, a popular education organization, noted the 
heavy influence of ideology and education, which makes journalists 
denigrate or avoid Creole.

"The defense of Creole is a political struggle, linked to the 
popular struggle," he added, "and the attacks are not only coming 
from French but also from English" and that all aspects of Haitian 
culture are being hit by cultural invasions from imperialist 
countries.

Andre Joseph of a radio in Fort Liberte angrily noted that despite 
all the government's propaganda about the use of Creole, French is 
really the only official language: it is used in court, 
parliament, etc. Many community radio participants from around the 
country expressed their frustration with how Creole is denigrated. 
Some people say they do not want to listen to the community radios 
because, since they are in Creole, they are "woy woy" or "cheap," 
participants reported.

Another debate was over music. Should music in Creole only be 
played? Or only music with a political message the radio's 
organizations endorse? Or music that will attract youth who are 
already influenced by commercial stations and want to hear rap?

The meeting ended with participants - local as well as the 
visitors - pledging to work together to protect and promote Creole 
and indigenous culture as part of their continuing struggle to 
give the people "the public voice."

[PHOTO: publications, a cassette recorder and a tape. CAPTION: A 
look at how organizations use Creole to advance the popular 
struggle.]


Close-up:              CORRUPTION

Airplanes sold at cut rates. Money missing. Suspicious contracts. 
Mayors accused to major theft. Projects never completed. 

The government is riddled with corruption, up to the highest 
levels. It's nothing new. The administration bequeathed by the 
Duvaliers was already full of corruption, and while the first 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide administration may have had the will to 
begin a clean-up, seven months was not much time. 

With the three-year coup d'etat period, corruption reached new 
heights. One of the more well-known scandals is the sale of scores 
of cars and other vehicles. In June, a list of at least 60 names 
of soldiers, de facto officials and others implicated in the theft 
or sale of government machinery and cars was leaked to Libete. 
According to the weekly, many of the papers authorizing the 
vehicles' transfers were signed by Max Pean, who was president of 
the Cour Superieure des Comptes et du Contentieux Administratif 
(CSCCA), the government accounting office, during the de facto 
regime. (The current CSCCA was installed and operated during the 
coup.) This month the government finally began to move on the 
dossier, and arrested Pean, who, along with CSCCA ex-Vice 
President Carl F. Herard, resigned from the court earlier this 
year. He was scheduled to be tried on Oct. 24, but two different 
judges announced they could not hear the case (one for "personal 
reasons" and the other due to his relationship with Pean) and it 
was postponed. Last week warrants were also issued for Herard, and 
for three ex-de facto ministers: Charles Beaulieu (Finances), 
Marc-Henry Rousseau (Public Works) and Jean Carmelo Pierre-Louis 
(Public Works). 

Faced with the uncovering of more and more cases of corruption, 
the Rene Preval government had to react in order to avoid total 
moral discredit, especially since the accusations come from 
sectors and people like Mayor Joseph Emmanuel Charlemagne and 
Bishop Willy Romelus, who support the government and Lavalas 
power. But how far can it go when the ones implicated are those in 
power as well as the Haitian bourgeoisie, whom Preval and his 
ministers do not cease to court, to the point that it has become 
one of Lavalas' social bases? Won't we see the same demagogy 
which characterized the justice issue, with life prison sentences 
in absentia for Col. Michel Francois and Lt. Emery Pyram, that 
give testimony, once and for all, to the government's good will, 
while nothing is done for the millions of victims of the coup 
d'etat, whosae executioners and their accomplices circulate at 
will, here and abroad, when they are not lunching, from time to 
time when the deal is a sweet one, with the highest levels of the 
Lavalas regime?

Look at some of the worst cases:

The contract between Terminal Varreux (the Mevs Group private 
wharf and terminal) and the Haitian government, signed during 
Robert Malval's brief stint as prime minister in 1993, designates 
the Mevs to stock government gasoline reserves for a total payment 
of 567 million gourdes (about US$39 million) over ten years, 
according to Le Nouvelliste. In front of the Senate on Oct. 16, 
Malval recognized the contract has questionable aspects and should 
be broken. Mevs brothers Gregory and Fritz have held press 
conferences and visited parliament to lobby their case, claiming 
Haiti needs a "strategic" gas reserve.

Last March, a scandal involving the sale of six government 
airplanes by the CSCCA and the Direction Generale des Impots 
(DGI), the tax office, at low prices, and without following proper 
procedure, emerged. The planes were reportedly sold in the spring 
of 1995, under the administration of Prime Minister Smarck Michel. 
Sen. Jean Robert Sabalat and other Senators announced an inquiry, 
and the CSCCA, the DGI and various officials launched accusations 
at one another. The CSCCA maintained the airplanes were still 
state property, but three months later admitted they had been sold 
under irregular conditions. Then, the affair disappeared.

In June, Sen. Sabalat again appeared in the press, with a nine-
page letter where he accused the Aristide government and close 
associates of Aristide, notably the boys home Lafanmi Selavi, of 
improperly handling state money. The accusation is rooted in a 
US$20 million gift from the government of Taiwan that many 
understood was to be used entirely for repairs to the almost 
impassable Carrefours road. Work never seemed to get started, and 
accusations of corruption had surfaced. In his letter, Sabalat 
announced that only US$7 million was for the road, and that the 
US$13 million was "in the shadows." He said 50 million gourdes 
(about US$3.33 million) went to Lafanmi Selavi, 30 million gourdes 
to "Alpha for Development" and another 15 million to "Alpha," two 
projects not previously known to the public. Lafanmi responded by 
saying the boys home was paid to construct the Tabarre road (the 
only major new road built in the country since Aristide's return, 
and which runs by his home and his foundation headquarters). The 
home had contracted the work out, and did not reveal the cost of 
the road. No contract with Taiwan listing the recipients of the 
money was ever made public. There was no follow-up by parliament. 
The Carrefours road is a mess.

Other cases include the "National Education Plan," funded to the 
tune of several million U.S. dollars, that has not yet produced 
anything more than a three-day conference at Club Med, the mayors' 
offices of Carrefours and Delmas accused of stealing, and 
corruption inside the state utilities.

Haiti Info asked two Deputies from the north about the corruption:

"We could say the Haitian state is corrupt through and through. 
The majority of officials in the state apparatus are corrupt," 
said Dep. Jacques Garcon of St. Louis du Nord, a member of Pouvoir 
de Rassemblement des Organisations Populaires.

Regarding the contract with the Mevs family, he said he did not 
know the details, "but one thing I have no doubts on is that once 
a contract is signed between two people, two branches of this 
corrupt compradore Haitian bourgeoise, I always doubt it." 

Garcon also noted that the airplane issue "cooled off" and thinks 
that is because "People just do things among friends. I think that 
Sabalat was one of the ones trying to buy one of the airplanes... 
"

On the US$20 million and the Carrefours road, he remembered that 
the Public Works minister at the time justified the lack of 
progress on the road by saying some of the money was for a health 
center, too. 

"Okay, if the minister says, there was money for a health center. 
Was the health center built? No. Was the Carrefours road repaired? 
A few little things were done, demagogy, just to put something in 
front of people's eyes, but the $20 million was not used in that 
work," he said. "There are people with papers saying some of the 
money was for alphabetization. They try to launder the money so 
people do not see... There is something fishy going on."

In Port-de-Paix, near Garcon's district, as all over the country, 
there was also money for the "Petits Projets de la Presidence" 
(PPP), a series of projects the Aristide administration 
publicized. Garcon said a great deal of money was wasted or 
pilfered.

"There was money for a town square, where they only put up two 
little walls and said it was a 'kiosk' and the money stayed with 
them. Then the work ended because they said they did not have 
enough money. If we went through all the cases, we could spend the 
whole day. But in general, those cases reveal how the state is 
corrupt," he said.

Garcon is very skeptical of the announcement by certain Senators 
that they are looking into the Mevs contract.

"I criticize that commission and others," he said, because they 
have worked "to order for the government [on passing the 
neoliberal laws] and under the diktats of the imperialists, and 
it's those same people that are part of the commission to study 
the contract."

The CSCCA cannot clean up the corruption, either: "How was that 
court formed? I think it should be declared null and void. Since 
it was formed during the coup, I know its decisions will never be 
in the interests of the people," he added, and reminded that if 
Pean, the ex-president, is being arrested, the other judges 
"should be locked up, too." 

Garcon said he is fed up.

"The people's struggle is getting slapped by the very people it 
counted on, and I think that at this moment a purification should 
be done, where we can separate ourselves from these people and 
take our destiny in our hands," he concluded.

Another Deputy, Jose Joseph of Ouanaminthe, from Pati Louvri 
Barye, part of the Lavalas platform, listed the recent reports of 
corruption and said: "The situation has been developing in the 
country for some time, but we regret that during the period of the 
return to constitutionality, it went even further. Today, they are 
stealing the goods of the state and there is nobody in power that 
is serious about punishing these people." 

Joseph thinks all officials involved with the Mevs contract should 
be questioned. 

"If you look at the contract, it is thievery," he said, and 
angrily continued: "Don't you see they [the Mevs family] have put 
the country under economic dictatorship? You can see, as a 
journalist, you turn to the right, they are there, you turn to the 
left, they are there. The return to constitutional order was for 
their profit. During the coup d'etat, those people had all the 
monopolies in their hands: cement, sugar, flour. Now we have a 
government the people elected that is supposed to do development 
for the country, but you can see the quantity of scandals they are 
mixed up in!"

The Deputy is not surprised the airplane scandal disappeared.

"Well, they say, 'You wash your dirty laundry inside the family,'" 
he said. Parliament tried to look into it, "but at the executive 
level, it got blocked, because of who was implicated. Don't you 
notice how CSCCA and DGI always pass the buck?" 

Joseph also called for the cleaning out of the CSCCA, as well as 
the justice system, so that corruption can be fought.

"One of the problems of Lavalas is that there is a lot of 
corruption going on right inside Lavalas, and they organize 
themselves to block investigations," he continued. "We can assume 
the [US$20 million] has disappeared. If you go to Carrefours, you 
see nothing has been done. If $20 million  worth of work had been 
done, you would see it!" 

The money for the "National Education Plan" appears to be gone, 
too, "just like the money to construct schools," he said.

"Parliament is one of the places people have confidence in, that 
could do something on corruption, but parliament has not yet been 
able to fill this role," he concluded. Other issues have taken up 
its time, like the months spent on last years budget.

"To deal with corruption, the problem is that you have to go in to 
find the source of the thing, and I am telling you, the ones doing 
corruption are the ones in the entourage of power of the 
executive, and they will not permit nosing around," he said.

[PHOTO: Narcisse in handcuffs. CAPTION: Charles Edouard Narcisse, 
director of Cimenterie d'Haiti, being led, handcuffed, to prison 
on Sept. 26 to await his trial on charges of corruption. [Haiti-
en-Marche]]


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