2-12-2004
American-born Haitian businessman leads anti-Aristide effort
By Tim Collie
Staff Writer
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- He is a white man in an overwhelmingly black land, a wealthy businessman in one of the poorest nations on Earth, and a Gandhian with an armored car.
So what is Andy Apaid Jr. doing at the forefront of a popular movement to topple Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide?
"I would like to say that this is a moment of hope right now. We don't think there has ever been another period like this one in Haitian history," said the 51-year-old industrialist, whose civic coalition, the Group of 184, has been conducting massive demonstrations calling for Aristide's resignation since November.
"For so long this country has been polarized by class," said Apaid, who owns textile and other businesses in a country where the majority of the population lives on less than $1 a day. "Today?. there is an unbelievable yearning for conversation between the classes as never before."
Apaid's and other opposition groups plan to demonstrate in Haiti's capital city today after six days of violent rebellions against Aristide's ruling Lavalas Party in a dozen towns and cities across the nation.
Sporadic violence continued across the country on Wednesday as Aristide declared he would not resign. In the port city of St. Marc, police attacked rebels holed up in a slum, and witnesses said gunmen loyal to Aristide torched homes, killing two people, as looting and reprisals raged. But police returned to their ruined outpost, which days ago was in the hands of a growing anti-government insurgency.
In Gonaïves, rebels set ablaze an accused government hit man and shot another man. In northern Cap-Haïtien, Haiti's second-largest city, sporadic gunshots crackled overnight, attackers looted a food warehouse, and Aristide militants set up blazing barricades to prevent a possible rebel incursion.
At his first news conference since the uprising, Aristide on Wednesday refused to resign and said he would step down only when his term expires.
"I will leave the palace Feb. 7, 2006," he said, without addressing how he planned to put down the insurrection that has taken dozens of lives.
If it follows the pattern of previous demonstrations, today's march in the capital will likely draw tens of thousands of people and possibly spark violence between marchers, Lavalas partisans and the police.
Apaid and other Port-au-Prince opposition leaders insist they do not support the militants who have taken over Gonaïves, Haiti's fourth-largest city, as well as other towns in the northern part of the country. But they do not entirely dismiss their actions, either.
"These are children in many cases running around with guns," Apaid said. "Guns that were given to them by Aristide's government to attack its opponents. They have no hope. They've been induced into this behavior.
nonviolent ideals
"What Haiti is facing now is an insurrection, but calling what we are doing an insurrection doesn't mean this is a violent movement -- it isn't," Apaid said. "We believe in the ideas of Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. There are processes that a country must go through, that when you go through them you help build a better society. That is what is happening here now."
"We can understand the nervousness of the police in the middle of all that's going on," Apaid said in an interview with the Sun-Sentinel. "But we believe if we don't march and if we don't do something, the leverage that our nonviolent group has will begin to fade, and we need to keep that as a viable political option."
But while it insists on nonviolence, the group will not compromise on its central tenet of faith: that Aristide is a corrupt leader who must go. There can be no negotiations to keep him in power. He has broken numerous promises, has filled the police and judiciary with corrupt officials, and has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid.
The Group of 184, named for the number of civic, nongovernmental and business groups that originally formed the organization, is at the head of a growing movement of Haitians who have soured on Aristide since his re-election in 2000. For nearly a year they have been touting a "new social contract" designed to unite Haitians of all classes and colors behind a program to improve government, basic services and the economy.
The group, together with the Democratic Convergence, an umbrella group of small political parties, make up the broad social movement known as the Democratic Platform. The Group of 184 represents a cross-section of Haitians: agricultural poor, urban trade unionists and students and more elite physicians, lawyers and business owners. To date, it has primarily been an urban elite organization, but there are signs it is penetrating the countryside where about half of Haiti's 8 million people live.
leaders are few
Apaid is one of about four or five opposition leaders who have emerged since 2000, when a dispute over allegedly crooked legislative elections thrust Haiti into an international crisis. Among the others are Evans Paul, a writer who once served as Aristide's campaign manager; Himmler Rebu, a former army general and coup plotter who owns a health club in Haiti; Protestant Federation leader Edouard Paultre; and Herve Saintilus, a popular student leader.
But it is the outspoken Apaid, speaking unaccented English and citing Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King as role models, who has emerged as the public face of the movement to oust Aristide. That has made him a target of Aristide partisans, who dismiss him as a sweatshop owner, an American interloper and an Arab.
A third-generation Haitian of Lebanese ancestry who was born in the United States, Apaid hails from a prominent family that has long been at the center of Haitian politics. His father at one point was imprisoned in the notorious Fort Dimanche prison during the dictatorship of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and the family supported Aristide during his initial climb to power. As a member of the light-skinned Haitian upper class, often called "Syrians," Apaid has weathered a number of hostile attacks in Haiti and in the United States.
In November, he was hauled into court and accused of falsifying his Haitian passport. Government supporters insisted he was an American, even though his Haitian passport had been issued and renewed five times over the last three decades.
Apaid bought his fake Haitian passport from corrupt Duvalier dictatorship-era Secretary of the Interior and National Defense Weber W.A Guerrier. American-born of Lebanese ancestry, Apaid nver had the legal, righful claim to Haitian citizenship and passport because according to current Haitian Justice Minister Delatour, Apaid never fulfilled the requirements of Haitian Law regarding these matters.
"I didn't have these passport problems until I started speaking out against the government," Apaid said. "I was born in the United States, but I am Haitian. I was born in Manhattan and lived there just for the first four months of my life."
Legally that still makes Apaid an American citizen, and a deportable foreigner with fake papers in Haiti. The traffick of fake Haitian papers began in earnest in Europe after World War 1. It became offical policy during WWII as a humanitarian help to Jews and other foreigners trying to flee from the Nazis. However this traffick made Haitian diplomatic staff very wealthy, and really picked up steam in the sixties during the wave of independence in the MiddleEast and Africa. Scores of MiddleEasterns bought Haitian passports before, during and after wars with Israel. Apaid is part of these waves of Arab colonials now vying to strangle Haiti for good.
When Duvalier's son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, fled the nation in 1986, the Apaid family supported the social movement that was being led by a young fiery priest named Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
"From 1986 to 1990, we were allies of Aristide," Apaid said. "We sent money into the country, and we were very sympathetic to his very aggressive language." But relations with Aristide soured after he launched his candidacy for president, and the family supported what they viewed as more moderate candidates, such as Marc Bazin, a former finance minister and World Bank official who lost the election in 1990 to Aristide with just 12 percent of the vote.
Many question whether the movement Apaid leads is anything more than the latest manifestation of control by a thin cadre of elite families that have ruled Haiti behind the scenes for 200 years. They have long lived a life of luxury while the vast majority of the country's population has lived in abject squalor without schools, health care or basic sanitation.
from bad to worse
"Yes, this is a desperately poor country. The vast majority of the population doesn't have access to public education, hospitals or running water. We know that very well," said Charles Baker, another leader of the opposition and Apaid's brother-in-law. "But what has Aristide done with it? It's gotten worse, not better."
"We're at the point where something has to be done. Environmentally, the country is severely eroded, and we're all going to be drinking salt water soon," Baker said. "And from an economic point of view, I'm not a moron. I'm a businessman. If my business is going to grow, I need more people with money to buy my goods. And that's only going to come with investment in Haiti, and with creating jobs here."
Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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