PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov 16 (IPS) – The acrid black smoke of flaming barricades that filled the skies of Haiti this week signaled more than the mounting frustrations of many Haitians at the lack of justice and security.

Along with the tires and scraps of wood that shut down major roads and cities nationwide the last three days, the politics of national reconciliation – a condition of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s return to Haiti by 20,000 U.S.-led troops last year– appears to be going up in smoke as well.

The protests were over the murder of a popular legislator and the lack of disarmament by U.N. forces. Seven people died in three days of protests in the wake of last week’s killings of two prominent Members of Parliament connected to the Lavalas Political Platform (LPP), which is loyal to President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

Jean Hubert Feuille and Jean Gabriel Fortune were believed to have been killed by opponents of the president.

‘’We want reconciliation, but the macoutes don’t,’’ explained one member of the Association of Young Militants of the Arrondissement of Port Salut, a popular organization from the area represented by Feuille, the 31-year-old murdered deputy.

‘’Feuille was killed and we can’t reconcile with people who did that,’’ said the youth who, reflecting the continued fears for personal safety, spoke on condition of anonymity,

As the Caribbean country entered into second week of the sharpest political crisis since President Aristide’s return to power last October, grassroots organisations and government officials said political rapprochement between Aristide and his Lavalas movement with the various pro-coup sectors of Haitian society could be collapsing.

‘’President Aristide’s concept of reconciliation and justice is to be able to have a kind of balance so that the country can move forward without any catastrophe,’’ said Yvon Neptune, a spokesperson for Aristide.

‘’He has been giving a lot to certain sectors that have money, that supported the coup. He has made life easier for them. But what have they done to help the country? What have they done for the people so that life can be easier? We haven’t seen anything,’’ Neptune said.

He noted that anti-democratic sectors, that include old supporters of the Duvalier family dictatorship (1957-1986) as well as the small Haitian elite, have often made matters worse by continuing to commit acts of violence, and to block the electoral process and the institutionalisation of democratic rule.

‘’There are people from the old regime who don’t want change and there are pseudo-democrats who still want the piece of the pie handed to them. This makes progress extremely difficult,’’ Neptune said.

In practice, the politics of reconciliation has meant allowing those sectors which supported the bloody Sept. 1991 coup to remain present and active in different areas of Haitian society, such as government ministries.

Of the more than 20 political parties that initially participated in this past June’s parliamentary and local elections, for example, the vast majority supported or took part in the coup governments of Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras.

But popular organizations have never fully accepted the politics of reconciliation either. Many see it as tantamount to impunity and a way to block legitimate popular demands for social justice and social change.

That has placed Aristide in a difficult balancing act this past year, trying to appease the demands of his militant base, as well as those of the international community and the Haitian elite.

‘’It’s a mess,’’ said Harry Numa of the National Popular Assembly (APN), one of the larger, largely urban based popular groups in Haiti that first supported and then split from Aristide following the U.S.-led intervention in the country.

‘’When Aristide tries to please the people, the bourgeoisie and the U.S. put pressure on him. When he seeks to please the bourgeoisie and the U.S., the people say no,’’ Numa argued, saying the politics of reconciliation will eventually end because of the conflicting interests.

To be sure, Aristide appears now to be moving more towards his base, although it’s not clear that the Haitian government has the capacity or political will to break entirely with the international community and the Haitian elite.

Still, the new government of Prime Minister Claudette Werleigh is solidly Lavalas, a departure from this past year’s government of ‘’national concord.’’

And with the Nov. 7 shooting of the Lavalas deputies Jean Hubert Feuille and Gabriel Fortune whatever governmental and popular support for reconciliation has quickly eroded. Indeed, the murder of Feuille and the wounding of Fortune provoked a popular uprising in the southern towns of Port Salut and Les Cayes, their respective districts.

President Aristide himself fanned the flames in an extraordinary and angry speech at the National Cathedral this past Saturday.

Resembling the militant liberation priest of the late 1980's and early 90's, rather than the genial and urbane diplomat of his three-year exile period, Aristide slammed the international community for its ‘’hypocrisy.’’

He demanded that the some 6,000 soldiers of the U.N. Mission in Haiti (UNMIH) do more to support total disarmament – a long festering issue between Aristide and international forces – and called on the Haitian people to actively seize illegal weapons.

The speech was intended and indeed received as a clarion call for popular mobilization in support of what Aristide called ‘’operation disarmament.’’

And in a sign of the remarkable rapport between Aristide and Haiti’s poor majority, people responded immediately.

In the capital city here, and then in key cities throughout the country, thousands hit the streets, erected flaming barricades, searching cars and houses for illegal weapons, and, in the case of the western town of Gonaives and Cap Haitien in north, shutting down entire cities. Even official U.N. cars have been stopped and searched.

Both the U.N. Mission in Haiti (UNMIH) and the U.S. Embassy Monday condemned what they called lawlessness, but have not yet offered any public concessions to Aristide.

Haitian government officials Monday called on demonstrators to maintain order and discipline, while stopping short of asking people to return to their homes. (END/IPS/DC/FN/95)

Origin: Amsterdam/HAITI/ ----

[c] 1995, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) All rights reserved

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