Tag Archives: Duvalier

Dec 25 2013

Nicolas Duvalier Possibly Running For Office Gets Lavalas Going Ballistic

Nicolas Duvalier posing with kids at a toy distribution event for Christmas.

Nicolas Duvalier posing with kids at a toy distribution event for Christmas.

These Lavalas folks are in a state of panic attack –after they got the news that NICOLAS DUVALIER, the son of former President Jean Claude Duvalier, could be running for some type of elected office in Haiti. They are now making all types of nonsensical statements to prove that him running for office is an insult to the Haitian people.

Now I feel compelled to really talk to these folks. History is there to judge all of us, not just the Duvaliers. Don’t judge Nicolas based on his dad’s political accomplishments or report card, which he has absolutely nothing to do with, when you did not do any better when you had your chance to run the country and make a positive difference.

Lavalas came in power in Haiti after the fall of the Duvalier regime and spent 20 years destroying everything Duvalier had left behind. The 20 years of the Lavalas regime [1991-2011] had moved the country 50 years back. We are now in the past playing catch-up towards the future. And you want to blame all the problems and setbacks of the country solely on the Duvaliers? When will you be bold enough to assume your part of the blame?

Lavalas has the nerve badmouthing the Duvaliers because they ran Haiti with an iron fist -a dictatorship so to speak. Well, at least we knew we were dealing with a pure dictatorship, not one with a mask of democracy -like Aristide had it.

Lavalas came in power in 1991 and did the exact same thing they are now blaming the Duvaliers for. You would be a fool to believe that under the Lavalas regime Haiti had a democracy. Aristide had his armed thugs [chimè, rat pa kaka, etc.] on the streets terrorizing the population; muzzling the press; lynching journalists, professionals, business owners, etc… He had plunged the country in a total state of institutionalized lawlessness and chaos. That’s what had gotten the people to come together on their feet as one to drag him out of power in 2004.

You are accusing the Duvaliers of emptying our treasury, right? Show me that you Lavalas did not do just as worse. Your administrations were corrupted. In fact, Aristide came in power as a poor defrocked priest who did not even have an income, he left multimillionaire. We are still waiting on him to tell us what he had done with the money of these poor Haitians who had placed all their hard-earned earnings in “cooperative” investments. He ransacked all these accounts. He is a crook in disguise.

I could go on and on, but I am going to stop here for now. But don’t assume that only the Duvaliers have a past. You Lavalas have one, too. In fact, yours is recent history, meaning fresh in our memory bank. Yet, in spite of all, your organization [Fanmi Lavalas] is still trying so desperately to make a comeback. And you have the nerve telling us that NICOLAS DUVALIER running for elected office is an insult to the Haitian people? How dare you!

All I am saying to my Lavalas folks is this: you should be the last group of people in our political world to be judging Nicolas Duvalier. If he meets all the requirements set by the electoral organization, only his constituency can determine if he is not good enough for them. Meanwhile, if he decides to run, instead of wasting your time judging him based on his father’s report card, which I think is futile -since he has nothing to do with that, you better get yourself ready to send someone capable and qualified to challenge him. Otherwise, he will be elected, and that will be your worst nightmare.

Jul 11 2011

THE HAITIAN LEGISLATURE: A CASE STUDY FOR ALL POLITICAL JUNKIES

I understand democracy can be hard, but it is poised to get harder when you have people in political positions with no clue whatsoever of how democracy works and what it means to be public servant.

As we speak, we have a serious crisis in Haiti, and it has nothing to do with our democratic experience; rather, it has to do with the people we have in our political institutions, especially the legislature, to represent us. So solving this crisis requires that we take bolt and unpopular measures.

I strongly believe we need to find a way to get rid of this legislature we currently have in Haiti and start over with a new and functional body –if we really aspire to a new and better Haiti.

This Congress, it is sad to say, is bringing nothing but shame and deception to the land of Dessalines, Toussaint, Christophe and Petion. So, by any means necessary, democratic or otherwise, we need to retire it urgently before it is too late. Retiring this Congress is just as urgent as unclogging a clogged artery so that the tissues of a specific organ it is there to irrigate can be perfused before the undesirable occurs.

These two chambers of the legislative branch of our government are instruments put in place by ARISTIDE and PREVAL to destroy the country. They are saturated with their vassals -criminals, drug dealers, thieves, crooks, ignorant and unqualified heads, etc. Their only qualification to accede to these respectable chambers was to pledge allegiance to their bosses, ARISTIDE and PREVAL, not to the republic and the people that elected them.

So basically, These two LAVALAS guys, ARISTIDE and PREVAL, during their twenty years in power, have done to the country the same thing they had been blaming the Duvaliers for, which is vasalizing all the institutions. That’s why they do not have the moral authority and political leverage to take legal actions against Jean Claude Duvalier curently living peacefully in his country. To prosecute Duvalier is to prosecute the two of them.

Institutions are made of people, and they are the reflection of the people inside them. A better way to look at it is like this: Tell me who you have to body your institutions, I will tell you how effective and functional they are.

Some of these people in our legislature can barely read, let alone comprehending the wording of and logic embedded in the articles of the Constitution, how can you expect them to legislate in total knowledge of the law? Haitians, seriously, are these folks the best you have to offer? Where are the highly qualified and honest Haitians? How did we end up with these guys as our representatives?

Well, I don’t know. Maybe I am expecting too much from a group of people for whom the mess seems to be working and to whom the filth seems to be beneficial.

It is not my fault that I am holding these guys to such higher standards; it is that the little bit I know in politics, I have acquired that in the United States. In other words, the only model I have of how government institutions work and are structured and staffed, I have obtained that in the country where everything seems to be working for its people, and that is the United States of America.

The lesson all political junkies like myself have to learn from observing the Haitian legislature is this: When you have crooks, thieves, drug dealers and politically illiterate folks in your political institutions, you have the Haitian model, you have what is happening now in Haiti -a case study of a politically, economically and socially dead country due to its lifeless institutions.

Oct 27 2010

CHARACTER ASSASSINATION IS NOT A CRIME

Successful politicians do not only know how well to articulate their plans to their constituents, but also how best to assassinate the character of their opponents. How do you assassinate someone’s character? You assassinate someone’s character by using their vulnerabilities to convince the electorate to believe that the person is UNFIT for the position. You don’t know about your opponents’ character flaws by looking and smiling at them. You have to dig and unearth the stinky corpses.   

Here in the United States, we see nothing but that. Character assassination is the essence of American politics. Do not take my words for it. All you have to do is to take a few minutes of your time to watch a few political ads. A very slim portion of them is dedicated to introducing and positioning the candidates. For the most part, they are attack ads, and their sole purpose is to assassinate the character of the challenger.

In the Haitian political landscape, the politicians do not create or raise controversies, which is probably the reason why I have found it to be overtly boring. I barely see a political advertisement introducing a candidate, let alone an attack one. The ones I have come in contact with only tell the electorate what the candidate’s identification number is and where to make the check mark to vote him/her.

These Haitian politicians do not even talk about themselves in the ads; they worry more about putting the illiterate and hungry masses in the streets playing RARA POLITICS. I have seen a few candidates doing this crap, which I think is embarrassing, disparaging, condescending, demeaning, low and outdated.  

Anyhow, let’s go back to the topic. As I was saying, character assassination is the best way to fight political battles. You do not win these kinds of battles simply by presenting and positioning yourself; you do by assassinating the character of your opponents.

Have you ever asked yourself what had stopped Marc Bazin, the leader of the MIDH, from winning the 1990 presidential election in Haiti? That man was unstoppable. He had the persona, the savviness and the money to finance and run a well-structured campaign. But what he failed to realize was that money alone does not win elections. You need to be presenting yourself and your agenda and attacking your opponents. The strategy for his defeat was perfectly crafted that he was politically dead before the news even got to him.

How did his character get assassinated? The Haitian left painted him as an emissary of Washington. That’s exactly what they did, and before you know it, he was powerless with all the money he had.

The framing of the leader of the MIDH as Washington’s emissary worked perfectly because the public sentiment at the time was VERY antagonistic towards Washington. And the left did not spend a dime in presenting their candidate, Jean Bertand Aristide, who had just been relieved of his priesthood duty by Vatican for his revolutionary and leftist ideology of liberation theology. Aristide, as popular and powerful as he was, did not need any introduction to the political scene. With only a few months of campaigning, he could topple Bazin’s chance to win the presidency.  

Other politicians got eliminated from the scene simply by being labeled the M word –MAKOUT. Coming from the brutal dictatorship regime of the Duvalier, the people were highly repulsive of anyone having ties or acquaintances with the regime. So if you are a candidate, once you are framed as a TONTON MAKOUT, the ceremony for your political funeral is inevitable.

In conclusion, character assassination is a great strategy of battle which politicians use to annihilate their challenger. It works wonders. Politics is not supposed to be fair. How could you be fair in playing a game which must be won psychologically? Before you win in the polls, you must win in the minds of the people. So politicians should not be spending money in just presenting themselves and their agendas to the electorate; they should also work just as hard to assassinate the character of their opponents. It is despicable to see in this 21st century these Haitian politicians using the same archaic RARA POLITICS as political tool to get the attention of the electorate. Character assassination is not a punishable offense, so use it.