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class="header"> <b><small><small><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/29/tens-of-thousands-march-on-haiti/"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/29/tens-of-thousands-march-on-haiti/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/29/tens-of-thousands-march-on-haiti/</a></a></small></small></b>
<h1 id="reader-title">Tens of Thousands March on Haiti</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/kim-ives/"
rel="nofollow">Kim Ives</a> January 29, 2016<br>
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<p>On Friday, January 22, many thousands marched over ten
miles up Port-au-Prince’s Delmas road to Pétionville
then back down the Bourdon road to the capital’s central
square to demand new elections and denounce a government
ban on demonstrations that was to begin that midnight.</p>
<p>The marching, chanting multitude scared the daylights
out of Haiti’s Pétionville elite, loudly pouring into
the narrow, tony streets of the wealthy mountain enclave
while young men scattered large rocks and telephone
poles across roadways and set aflame cars and columns of
tires.</p>
<p>The tumultuous day forced Haiti’s Provisional Electoral
Council (CEP), six of whose nine members have now
resigned in disgrace or disgust, to indefinitely cancel
the third round of widely denounced elections, which had
been scheduled for Jan 24.</p>
<p>Armored vehicles of the CIMO squads of Haiti’s national
police shadowed the marchers on sidestreets throughout
the afternoon, occasionally engaging them with shots in
the air or teargas, but mostly they put out fires with
their water canon trucks and made a show of force in
front of ministries and embassies the marchers passed.</p>
<p>Despite the CEP’s announcement, the Haitian masses have
continued marching in cities throughout Haiti on every
day since last Friday’s historic march, emboldened by
their victory and calling for the immediate departure of
President Michel Martelly and the United Nations
military occupation troops known as MINUSTAH.</p>
<p>Martelly is constitutionally required to step down on
Feb. 7. However, the regime is now planning to deploy
death-squads against the popular uprising and opposition
leaders, according to a source in the Haitian National
Police (PNH). The government is also spending tens of
thousands of dollars in a bid to buy the allegiance of
sectors of the population during the celebratory days
leading up to <em>Carnaval</em>, which falls this year
on Feb 9, two days after Martelly is supposed to resign.</p>
<p>According to a reliable PNH source, on Jan 25, a police
officer called “Chariot” assigned to the PNH’s
Presidential Guard and Security Unit (USP) received at
the National Palace weapons, four Prado SUVs and money
to sow trouble in the capital’s largest slum, Cité
Soleil, and the semi-rural suburb north of the capital,
La Plaine.</p>
<p>According to the source, Chariot has the collaboration
in the USP of a former Lavalas activist named ‘Yabout’,
who will be a key actor in the planned terror.</p>
<p>Chariot also gave two Galil rifles to a paramilitary
thug known as ‘Noé’ (Noah) to murder anti-Martelly
people in La Plaine and Croix des Bouquets, the police
source said.</p>
<p>Chariot himself lives in the area of Papo in the
capital district of Croix des Missions Cross and owns a
nightclub called ‘Scandale Disco’ in the Anba Mapou area
of Croix des Missions.</p>
<p>Among the people to be targeted by Chariot’s assassins
are Rony Colin, the new mayor of Croix des Bouquets,
supposedly elected in the contested polling under the
banner of the Palmis party, and Caleb Desrameaux, the
similarly elected deputy of Tabarre, from the Vérité
(Truth) party. The assassins would try to make it look
like the anti-Martelly opposition was responsible for
the murders, according to the police source.</p>
<p>On the morning of Jan. 26 in Croix des Mission,
partisans of Martelly’s Haitian Bald Headed Party (PHTK)
blocked the main artery to the Haiti’s north, National
Highway No. 1, by disabling a tractor-trailer truck in
front of the Damiens bridge. Until the afternoon, when
this report was written, the truck was still blocking
the road and any northbound traffic.</p>
<p>The PNH reportedly received instructions not to
intervene if PHTK partisans block roads or demonstrate,
our police source said.</p>
<p>According to another anonymous source close to the PNH,
the PHTK has distributed 300 million gourdes (US$51,000)
to mobilize support for the Martelly government in a
demonstration scheduled for Jan 28. The action was
originally planned for Jan 26 but was called off at the
last minute.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Guy Philippe, the leader of the paramilitary
‘rebel’ force which helped overthrow former president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, has declared that he and
his partisans “will divide the country” and “are ready
for war” against the “anarchists” who stopped the vote,
<a
href="http://canadahaitiaction.ca/content/ex%E2%80%93haiti-coup-leader-decries-canceled-presidential-election">according
to Reuters</a>. A former Haitian cop and soldier,
Philippe is today a Senate candidate in the
now-postponed run-off election and a close Martelly
ally. He has been holed up in the picturesque
south-western seaside town of Pestel since 2004. The
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has made two
half-hearted attempts to arrest him in the last decade.
Each time, the accused drug trafficker supposedly could
not be found.</p>
<p>As the battle lines in Haiti draw up, the “Group of
Eight” opposition presidential candidates, who contest
the results which put the PHTK’s Jovenel Moïse in the
lead with 33% of the vote, issued their proposal on Jan
24 for the provisional government that would take over
when Martelly steps down. They proposed the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court be named President (as
dictated by the 1987 Constitution) and choose a
“consensus” prime minister with a cabinet of “no more
than 15 ministers” chosen from Haiti’s “known political
personalities”.</p>
<p>This provisional government would then set in place a
five-member “independent commission of inquiry” drawn
from the leading organizations of the media, human
rights, women, the university, and national election
observers. After reviewing the results of the elections’
violence-and-fraud-plagued first two rounds on Aug 9 and
Oct 25, 2015, the commission of inquiry would then
“recommend to the provisional government of consensus
all the measures deemed useful and susceptible to
reestablish trust.”</p>
<p>The G8 also proposed that the illegally sworn-in
parliamentarians determined by the independent
commission of having won their seats fraudulently would
be “ejected” and the CEP would be reconstituted.</p>
<p>In light of the bloody repression being prepared by the
Martelly regime, the G8’s moderate and half-step
recommendations are likely to enrage the masses, who are
chanting “we want revolution” as they march. The last
proposal will surely be found particularly galling: “To
guarantee the protection of the members of the Tet Kale
(Bald Headed) executive against all harassing and
wrongful prosecution.”</p>
<p><em>Kim Ives is an editor of the weekly print newspaper
<a href="http://haiti-liberte.com/">Haiti Liberté</a>.
The newspaper is published in French and Kreyol with a
weekly English-language page in Brooklyn and
distributed throughout Haiti.</em></p>
<p><strong>Read also:</strong><br>
<a
href="http://canadahaitiaction.ca/content/haitis-election-crisis-how-did-we-get-point">Haiti’s
election crisis: How did we get to this point?</a>, by
Nikolas Barry-Shaw, Jan 20, 2016</p>
<p><a
href="http://canadahaitiaction.ca/content/haiti-cancels-presidential-election-violence-erupts">Haiti
cancels presidential election as violence erupts</a>,
by Jacqueline Charles, <em>Miami Herald</em>, Jan. 22,
2016</p>
<p><em>Full news coverage of Haiti can be read on the <a
href="http://canadahaitiaction.ca/">website of the
Canada Haiti Action Network</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="author_description"> <em>Kim Ives is an editor of
the weekly print newspaper <a
href="http://haiti-liberte.com/">Haiti Liberté</a>,
where this piece was first published. The newspaper is
published in French and Kreyol with a weekly
English-language page in Brooklyn and distributed
throughout Haiti.</em> </p>
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