| This year marks the 208th anniversary of Haitian Flag Day, a day of significance in the Haitian people's struggle for emancipation and independence which continues to this day. The website Haitian Treasures writes, "One of the primary symbols of Haitian freedom is the Haitian flag created in Arcahaie, a town located outside of Port-au-Prince on May 18, 1803. Since then, May 18th has been observed as the Haitian Flag Day as it has become a symbol of pride, unity, and individual liberty. In Haiti, Flag Day is a major national holiday celebrated with great fanfare on the grounds of the national palace and all cities in the country and in other countries with a large number of Haitians. In the United States, Haitians pay homage to the blue and red flag by carrying it around with them for at least a week. As a matter of fact, the Haitian flag is tightly linked to a history of struggle and freedom. "On August 21, 1791 the Haitian Revolution began its struggle against the French occupation. From 1791 to about 1793, the revolt became more widespread and gave rise to a number of large groups still fighting independently. In those times, each main leader would use any piece of cloth as a flag. Slowly the slave movement found some synergy and came to follow the leadership of one main person: Toussaint Louverture. He had led his whole war with the French tricolor: the blue, white and red flag. After the capture of Toussaint, Jean-Jacques Dessalines had taken up the torch in 1802 with the same color flag, but with a slight difference: the general had simply removed the French rooster and the initials RF for 'République de France' which at that time were found on the white band of the flag of the French Republic. "At that time, an original Haitian flag was not yet created. The fact that the rebel army was carrying a French flag was presented by the press of the time under the title of 'Proclamation.' The headquarters of the French army in Saint Domingue pretended that this tricolor flag, carried as a rallying sign by the indigenous army, was proof that the insurgents were not fighting for the independence of Saint Domingue but only to keep their liberty, just like the French of the home land, a liberty that the First Consul, the dictator Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to take from them. "During a famous battle in the Cul-du-Sac, a plain not far from Port-au-Prince, on December 1, 1802, Alexandre Pétion confronted the colonial troops of Gilbert Gérard. "This confrontation was not successful for the rebel army and in the course of retreat, they lost the tricolor flag which was quickly seized by the enemy as a prize of war. This served to reinforce the determination of Pétion about the necessity for the rebels to have their own flag. In February 1803, when Pétion happened upon this newspaper which contained the story of his flag lost during the battle of December 1, he raced to get the newspaper in question to the headquarters of Dessalines, the commander-in-chief, in Petite-Rivičre de L'Artibonite; he carefully explained the affair in detail and took the opportunity to advise the commander-in-chief that the revolutionary army urgently needed to adopt a different flag. "Dessalines immediately reacted to Pétion's recommendation. He grabbed a red, white and blue flag, and with a sharp jerk, ripped the white stripe to pieces and joined the blue and red together, making the first Haitian flag, symbolizing the union of the mulattoes and the blacks against the colonialist, pro-slavery France. That is how the famous national bicolor was born between the end of February and the beginning of March 1803. "Pétion wanted to hold a big meeting with all the high ranking officers where this new flag would be adopted after debate. Pétion finished by convincing Dessalines and his principal lieutenants, in particular his private secretary and confidant Boisrond Tonnerre, to hold a major meeting during May in Arcahaie. "This meeting, known as the Congress of Arcahaie, was set for May 14 to 18, 1803; the agenda had two essential points: the establishment of a united command of the revolutionary army under the supreme authority of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and the adoption of a flag by the indigenous army. The two principal leaders at this time, Dessalines and Pétion, jointly drew up this agenda. On May 14, 1803, military delegations flocked to Arcahaie [...] "Dessalines was appointed general-in-chief of the insurrection army. "The question of the new Haitian Flag came up on the last day, May 18. The new Commander General suggested the old slogan 'Live Free or Die' be replaced by 'Liberty or Death.' The debate over the proclamation of the creation of a new Haitian flag lasted a whole day. It was only in the evening that the Congress of Arcahaie definitively adopted the new Flag of Haiti. The white stripe was eliminated, while the remaining red and blue bands were attached together. The removal of the white stripe symbolizes the abolition of the White Man's control and the union of blacks and mulattoes in Haiti. The arms are composed of a palm tree surmounted by the Phrygian cap of liberty and ornamented with trophies with a banner across the bottom saying 'L'Union Fait La Force' (through Unity there is Strength). "By this gesture, they publicly designated that this country no longer wanted to be recognized as a French territory and that the people who lived on this land preferred to be dead rather than be slaves. [...] "Haiti's first flag was sewn by a lady named Catherine Flon at the Congress. "The French troops were defeated during the battle of Vertieres (November 18, 1803). Their capitulation allowed the proclamation of Haiti's independence on January 1st , 1804. Haiti's new flag [was] raised proudly all over the country. [...] "As we celebrate the Haitian Flag Day, we need to remember that our ancestors created this bicolor blue and red as a symbol of unity among all of us of Haitian descent to fight colonialism and live free forever." Neoliberal Champion Nominated as Prime Minister A day after his inauguration on May 14, Haitian President Michel Martelly nominated businessman Daniel Gérard Rouzier as prime minister. Thierry Mayard-Paul, the Martelly's Chief of Cabinet said the president had chosen Rouzier because of his past as an accomplished entrepreneur. "His resume speaks for itself. [...] We believe that he can be very effective at managing the government," he said. Haiti Libre notes that the choice of Rouzier "will probably be the first battle between President Martelly and a Parliament where the legislators (INITE) loyal to [outgoing President René] Préval, enjoy a comfortable majority. In recent days, rumors of the choice of Daniel Rouzier, had already caused [...] tension and negative reactions from some Parliamentarians because of his lack of political experience. Sources close to the leaders of the party INITE, have indicated that the choice of Rouzier as Prime Minister had no chance to be confirmed by Parliament, as required by the Constitution..." According to the Haitian Constitution, the choice of the Prime Minister is made in consultation with the presidents of both chambers (Deputies and Senators) in cases where the party of the President of the Republic does not have a majority in parliament. This scenario applies to the present situation where Martelly's party "Respons Peyizan" has only 3 seats in the lower house and none in the Senate. Meanwhile, in the days before Martelly's inauguration, Kim Ives, writing for Haiti Liberté, reported on Rouzier's expected nomination by Martelly based on his reputation as a champion of neoliberalism. Ives writes: "Like President-elect Martelly, Rouzier is an arch-conservative, a supporter of the 2004 coup d'état against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and a devotee of neoliberal economics. "Rouzier is a classic example of Haiti's comprador bourgeoisie as the founder and general manager of Sun Auto, Haiti's largest car dealership. "In addition he is the chairman of E-Power, an independent 30 megawatt electrical power plant launched in January in the Bois Neuf area of Cité Soleil. The $59.5 million plant, largely financed by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC), runs on Heavy Fuel Oil diesel, which is less expensive than the Light Fuel Oil diesel that powers the nearby Varreux power station belonging to the state-owned Electricité d'Haďti (EDH). "Rouzier is also vice-president of the Haitian chapter of Christian behemoth Food for the Poor, the third largest international relief and development charity in the U.S., and the author of two books: Vision ou Illusion (2000) and Le Pouvoir des Idées (2002). "He also sits on the board of the Haitian investment bank PromoCapital and the Haitian Finance Company for Development (SOFIHDES) as well as the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti. "An ostensibly deeply religious Catholic, Rouzier sponsored a Haitian bishop and an American priest to bless the unmarked mass-grave sites of some 2,500 Haitian earthquake victims dumped near Titayen, just north of the capital, Port-au-Prince. "'I was just appalled,' Rouzier said according to a YouTube video he helped produce about his efforts. "This was sacrilege." The video says that he turned his Sun Auto body shop into a foundry to make steel crosses for the earthquake dead. "'He's very conservative,' says Bobby Duval, who runs a celebrated soccer training camp for kids from Haiti's slums. "He's definitely right-wing, but very smart rightwing. Those are the more dangerous." "Daniel Rouzier, who was educated at Dartmouth and Georgetown universities in the States, is the son of Gérard Raoul Rouzier, the Minister of Sports for dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in the 1970s. 'We used to call his father Ayatollah Rouzier,' said Duval, a former soccer star who spent almost a year and a half in one of Duvalier's most infamous prisons, Fort Dimanche. "An inkling of Rouzier's political bent can be gleaned from an article he wrote in March 2004 for The Nassau Institute, a Bahamas-based Milton Friedman-inspired think-tank 'that promotes capitalism and free markets,' according to its website. "'I have also followed the indignation and general outcry of CARICOM leaders who are mistakenly jumping to conclusions while being greatly misinformed about Haiti's situation,' Rouzier writes of CARICOM's protest against the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d'état where U.S. Special Forces kidnapped Aristide from his home and exiled him to Africa. 'Of an even greater concern to many of us is that our former president [Aristide] would come back so soon, as a CARICOM hero, to our Caribbean waters." Here Rouzier echoes the arrogant warnings issued by U.S. National Security advisor Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Aristide should "stay out of the hemisphere.' "In his article, Rouzier goes on to call Aristide 'one of the most violent rulers Haiti ever had,' speculating that 'his only intent seems to have only been to replace the dictators that preceded him rather than to promote real change in Haiti.' "Having supported the coup, Rouzier astonishingly writes that 'we need institutions that will enforce the rule of law,' while charging that 'Haitian demagogues (not the least being Aristide) have killed hope.' "Rouzier then lays out his vision for Haiti. 'In order for Haiti to be stable it must be prosperous and vice versa. Stability can only come through institution building. Prosperity, on the other hand, will only come with the infusion of fresh capital.' "To achieve this he lays out how the 'private sector [should] be the proponent of a development strategy' based among other things on 'establishing a free trade/free port regime with zero import tariffs' and 'privatizing public enterprises,' like EDH, which is now E-Power's main competitor and one of the last publicly-owned Haitian enterprises. "Rouzier closes by toasting the U.S., French and Canadian troops that militarily occupied Haiti right after the 2004 coup. 'U.S. forces have landed but they can no longer afford to window-dress,' he writes. 'They will have to help us consolidate our democratic institutions and establish the rule of law. The U.S., Canada, France and our other friends will need to come up with aggressive initiatives to help us attract foreign capital... Our economic policy must however remain sharply focused on the priorities defined to attract foreign investments and satisfy the criteria of the World Bank and the IMF... I am grateful for the new opportunities that we are being afforded. I believe that the French and American troops that are on Haitian soil today are different from those of 1803 [when France colonized Haiti] and 1915 [when U.S. Marines neo-colonized it]. If once again foreign troops had to come to Haiti, the problem is with us Haitians, not with them.' "It is hard to imagine a purer articulation of the Haitian bourgeoisie's subservient vision. "Nonetheless, Martelly may face a fight if Rouzier is his nominee. The Prime Minister must come from the ranks of the majority party in the Parliament. Unity, the party of outgoing President René Préval, presently holds 17 of 30 Senate seats and 46 of 99 Deputy seats. Sen. Joseph Lambert, Unity's coordinator, responded to word of Rouzier's eventual nomination by saying on Radio Métropole on May 6: 'I recall for Mr. Micky who, maybe, has not mastered the different articles of the Constitution or the Constitution in its entirety that he must stop acting like an elephant in a china shop... I say to him immediately that the Parliament is not a show where one does just anything.' "This stand-off is the principal reason why Martelly, along with the U.S. and its proxies in the OAS and CARICOM, are calling for a review of 17 Deputy races and two Senate races. As we go to press, the National Electoral Complaints and Challenges Bureau (BCEN) has handed down a ruling supporting the U.S. call for the 19 races to be revisited. "Rouzier clearly would be a Prime Minister who would privatize Haiti's last remaining state enterprises 'as the basis for foreign capital to start flowing into the country' and slash all tariff walls to 'establish a level playing field,' eliminate 'undue governmental control or interference,' and 'come up with aggressive initiatives to help us attract foreign capital,' as he has written. In short, he would rev up the 'American Plan' which Washington has been forcing on the Haitian people since 1986." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UN Exonerates Itself of Culpability for Cholera Epidemic On May 3, the office of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon released a report by a medical panel commissioned by Ban to "investigate and seek to determine the source of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti." Investigations by U.S. and French epidemiologists and others in the fall of 2010 implicated the UN's carelessness for this tragedy that compounded the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake. They attributed the outbreak, the first in 50 years, to poor sanitation by UN peacekeepers where raw sewage from a UN base was dumped into the Artibonite River around the time the outbreak began, a typical process through which the cholera bacteria is spread. Colum Lynch, writing for Foreign Policy magazine, notes that the UN report, in addition to being long overdue, fails to fulfill its mandate. "[I]t concluded that the forces contributing to the spread of a disease -- poor sanitation and a dysfunctional health care system -- were so varied as to make it impossible to identify a specific culprit. 'The independent panel concludes that the Haiti cholera outbreak was caused by the confluence of circumstances [described in the report], and was not the fault of, or deliberate action of, a group or individual,' according to the panel's report," Lynch writes. The report states, "The introduction of this cholera strain as a result of environmental contamination with feces could not have been the source of such an outbreak without simultaneous water and sanitation and health care deficiencies. These deficiencies, coupled with conducive environmental and epidemiological conditions, allowed the spread of the Vibrio cholerae organism in the environment, from which a large number of people became infected." Despite its mandate to determine the source of the problem, which presumably would mitigate the epidemic in Haiti and prevent its reoccurrence in other areas where the UN operates, the panel concludes, "The source of cholera in Haiti is no longer relevant to controlling the outbreak. What are needed at this time are measures to prevent the disease from becoming endemic." Meanwhile, although the situation is still very serious with nearly 5,000 killed by the disease and some 300,000 infected, the unparalleled efforts of the Cuban medical brigade, along with other genuine humanitarian assistance from Venezuela and other countries is keeping the epidemic in check. On May 16, Prensa Latina reported that the Cuban medical brigade has gone 116 days without reporting any deaths in the hospitals it is responsible for. In a recent visit to Haiti, Cuban Vice President Esteban Lazo thanked outgoing president René Préval for awarding Haiti's highest honour to the Cuban medical brigade for its work which has saved the lives of 73,938 Haitians. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Venezuela Will "Repay it's Debt" to Haiti Through Continuation of Humanitarian Projects - Rachael Boothroyd, Venezuelanalysis.com, May 15, 2011 - Sunday, Hector Rodriguez, Vice-President of the "Social Area Council of Venezuela," confirmed the Venezuelan government's commitment to maintain its reconstruction efforts in Haiti and sent a message of solidarity to the Haitian people on behalf of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. In an interview with Latin American news channel TeleSUR, following the inauguration ceremony of the newly elected Haitian president, Michel Martelly, Rodriguez said that they would "continue working for the dignity, the life, of this brother nation," so that Haiti would "keep moving forward." "We have a historical debt to pay to our brothers and sisters in Haiti, because they helped us liberate our Latin America," said Rodriguez, in reference to the support offered to Venezuela by the newly independent Haitian nation, which provided Simon Bolivar with financial aid, political asylum and Haitian soldiers during the Wars of Independence. "Writing Off the Debt" The Venezuelan government -- as well as the Cuban government -- was amongst the first to react when the earthquake struck in Haiti in January 2010 and led the relief effort by sending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, as well as pledging to work with the Haitian government in order to build sustainable development missions. Since then, the Venezuelan government has sent more than 10,000 tonnes of food items, medicines and other aid to the devastated Caribbean nation. Venezuela's ability to respond quickly was facilitated by the fact that the Bolivarian government was already considerably involved in providing development packages to the island prior to the earthquake. Most notably Chávez signed a series of significant agreements between Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela via the ALBA initiative in 2007. These agreements included U.S.$80 million for an oil refinery, a U.S.$56 million electricity plant, a U.S.$4 million liquid natural gas plant, U.S.$3 million for waste collection, and resources for a Cuban health care programme in Haiti staffed by 2,000 doctors. In June 2010, the Bolivarian government also cancelled all of Haiti's debt with Petrocaribe -- amounting to almost U.S.$400 million. Venezuela currently maintains its humanitarian missions in Haiti from its Francisco de Miranda Camp, promoting sustainability and managing projects in agriculture, energy, transport and health. Chávez has also become a prominent political voice in Haiti, refusing to recognise the interim government when democratically elected Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted via a U.S.-sponsored coup in 2004, as well as openly criticising the unpopular UN stabilisation mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and condemning the U.S. response to the earthquake as a "military occupation." When Chávez visited Haiti in 2007, he was greeted by thousands of Haitians waving Venezuelan flags and shouting 'Long live Chávez! Down with Bush!' During the inauguration Martelly, who was elected after the recent controversial elections in Haiti with 16.7% of the vote, promised a "new era" for Haiti and vowed to provide free health and education services. He also added that "foreign investment will be present in the new Haiti," following a recent meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and IMF and World Bank officials. |