By Myrtha Desulme, Contributor 
Latortue (left) and Chavez (right)
HAITI'S NEW Government was sworn in Wednesday, one day after Prime Minister Gerard Latortue completed the formation of a Cabinet of 13 ministers.
Boniface Alexandre is the interim President, but under Haiti's constitution, the Prime Minister is in charge of running the Government. Most of the ministers chosen by Latortue, including three women, are technocrats. The Cabinet does not include any political party leaders, though several of its members belong to the civil society Group of 184, and are ideologically close to the opposition.
One, Women's Affairs Minister Adeline Magloire Chancy, had served as Literacy Programme Secretary in Rene Preval's Lavalas Government in the 1990s.
Former armed forces chief, Herard Abraham, 63, will head the interior and national security ministry, a key post in a deeply polarised country. The retired general, who headed the armed forces from 1988 to 1991, is considered a moderate politician. In 1990, he had ensured the armed forces did not stand in the way of Aristide's election, and the next year he opposed a coup attempt. He had recently joined calls for the resignation of Aristide.
Latortue completed forming his Government on Tuesday evening, following several days of discussions with the council, as well as with members of the opposition, and of ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas party. He said that within days the country would have a provisional electoral body charged with organising free elections.
LATORTUE'S BACKGROUND
The new PM, Gerard Latortue, was born in Gonaives, 69 years ago. He studied in Haiti, then at the Institute of Political Studies, and the Institute of Economic and Social Development in Paris, before returning to Haiti in 1960.
In 1962, he became co-director and then director of the Institute of Higher Commercial and Economic Studies in Port-au-Prince, but by the end of the decade, like so many Haitian intellectuals, he left Haiti, to spend 25 years in self-imposed exile, due to the Duvalier dictatorship.
As a lawyer and an economist, he worked for the United Nations Development Programme in West Africa, living in Togo and the Ivory Coast.
He returned to Haiti to serve as Foreign Minister in 1988, to former President Leslie Manigat, who was overthrown by Haiti's army, less than a year after taking power.
After Manigat, Latortue went on to work for the U.N. Industrial Development Organisation, and as an international business consultant in Miami. He was most recently residing in Boca Raton, Florida, where he hosted two television programmes.
He is married, and has three children. He is an avid book collector, whose library includes coveted editions of Haitian history, which are sought by the African-American Research Library and Culture Center, for their collection on the African diaspora. For the past year, Latortue had been calling for United States President George Bush to help oust former President Aristide.
Latortue's first declaration upon taking office was that the Government he had formed was non-partisan and would be judged on its achievements, and that his priority would be to restore the authority of the state, and put an end to impunity.
"The time has come to turn our backs on dictatorship," said Latortue, at the national palace ceremony, in which interim President Boniface Alexandre swore in the 13 new ministers. "I want to seize the occasion given to me, to rally all citizens of the country, on the basis of their competence, their honesty and their integrity, to participate in the construction of a new Haiti."
Nice speech. But, Prime Minister Latortue has, however, not started out on a very good footing. After declaring his intention of forming a Government of national reconciliation, he proceeded to commit two glaring errors.
He has not invited anyone close to Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party to participate in the new coalition Government, and, in a blustering show of intransigence, he has broken diplomatic relations with Haiti's staunchest friends and allies, Jamaica and CARICOM, over former President Aristide's sojourn in Jamaica.
WHAT IS AT STAKE
This does not augur well for reconciliation, and illustrates how deeply entrenched the divisions still are. It is reported that the house of Jonas Petit, the present leader of Fanmi Lavalas, was burned down.
What we now have is the interesting phenomenon of an interim Government which has not been elected or even ratified, since Parliament was dissolved, and an exiled president whose political party still remains the grassroots organisation with the greatest popular support. Could this be the reason for Latortue and the U.S.'s nervousness about Aristide's proximity?
Prime Minister P. J. Patterson's principled stance, regarding the nebulous circumstances surrounding the abrupt departure of former President Aristide, which has led to his request for an inquiry, is consistent with the hand of friendship, which he has extended to a former colleague.
'Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, who has already accused the U.S. of backing a 2002 coup which briefly ousted him, has not been so guarded in his reaction.
He has vociferously denounced the kidnapping, "by troops from the country that preaches democracy in the world", and has defiantly declared the doors of Venezuela open to Aristide. Chavez, a left-winger who has repeatedly accused President Bush's administration of conspiring to topple his "revolutionary" Government, urged the Organisation of American States to investigate Aristide's claim.
What is really at stake in this amazing real-life spy thriller of geopolitical intrigue, and a kidnapped President?
What is at stake is the determination of the rules of engagement of the New World Order, in light of the arrogant abuses of power by the world's sole remaining superpower.
In a world dominated by a "Preventive War" doctrine, which has now become a "Pre-emptive War" doctrine, justified by the terrorist acts of September 11, where constitutional rights are arbitrarily abrogated, and "regime change" is the domain of the State Department, who and what will determine the sacred issues of constitutionality, sovereignty and civil and human rights?
Journalists all over the world are anxiously seeking answers to the following burning questions:
Did the U.S. summarily deny military protection to Aristide, and if so, why and when?
Did the U.S. supply weapons to the rebels, who showed up in Haiti last month with sophisticated equipment, which was reportedly delivered by the U.S. military to the Dominican Republic, next door to Haiti?
Why did the U.S. and France abruptly abandon the call of Caribbean leaders for a political compromise, which Aristide had already accepted?
And, most importantly, did the U.S., in fact, bankroll a coup in Haiti?
The "pre-emptive" war doctrine has led to the phenomenon of the "pre-emptive" coup, i.e. a bloodless coup, carried out to forestall an ostensibly bloody one.
When former President Aristide descended from his plane in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, he made a brief statement: "In overthrowing me, they have cut down the tree of peace, but it will grow again, because its roots are well planted."
This was a deliberate allusion to the fate of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the famed leader of Haiti's revolution, who was entrapped by the French, bound, and hustled away from Haiti on a ship, to die in solitary confinement, in a fortress prison in the Jura mountains in France. From aboard the ship, knowing that he would never see Haiti again, Toussaint declared: "They have felled only the trunk of the tree of liberty. Branches will sprout again, for its roots are numerous and deep."
The echo could be missed by no Haitian. Aristide could have well borrowed another phrase attributed to Toussaint, by Martiniquan playwright, Edouard Glissant in the play, Monsieur Toussaint. When asked what led him to become a revolutionary freedom fighter, in an allusion to his position as a horse and buggy driver on his master's plantation, Toussaint replies:"My people needed a driver for their yoke of misery."
HAITI'S DISPOSSESSED
What is particularly tragic about the story of Aristide, is that he was the first president to have had the potential of recapturing the power of the Founding Fathers.
Like them, he came from the humblest possible origins, to capture the spirit of a nation through revolutionary fervour.
Unfortunately the charges of mismanagement, corruption, and violence brought against his administration were damning and far-reaching, and gave the coalition forces the justification to declare that: "...no nation, the U.S. included, was inclined to send forces to sustain the failed political status quo in Haiti."
Of paramount importance now, in the post-Aristide era, is finding the formula to bring Haiti's dispossessed majority into the political process. This was Aristide's original agenda, but a devastating freeze on international loans, aid and development pledges crippled his Government, and critically polarised the war between pro and anti-government forces.
The Haitian people have been the victims of a crime against humanity, perpetrated by the authors of the U.S.-led fund veto. The health sector, like many other vital sectors, has all but collapsed, and innocent men, women and children have undergone untold suffering for years. The international community must now make the rectification of this great injustice a priority.
The main opposition group in Haiti remains the Democratic Platform of Civil Society and Political Parties. This coalition includes the Group of 184, a coalition of non-governmental civil society groups, and the Convergence Democratique. The coalition called the of Group 184 was initially made up of 184 business, labour, religious and legal organisations. It kept its name even as its membership grew to over 300.
Convergence Democratique is the main coalition of opposition parties. It is made up of the New Christian Movement for a New Haiti, the Struggling People's Organisation, and a group called Espace. Espace, in turn, is a coalition of four parties: the National Congress of Democratic Movements, the National Progressive Revolutionary Party, Generation 2004, and Haiti Can.
Evans Paul, the former mayor of Port-au-Prince, and campaign manager for Aristide in 1990, is the leader of the Democratic Convergence. His own party is called Convention de l'Unite Democratique. Paul, who is in his late 40s, is one of several prominent Haitians who claims to have been abducted and tortured by the former military regime. The former journalist and playwright was also jailed for opposing Jean-Claude Duvalier.
LAST OCCUPATION
Many contend that the elite, which instigated the marches and protests, leading to the ultimate downfall of Aristide, while making the demand of democratic rights for the people a centerpiece of their platform, were never so concerned about the plight of the long-suffering masses during the Duvalier years, when they were in bed with the administration, reaping tax breaks and other concessions. The post-Aristide era cannot be business as usual.
It is crucial, that programmes of aid to alleviate the dire consequences of the suffocation of the economy, and job creation, at livable wages, to bring about the advancement of the majority, remain in focus, for unless the yawning chasm between social classes is bridged, it will forever remain a time bomb, waiting to explode.
Haiti's new Government was sworn in as gangs loyal to exiled ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide handed in their weapons. It is altogether possible, that we are on the verge of a shift in paradigms, and that the terrible images we have been seeing from Haiti, are the paroxysms, the final terrible death throes of the old, no longer workable, no longer justifiable system.
It is imperative that this latest occupation of Haiti by foreign forces is the last in its history, and that reconstruction effort ensures that the glorious and heroic Haitian Revolution for freedom and independence finally succeeds.
Myrtha Desulme is chairwoman of the UNESCO Haiti/Jamaica Exchange subcommittee organising events to mark the bicentenary of Haiti's independence from France.
