Posted by NEWS SERVICE on August 25, 1998 at 22:11:27:
GOP Is Accused in Haiti of Plot
By MICHAEL NORTON
Ass Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- The international arm of the U.S. Republican Party is embroiled in a political storm in Haiti, where its crusade for political pluralism is being condemned as support for militarist right-wing parties.
Weeks of criticism of the International Republican Institute culminated this week in a charge by the pro-government Haitian News Network that the group ``aims at overthrowing the Haitian political order.''
The claim reflects Haiti's tremendous sensitivity to U.S. influence, especially at a time of scant political order. The country has been reduced to abject poverty and for more than a year has lacked an effective government.
The IRI has taken a leading role in trying to re-establish a political party system. And in doing so, it has run afoul of supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who still dominates politics and appears poised to return to power in 2000 elections. Aristide's camp contends that the IRI is funding right-wing politicians who supported the 1991 army coup that ousted him.
``It will weaken, not strengthen democracy,'' said Gabriel Fortune, a legislator who supports Aristide's policies. ``Everyone knows that if today some political parties are trying to destabilize -- it's thanks to IRI funding.''
Institute chairman Lorne Craner, on a visit Wednesday to dedicate a Political Party Training Center, said the project will ``create a fair playing field for pluralist competition.''
Craner denies providing money to any parties, saying IRI assistance is restricted to technical help -- seminars for local parties to discuss topics like free elections, campaigning and registration drives. Never in its previous assignments around the world, the IRI says, has the institute generated such controversy and divisiveness.
Three days after the IRI criticized Haiti's disputed April 1997 elections, a Haitian police SWAT team raided the home of the aunt of the IRI's Haitian representative, Stanley Lucas.
``I can't say if it's political, but there are too many troubling coincidences. I feel very threatened,'' Lucas said, adding that he'd been warned to be careful before the elections.
Most parties have boycotted ballots since chaotic 1995 legislative elections that critics -- and Republican election monitors -- said were rigged to favor Aristide's heirs. Last year, Premier Rosny Smarth resigned over an April legislative ballot, lodging the same charges. Haiti has been without a premier for more than a year.
Haiti's two largest parties, Aristide's Lavalas Family party and Smarth's breakaway Struggling People's Organization, have both declined to cooperate with the IRI. By default, the institute ends up working with Haiti's 26 opposition parties, many small and from the extreme right.
Last month, Aristide supporters broke up an IRI-arranged town hall meeting in the western port of St. Marc, yelling that only Aristide's party has a right to a voice in Haiti.
Haitians long have been suspicious of the United States, which occupied their country from 1915 to 1934. Many suspect the CIA was involved in the coup that ousted Aristide in 1991. But most welcomed the 1995 invasion that halted an exodus of Haitian boat people to Florida and toppled the murderous military regime.
That intervention reinstalled Aristide until his term ran out, but the populist priest always had a testy relationship with the United States.
The Republicans' fracas has caused other organizations to be targeted as alleged tools of U.S. domination -- including the U.S. Democratic Party's National Democratic Institute and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
But the IRI has drawn the bulk of ire -- being accused by Aristide sympathizers of supporting alleged plotters of unspecified subversive acts -- for which police arrested nine people last month and are seeking 15 others.
``The allegations are completely false. They can only serve to incite people to violence,'' U.S. Ambassador Timothy Michael Carney said. Opposition politicians also reject the charges.
Haitian human rights activist Chenet Jean-Baptiste said he was accused Monday of being an IRI hireling by armed Aristide partisans who threatened to kill him.
The same day, the Haitian News Network broadcast its claim, alleging that ``certain pieces of information lead one to believe that a certain sector of the U.S. establishment supports (a destabilization) movement through IRI.''