Struggle wins provisional release for Jean-Juste

Widespread support has won the provisional release of Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste from a prison cell in Haiti. Jean-Juste is probably the most influential leader in Lavalas—President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s party—after Aristide himself. A 2004 U.S.-backed coup deposed Aristide, the elected president of Haiti, and drove Lavalas from office.

An interim government set up by Washington threw Jean-Juste in jail this past fall on murder charges. The charges were widely seen as trumped up to keep Jean-Juste from running in the election. He clearly would have been the front runner in the contest for president.

Just a week before Jean-Juste’s Jan. 29 release, a Haitian judge dismissed the murder charges but slapped this political prisoner with charges of “illegal weapon possession” and conspiracy.

Occupation-appointed Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue offered Jean-Juste a deal: if he agreed not to appeal the weapons indictment, he would get a speedy trial. And if convicted, the government claimed it would commute his sentence.

The pressure to accept a guilty verdict was intense. Jean-Juste has leukemia. A commuted sentence would have allowed him to seek treatment in the U.S.

But both sides agree on what happened: Jean-Juste refused the deal. On Jan. 27, he appealed.

Two days later, he was flown to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s cancer center in Miami for treatment of leukemia and pneu monia. Jean-Juste—who founded the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami—has won deep and widespread support in the South Florida Haitian community. Plans had already been announced for a Jan. 28 Miami vigil for his release.

Under the terms of his release, Jean-Juste is supposed to return to Haiti after treatment to face criminal charges.

The duplicity, brutality and maneuvers of the current, illegal government in Haiti have been apparent in its treatment of Jean-Juste. Now new “elections” are scheduled to take place there.

‘Selections’ under guise of ‘elections’

When election authorities in Haiti announced there would be no polling places in pro-Aristide Cité Soleil—a poor, sprawling seaside section of Port-au-Prince with 300,000 to 600,000 residents—they were implicitly confirming that they do indeed intend to hold “elections” on Feb. 7. These officials are under strong pressure from the United States to “finalize” the coup that the U.S. organized and implemented on Feb. 29, 2004.

Rosemond Pradel, head of the Provisional Electoral Council, claimed that Cité Soleil was disenfranchised to avoid the intimidation of voting officials and voters by “criminal gangs”—meaning the many supporters of Aristide.

A better term for elections held under foreign military occupation would be “selections.” The authorities are deliberately excluding poor and working people, the vast majority of whom support Aristide.

The last three “selections” were postponed due to “technical difficulties.” A more likely reason is that the election authorities weren’t sure who would win.

Rene Preval is the leading candidate. Preval was Aristide’s prime minister and was president from Feb. 7, 1995, to Feb. 7, 2001. He is bitterly opposed by the local bourgeoisie and big landlords and the current occupation “government.” They feel that he is too closely tied to Aristide.

Preval himself has emphasized his differences with Aristide. But that didn’t stop town officials in St. Marc, a small seaside town between Port-au-Prince and Gonaï ves, from burning down the offices of his party, Lespwa (Hope), on Jan. 18. Preval was due to arrive in town the next day.

Preval’s election material was destroyed in Cayes, a town in the southwest, and a pickup truck carrying a depiction of Preval was burned in Gonaïves.

While Lespwa has called for calm and political dialog, the police and the United Nations forces in Haiti, called Minustah, have done nothing to stop the violence directed against Preval’s organization.

Haïtí-Progrès—a widely distributed weekly edited in Port-au-Prince that reflects the views of Haiti’s National Popular Party—sees three possible outcomes to this “election/selection.” A massacre, like the one in 1987. A selection of a candidate other than Preval. Or a “victory” for Preval, but one in which his opponents gain control of parliament and tie him tightly to the wishes of U.S. imperialism.

Haïtí-Progrès is referring to the Nov. 29, 1987, massacre that the generals then running the country carried out when they were pushed to hold an election after the departure of Jean-Claude Duvalier, also known as Baby Doc.

Haitian anger felt in Canadian election

The Haitian community in Montreal played a role in the Canadian election on Jan. 23.

The Canadian government supplied 500 soldiers for the initial occupation of Haiti and then Royal Canadian Mounted Police to “train” the Haitian police. And, through the Canadian International Development Agency, it has funded non-governmental organizations operating in Haiti to “stabilize” the situation for the current, illegal government.

So when Pierre Pettigrew, Canada’s foreign minister, ran as a Liberal in the district of Papineau in Montreal, he ran right into anger at the government’s role in Haiti.

Two committees—the support group Haiti Action Montreal and the Haitian Com mittee for the 2006 Federal Elections —organized a major campaign against Pettigrew.

They handed out more than 12,000 leaflets and put up over 2,000 posters in a two-month campaign. The literature pointed our that “Pettigrew is lending Canada’s support to a government that is killing thousands of people, holding political prisoners and allowing the country to degenerate into chaos,” according to Dru Oja Jay of Haiti Support Montreal.

They held protests and demonstrations whenever Pettigrew appeared in public. All this work energized the Haitian community, which voted solidly against Pettigrew.