‘As a person I was paralyzed,’ says President Rene Preval, recalling the suffering he saw. He’s quiet for a politician, even humble; but his silence since the disaster enrages many.

By Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times

August 15, 2010

Haitian President Rene Preval peers off and rubs his beard when he thinks about those 35 seconds when the earth convulsed.

Preval was feeding his 8-month-old granddaughter dinner in the courtyard of the presidential mansion. They were thrown to the ground as the house collapsed. Unable to reach anyone on the phone, Preval jumped on the back of a motorcycle taxi and directed the driver toward downtown. Wending through the rubble in the dark, he couldn’t comprehend the scope of death and ruin.

“Pain made me speechless,” he says during a two-hour interview in an office behind the half-collapsed National Palace. “As a person I was paralyzed.”

In the days and weeks following the Jan. 12 earthquake, Haitians desperately wanted to hear from their leader. Soon they were furious at his silence.

“I was much criticized for not having spoken…. To say what? To the thousands of parents whose children were dead. To the hundreds of schoolchildren I was hearing scream, ‘Come help me!’ ” He pauses and sighs. “I couldn’t find the words to say to those people.”

This is a classic case of spinning after the event. Preval, in fact, disappeared for over a week, along with MINUSTAH, leaving the nation without any sort of leadership. Preval was drunk at his girlfriend’s house….Now we have him feeding his granddaughter at the time of the quake. THIS IS OBSCENE!!!

MINUSTAH  was simply…not here. Their chief, and the MINUSTAH pr person would give rambling statements, after they surfaced, to the effect that MINUSTAH stayed detached, for over a week, so they wouldn’t appear to be meddling in Haiti’s internal affairs. It was truly bizarre!!  Check the video tapes. The UN was absent when needed and people died because of this!!

Preval, 67, a quiet former agronomist with a gap-toothed smile and silver beard that some Haitians suspect has magical powers, has always been an enigmatic figure. He concluded his first term as president, in 2001, with a prophetic warning of the chaos to come — “Swim to get out” — and retreated to a tiny home in the northern mountains to help peasants grow bamboo.

Let’s get over this agronomist crap!  He claims to have completed studies in Belgium. This is not true. After a couple of months he dropped out of school. Some suggest he switched his focus to the Patrice Lumumba School in Moswcow, but the fact remains. He did not complete his studies in Belgium. He has a green thumb, nothing else.

When he ran again in 2006, he barely campaigned and said almost nothing. Political observers were perplexed by his candidacy, because he never seemed to really like being president. He certainly never showed the thirst for power of any of his rivals or predecessors, and his return to the National Palace felt so casual as if to be almost accidental.

So did his success. Preval’s government quietly settled a gang war that had paralyzed the capital, stopped a horrific spate of kidnappings, restored regular electricity, reformed a corrupt police force, and secured trade preferences from Washington. And despite being hit by two destructive hurricanes, Haiti experienced a semblance of political stability for the first time in decades.

Preval never settled the gang problem

He simply took control of these criminal groups, using them to strong arm communities into compliance.  One of these gang-leaders, Amaral  Duclona was a hired hit man who assassinated irritants upon Preval’s command. Duclona killed a French Consul, on Preval’s orders, and murdered  Moreno, a government official, when he wouldn’s give control of a major $100,000,000 contact to Jude Celestin and Preval. Duclona has testified to this, and many other murders under interrogation by the French and Americans.

With Duclona’s arrest imminent, Jude Celestin obtained a false passport for Duclona and Duclona stayed at Preval’s sister’s house the night before he fled to the Dominican Republic, where he would be arrested and extradited to France.

Preval is responsible for the kidnappings. He uses this terror – coordinated by his gang-leaders, to maintain tension in the society, whenever this is required for his purposes. We will see this demonstrated, yet again, as we get closer to the elections.

The hurricanes were a boon to Preval, and his associates. They stole hundreds of millions in relief funds, designated for such areas as Gonaives and Cabaret. His people sold relief supplies by the container load for pennies on the dollar and the people are still in their original, miserable condition – waiting for the 2010 season to strike.

There is no political stability. There is political paralysis as Preval controls the Chamber of Deputies and Senate through cash payments. We have a simple dictatorship – headed by Preval.

The world didn’t notice because, for once, Haiti was not in the news.

“He came in when the country was at war,” says Michele Montas, a longtime journalist and now a special advisor to the head of the United Nations mission in Haiti. “He brought the opposition into the government. He tried to reassure the private sector. As a journalist in this country for 30 years, I’ve never seen a political figure as shrewd as Rene Preval…. Can you imagine a politician who gets to power and he didn’t even campaign?

“I really think he’s misunderstood. But to some extent it’s his own fault.”

Michele Montas should be ashamed of this garbage, but she has no shame. She was Preval’s mistress and, when her husband was assassinated, she knew who was involved and said nothing. Preval knew exactly what was going to happen and did nothing to stop the killing of Michele’s husband, Preval’s close friend, Jean Dominique.

While at the UN she convinced the Secretary General that Preval was Haiti’s only hope.

Michele Montas is responsible for much of the trouble the nation is now in.

Haitians have long grumbled about Preval’s inability or unwillingness to speak to the masses and pitch a vision of the future. But when the earthquake killed an estimated 230,000 people, displaced more than a million more and leveled whole swaths of the capital, what was once seen as a tolerable quirk in a humble man became a focal point of the nation’s outrage.

Asked what Preval has done for the country, people in many parts of the capital grimace or swipe their hands in disgust, as if the answer is so obvious that the question itself is an outrage.

“Preval didn’t do a damn thing,” says Kerby Badio, 28, living in the sprawling tent camp outside the palace that Haitians call the White House. “He can’t even get the palace fixed. If a country doesn’t have a White House, it’s not a nation.”

Badio voted for Preval in 2006 because he thought he would make life better for the poor. But the president’s seeming absence after the earthquake crystallized a feeling that he didn’t empathize with their suffering.

“When a country goes through something like that, everyone looks for a president to say something. He didn’t say anything for weeks. He was just riding around on his motorcycle,” Badio said.

In nearby Fort National, residents were furious when the government razed homes to cut new road corridors. “We didn’t know what was being done,” says Victorin Richard, 22, whose little hut was among those cleared. “We thought they were building new houses. Now we hear it’s a road. It’s just going to be dust. They’ll never finish it.”

The people hate Preval!

They did not vote for him!

MINUSTAH, in the form of Brazil and Chile, installed Preval, for their own agenda.

The Americans, French, and Canadians were stunned!

Preval had 23% of the vote and faced a run-off in which his opposition would have combined to beat him.

Rene Momplaisir, leader of the Popular Organizatiuon, and Preval sat down with MINUSTAH leade4rs and told them Port-au-Prince would burn, if Preval was not named President. To emphasis this, Momplaisir put 1,000 gang members into the Montana Hotel, where they splashed in the swimming pool and ran through corridors….without any damage or violence.

MINUSTAH was terrified and fled the premises.

The message was clear.

Without consulting the other candidates, foreign governments, or the Haitian people, MINUSTAH juggled the books to give Preval 51%…thus avoiding a run-off.

It should be pointed out that Momplaisir put his mob behind Preval only because Preval promised to bring Aristide back to Haiti. Once in the chair Preval forgot his word and double-crossed his old friend.

Aristide has popularity.

Preval has none, and never had any.

He is a drunken bum.

All of this has big political implications for the country’s recovery in a presidential election year. Preval, who cannot run for reelection, founded a new platform, Unity, to maintain some political continuity when he departs. But his lack of popularity leaves the election wide open, with many people on the streets saying they’d vote for hip-hop singer Wyclef Jean.

Preval has named Jude Celestin, criminal, cocaine trafficker, contract killer, thief, ex-lover of his wife, husband of his daughter, to be candidate for his political party in the November elections. One need not say more, but he is really “giving the finger” to the world and the world accepts.

There is an old saying, to the effect thyat  A COUNTRY GETS THE GOVERNMENT IT DESERVES…”  We no one deserves a Celestin government!!!

Foreign aid groups and diplomats have complained that Preval has been indecisive and has failed to settle key issues of where to settle the displaced.

Preval has not been indecisive.

He has been completely and totally decisive.  He is committed to blocking aid to his nation. To this end he has slowed everything down. Customs won’t clear anything. He won’t make land available for housing. His ministries are on slow mode.

Preval has a plan and he is sticking to it in a cold blooded effort to install his own team in the new presidency….and the world seems to be tolerating this!!

“We know that it is not an easy task,” says Julie Schindall, a spokeswoman for the relief group Oxfam, which supplies clean water to the camps. But the people in the camps “are living on the edge. And they need to know what the future holds.”

Still, longtime Haiti observers view this in context of the turmoil before. Mark Schneider, a senior vice president at the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit group devoted to resolving deadly conflicts, says Preval has done “a remarkable job, given the half-functioning government, given the level of malaise, unhappiness and corruption previously.”

“People say they’re looking for a father figure to say things are going to be OK,” Schneider says. “And he just doesn’t do that. The instinct in his gut is that if he doesn’t see evidence that that’s going to happen, he’s not going to say it.”

But Schneider acknowledges that Preval needs to better explain his plans to the public.

“There’s frustration and uncertainty. People are asking, ‘What’s next?’ “

Who is Mark Schneider??

Whoever he is, he has absolutely no grasp of the Haitian situation and should go somewhere else to resolve problems of conflict!

Preval rode to power on the wings of his political mentor, the fiery slum priest-turned-president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The two had become friends when Preval owned a bakery that supplied free bread to Aristide’s church. When he succeeded Aristide as president in 1995, they had grown estranged, and Aristide was unwilling to give up his power, having his own loyalists embedded in the police and government and using street gangs to terrorize opponents.

The message of who really ruled was made clear when Preval and his then-wife found their dog dying of a machete blow — inside the National Palace.

His weak position hit its nadir in 2000 when his best friend, the crusading radio broadcaster Jean Dominique, was assassinated after accusing various Aristide acolytes of corruption and thuggery. Preval was devastated. He appointed a judge to investigate, but when Aristide succeeded him in 2001, the judge found his budget and security suddenly withdrawn, and fled to Miami.

Jean Dominique was murdered because he promised to reveal embarrassing secrets during his Monday broadcast. Preval knew his best friend was going to be killed, but did nothing to stop the crime. Instead, he called Michel Montas and told her he had to see her…she should wait at home for him. So, as Dominique drove off to his Fate, Montas sat waiting for Preval. Preval saved his mistress but saw his best friend murdered.

What more can I say?

Well, I could say that Michele Montas is seen to be complicit, in her husband’s death, by Haiti’s society. Her children have shunned her.

Still, Preval’s first term was noted for many improvements — new roads, schools, hospitals. He cleaned out many of the “zombie” employees on the government payrolls and investigated human rights abuses.

He has always said he prefers practical steps to sweeping ideology or rhetoric.

He has filled the ministries with his own zombies.

His school system is an obscene crime against the children of Haiti.

He is responsible  for the human rights abuses.

In person, Preval is nothing like the stiff, distant man in front of the microphone. He is open, humorous and human like few politicians, admitting his frailties and chatting without the salesman sheen. Walking with a reporter behind the National Palace, among roaming chickens and peacocks, he puts his arm around an elderly man with light eyes and white hair.

He is a ruthless cynic who does not give a damn for the People.

“He looks just like me,” he says. The man smiles dutifully, clearly having heard this before.

He approaches another worker he knows and says, “He’s on his way to an anti-Preval demonstration.”

The man shakes his head, somewhat nervously, until Preval laughs and pats him on the back.

In the office, he ruminates on why his people seem to be turning against him. On the wall is a poster of Dominique, with the words “We Will Never Forget” in Creole.

But we have already forgotten.

Michele Montas has forgotten.

Preval has forgotten.

It is a simple slogan than means nothing.

Preval details a range of plans to build temporary shelters, followed by tall apartment buildings, to bring order to the teeming neighborhoods where houses were literally built on top of one another. He appointed a civil engineer to work with U.N. officials and relief organizations to settle land disputes and find suitable places for the people in the tent camps.

Preval couldn’t organize a Piss-up in a men’s bathroom!

Someone else has come up with the plans and concept.

If it doesn’t focus on Booze, Sex or Sports…Preva’s attention span is about 4 minutes!

“If the people know that within five years there will be apartment buildings, they will go,” he said.

What a cruel lie!!!

But he knows he is in no position to promise them this. The election to replace him is scheduled for Nov. 28. The U.N. advisors working on the issue hadn’t even heard of this apartment idea, and appeared to be waiting for his successor to grapple with long-term issues.

Where were Preval’s Idea when he was President the first time. He refused to make any sort of decision, without asking Aristide. Now he doesn’t have Aristide to rely upon and the result is a complete and total screw up!!

AND JOE MOZINGO PROMOTES THIS DEBACLE. IS IT THROUGH COMPLETE AND TOTAL IGNORANCE…OR HAS HE SIPPED AT THE PREVAL TROUGH??

He hopes he can make some headway before his legacy is sealed by catastrophe.

“There was so much death, so much suffering, one has to find a person responsible for that. Since they can’t accuse the one up there,” he says, pointing up, “they are accusing the one in the palace. Sometimes you have the impression people are accusing you of actually causing the earthquake.”

Preval is not responsible for the earthquake.

Preval is responsible for the complete and total lack of action in the days, weeks, months following the disaster. His only action has been to guarantee massive, multi-multi million dollars – long-term contracts….for his wife and other criminal associates….while the Haitian people wait in despair for help that will never come.

joe.mozingo@latimes.com

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