Aristide flew back into Haiti expecting an earth-shaking welcome as tens of thousands swarmed the airport in eager anticipation.
Reality was a far cry from this as he was actually greeted by about 100 news people, and 100 airport workers, with a scattering of people who actually went to view his arrival.
A couple of the fanatical Aristide media people reported thousands of people, at the airport.
This was not true.
Others explained the lack of people by saying Aristide was expected in the afternoon, and arrived at 11 in the morning. For at least ten days, prior to his arrival, Aristide’s time at Port au Prince was 11 AM.
A lady named Bracken, plus one or two others, had Aristide’s car mobbed like a Pied Piper as he drove to Tabarre.
Not so.
There was a sound truck that attempted to lure people and managed to gather a hundred or so.
Aristide’s arrival at Tabarre showed the front fence painted pink. His apologists suggested this was a lighter shade than the Martelly pink and meant peace and hope, or some such garbage. In actual fact, Martelly’s supporters had painted Aristide’s walls pink as a sign of defiance. This was reported in the local media.
Preval paid a mob to greet Aristide at Tabarre. This mob got out of control and stormed Aristide’s residence, stealing all of the furniture, purchased on the Friday before his arrival, all of the food, from the buffet, and all of the personal belongings, of Aristide’s guests, including those of Danny Glover.
A lot of tear gas was fired.
The Aristide children were so traumatized, that they have been sent to the Dominican Republic for safety.
Aristide did not, and has not stayed at Tabarre since his arrival in Haiti.
What happened?
The fact of the matter is this. Certain key Lavalas people have continually expanded Aristide’s expectations by projecting a popularity that was really decreasing. Had he supported the candidacy of Jean Henry Ceant, he would have retained his popularity, and Ceant would be President. Instead, Aristide showed his predictable effort to keep everyone divided, so that no one – but Aristide – would have any power.
This selfish attitude saw the vast majority of Lavalas supporters switch their allegiance to Michel Martelly. In other words, Lavalas has become a mere shadow of his former self. Aristide originally divided/fragmented Lavalas into competing elements, all trying to win elections, and never succeeding.
Michel Martelly is the winner in this foolishness – as is the nation, now committed to the support of a new and popular president.
We wonder who the losers might be.
Ask anyone, on the street, about Aristide and – without exception, the people will reply to the effect that Aristide lived in luxury, while away, and did nothing for them. These people are not fickle, they are realistic and put their votes where their future might be – Michel Martelly.
It remains to be seen what Aristide’s future might be.
Duvalier has been harassed by a few people with frivolous, baseless legal actions.
However, Aristide and Preval could face some real problems, if those who feel damaged take action. None of their real, or imagined crimes are Statute Barred.
Preval’s recent electoral outrages leave him very vulnerable, and Martelly said he wanted Prval to surrender the $198,000,000 stolen from Petro Caraibe Funds, originally set aside for hurricane reconstruction of Gonaives, and other areas.
There has been a widespread attempt to remind us of Mireille Durocher-Bertin’s assassination in March, 1995, and those involved. This crime has 4 years before it will be Statute Barred and the American Federal Bureau of Investigation has offered assistance to anyone wishing to reopen this case.
The entire CEP should be arrested.
Will the new government be a simple continuation of impunity or are Martelly’s words to be taken seriously?
Time will tell.
By far the most intelligent comments that I have read on this site regarding Aristide.
I have always said that his greatest flaw was his inability to organize things beyond a simple grassroots movement. In South Africa, he should have taken lessons in building up a party rather than lessons in Zulu, Afrikaans, and Swahili. The ANC would have been a great laboratory to have learnt political craft. To be sure, I am no friend of the ANC since it is arrogant in its near absolute power, it is rather racist (it discriminates against the Coloureds, Whites, Asians, members of smaller ethnic groups, Africans who came from outside South Africa), it is corrupt, but it is a coherent party that will win free and open elections for a long time to come. It is no mere grassroots movement and Mandela understood that could never overcome entrenched White power. Aristide never got it. He wanted a one-man show.
Yes, Aristide should have, and could have, thrown his weight behind Ceant but he is no politician. In power he seemed to accumulate enemies rather than make deals or friends. This is tragic for the Haitian poor. They are now at the mercy of the usual oppressors who despise them: the US, Haitian elite. Hopefully a Dessalines or a Toussant will come on the scene to free the people from their new slavery.
I GIVE YOU ONE OF THE ARTICLES THAT EXAGGERATES THE ARISTIDE RETURN.
AND, ARISTIDE NEVER ASKED FOR A PASSPORT BEFORE. HE COULD HAVE HAD ONE BY RETURN MAIL HAD HE THE WILLINGNESS TO ACCEPT A STANDARD ONE. HIS DEMAND FOR A DIPLOMATIC PASSPORT WAS NOT USEFUL IF HE REALLY DESIRED HIS RETURN TO HOME.
FINALLY SOUTH AFRICA TIRED OF HIS PRESENCE AND EVICTED HIM.
IF THINGS BECOME TENSE FOR HIM HE WILL HAVE NO COUNTRY TO ACCEPT HIM.
Amy Goodman: Aristide’s return to Haiti: A long night’s journey into day
2011-03-26 22:41:04
Late at night on March 17, former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide boarded a small plane with his family in Johannesburg, South Africa. The following morning, he arrived in Haiti. It was just over seven years after he was kidnapped from his home in a U.S.-backed coup d’etat. Haiti has been ravaged by a massive earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people and left a million and a half homeless. A cholera epidemic carried in by United Nations occupation forces could sicken almost 800,000. A majority of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. Now, Aristide, by far the most popular figure in Haiti today and the first democratically elected president of the first black republic in the world, has returned home.
“Bon Retou Titid” (good return, Titid, the affectionate term for Aristide) read the signs in Port-au-Prince as thousands flocked to accompany Aristide from the Toussaint L’Ouverture Airport to his home. L’Ouverture led the slave uprising that established Haiti in 1804. I was able to travel with Aristide, his wife, Mildred, and their two daughters from Johannesburg to Haiti on the small jet provided by the government of South Africa. It was my second flight with them. In March 2004, the Aristides attempted to return from forced exile in the Central African Republic, but never made it back to Haiti. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials warned Aristide to stay away from the Western Hemisphere. Defying such pressure, the Aristides stopped in Jamaica before traveling to South Africa, where they remained until last weekend.
Just before Sunday’s election in Haiti, President Rene Preval gave Aristide the diplomatic passport he had long promised him. Earlier, on Jan. 19, U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley tweeted, referring to Aristide: “today Haiti needs to focus on its future, not its past.” Aristide’s wife, Mildred, was incensed. She said the U.S. had been saying that since they forced him out of the country. Sitting in the plane a few minutes before landing in Haiti, she repeated the words of an African leader who criticized the past abuses of colonial powers by saying, “I would stop talking about the past, if it weren’t so present.”
Mark Toner, the new State Department spokesman, said earlier this month: “Former President Aristide has chosen to remain outside of Haiti for seven years. To return this week could only be seen as a conscious choice to impact Haiti’s elections.”
Aristide did not choose to leave or remain outside Haiti, and the Obama administration knows that. On Feb. 29, 2004, Luis Moreno, the No. 2 man in the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, went to the Aristides’ home and hustled them off to the airport. Frantz Gabriel was Aristide’s personal bodyguard in 2004. I met him when he was with the Aristides in the Central African Republic then, and saw him again last Friday as the Aristides arrived home. He recalled: “It was not willingly that the president left, because all the people that came in to accompany the president were all military. Having been in the U.S. military myself, I know what a GI looks like, and I know what a special force looks like also … when we boarded the aircraft, everybody changed their uniform into civilian clothes. And that’s when I knew that it was a special operation.”
The U.S. continued to prevent Aristide from returning for the next seven years. Just last week, President Barack Obama called South African President Jacob Zuma to express “deep concerns” about Aristide’s potential return, and to pressure Zuma to block the trip. Zuma, to his credit, ignored the warning. U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveal a concerted, multiyear drive to hamper the return of Aristide to Haiti, including diplomatically punishing any country that helped Aristide, including threatening to block a U.N. Security Council seat for South Africa.
After landing in Port-au-Prince, Aristide wasted no time. He addressed the people of Haiti from the airport. His remarks touched on a key point of the current elections there: that his political party, the most popular party in Haiti, Fanmi Lavalas, is banned, excluded from the elections. He said: “The problem is exclusion, and the solution is inclusion. The exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas is the exclusion of the majority … because everybody is a person.” Looking out on the country he hadn’t seen in seven years, he concluded: “Haiti, Haiti, the further I am from you, the less I breathe. Haiti, I love you, and I will love you always. Always.”
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
© Copyright 2011 Freedom Communications. All Rights Reserved.
Aristide is a goon…You also have not mentionned Emeline Michel who was raped by Aristide….LAVALAS is DONE…Thank God!
Emmeline Michel a porté plainte contre Aristide pour viol au devant comme à l’anus et a une lettre médicale car il lui avait envoyé à l’hopital.
I was with the embassy, during one of Aristide’s terms, and can remember very well the Emmeline Michel scandal.
At one point Aristide had her dropped, naked, on a road by the airport.
However, Emmeline Michel should have known the people she was involving herself with. Like so many, she believed that should could control the situation, because of her celebrity, but this meant nothing to Titid.
If she really files a comp-laint, her papers will have some effect since she is a celebrity. Ordinary people will be swept aside.
A complaint will not exceed.
The person will be purchase.
The Advocat will be purchase.
The judge will be purchase
Just one week person to ruin justice.
Emmeline Michel a porté plainte contre Aristide pour viol au
devant comme à l’anus et a une lettre médicale car il lui avait
envoyé à l’hopital.
it is very interesting and very sad to see how some peoples are are so stupid ignorant and liars