Haiti was to mark its bicentennial yesterday, but for most in the poverty-ridden Caribbean state there is little to celebrate.
What should have been a festive event, commemorating history's only successful revolt by slaves who sent Napoleon's troops packing, will instead transpire under a cloud of elusive democracy, economic chaos and primitive health and sanitary conditions.
It could also turn into a nightmare for its president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former priest elected in 1990 on a wave of democratic hope but who is today opposed by a vast sector of the population, which denounces him as a despot and intended to make itself heard yesterday.
PHOTO: AP
The president had scheduled a speech in the capital for 8am yesterday, replete with the nation's blue and red flag and banners proclaiming "Jesus, Haiti, Aristide -- Credo of the Haitian People," and "1804-2004: Haiti, Mother of Freedom."
After the speech he goes to the northern city of Gonaives, focal point of modern-day opposition and the spot where independence was proclaimed 200 years ago.
He will be accompanied there by South African President Thabo Mbeki, the only head of state scheduled to participate. France is sending a parliamentary delegation.
The US, angered when Aristide recognized communist-ruled Cuba in 1996, will be represented only by its ambassador.
Most of the world's democracies shunned the Nov. 18 celebration of Haiti's pivotal Battle of Vertieres in protest against government repression of an opposition demonstration.
Haiti has become inexorably mired in political crisis since the May 2000 legislative elections whose outcome was heavily contested, followed by the presidential election -- boycotted by the opposition -- which retained Aristide by 91 percent of the vote.
Haiti, the poorest nation in the Americas, is also targeted by human rights groups which denounce corruption, political assassinations, government pressure on the press and opposition and the failure to establish an independent police force or a judicial system worthy of its name.
Led by Washington, which has frozen its aid to Haiti, the international community is pressuring Aristide's government to hold parliamentary elections which have been put on hold for lack of adequate security and by opposition demands that Aristide first resign.
The president for several months has felt the pressure of an increasingly strong opposition, rallied around an alliance of 184 organizations of business leaders, doctors, feminists, intellectuals and farm unionists that have taken over from a waning political opposition.
The alliance is seeking Aristide's resignation, and its increasingly frequent demonstrations have often degenerated into clashes with police and armed gangs linked to the government, leaving dead and wounded in their wake.
On Tuesday, two demonstrators suffered gunshot wounds.
Yesterday, "the 184" alliance planned to parade and place a wreath at the capital's Heros' Plaza, said its coordinator, Andre Apaid, who accuses Aristide of hijacking the bicentennial celebration for his own political ends.
"He wants to turn it into a trampoline, but people are angry at the way he is politicizing an event like this," Apaid said. "In any case, I think he's lost the enthusiasm of the people. He has major problems."
Aristide's information minister, Mario Dupuy, insisted the president's popularity remains intact.
"We are counting on the support of the people," he said yesterday, adding he does not expect trouble.
Meanwhile, preparation for the celebration was in evidence throughout the capital, with podiums under construction and fresh paint being applied to kiosks and streetcorners.
But once the celebrating is over, Haiti, two-thirds of whose population lives below the poverty level, will face yet another crisis. On Jan. 12 parliamentary terms of office run out, posing the prospect of an institutional vacuum that could deepen political tensions.
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
RSS