Police fired tear gas outside the ruins of Haiti’s national palace on Monday to control 2,000 demonstrators calling for Haitian President Rene Preval’s resignation in the largest political protest since the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Preval has been criticized for his low profile following the quake and for allegedly using the destruction as a pretext to stay in office beyond his term.
“He is profiting from this disaster in order to stay in power,” said Herve Santilus, 39, a sociologist who was laid off a few weeks after the magnitude 7 quake struck and has not been able to find work since.
PHOTO: EPA
Many demonstrators identified themselves as supporters of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was exiled to Africa during a 2004 rebellion.
In the narrow passages of the Bel-Air slum, counter-protesters threw rocks at the passing crowd and shotgun blasts rang out at least twice. At least one man was wounded, police spokesman Frantz Lerebours said.
Students supporting the protest threw rocks at passing UN vehicles, only to be choked into submission by volleys of police-fired tear gas.
This was the strongest showing of opposition to the Haitian leader since the quake, which killed a government-estimated 230,000 to 300,000 people. The insults were deep and vulgar: Some talked about president’s mother, others chanted that the first lady belonged “under the rubble.”
Preval announced last week that he would stay in office up to three months past the end of his term next Feb. 7 if the presidential election is delayed.
Officials are struggling to hold the election as scheduled this fall as the quake destroyed the election agency’s headquarters and records and killed or displaced about 1.6 million voters.
At a news conference last week, Preval assured the public that he would leave office by May 14 next year — exactly five years after his delayed 2006 inauguration.
“I want to establish stability in this country,” he said.
While marchers passed the crushed palace, the president was several miles away presiding as co-chairman at an election-planning meeting at the UN peacekeeping base.
As the protest wound down, a quorum of the 29-member Senate voted to extend Preval’s term. The 99-seat lower chamber approved the measure late last week.
The entire lower house and a third of the Senate were set to be vacant at midnight on Monday due to the cancellation of legislative elections slated for February, leaving a rump upper house dominated by Preval allies and a president ruling largely by decree.
In the absence of a fully functioning parliament, the country’s recovery will be directed mostly by a commission headed by former US president Bill Clinton and Haitain Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.
It is to oversee US$9.9 billion in foreign reconstruction money pledged at a March conference — a sum 40 percent larger than the nation’s entire GDP.
“Preval has used the drama that our country went through and turned it into an opportunity for himself … Instead of looking out for the people, he quickly hatched a plan to benefit the small group of people around him, the bourgeoisie,” 29-year-old schoolteacher Claudy Louis said.
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