Cité Soleil Unites, the CPT Splits, While Conille and Kenyans Run

This past week has not been a good one for de facto Prime Minister Garry Conille, the Transitional Presidential Council (CPT), or the U.S. Embassy, which is their boss.

On Wed., Jul. 24, thousands marched in Port-au-Prince’s giant shanty town of Cité Soleil to celebrate the peace established between the armed groups of its different neighborhoods.

Gabriel Jean-Pierre, who represents the quarter known as Brooklyn, Mathias Saintil, who represents Boston, and James “Bendji” Edmond, who represents Bélékou (previously represented by the late Iscar Andris), made a pact to stop all fighting.

Those leaders, as well as the marchers, called on Haitian authorities to resume services to the long abandoned slum such as restarting schools and clinics, dredging drainage canals, repairing roads, and restoring electricity, water, and garbage collection.

“Over the past five years, [Cité Soleil’s] people were hardly able to live due to fighting encouraged by Haiti’s traditional politicians and oligarchy,” said Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier in a Jul. 25 press conference, watched by hundreds of spectators, in Cité Soleil. He represents an alliance of armed groups called Viv Ansanm (Live Together), which prevented the return to Haiti of former Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry on Feb. 29.

“I take this occasion to thank every Viv Ansanm leader, especially Jeff of Canaan, who put his foot on the accelerator by speaking to Gabriel and stressing the need for this peace,” Cherizier continued, adding that Gabriel is not a member of the Viv Ansanm alliance. “This peace shows the importance of dialogue… We are not asking for peace and dialogue because we don’t have guns and ammunition… It’s not because the Kenyan force has arrived that we are asking for peace.”

He said that only the oligarchy and politicians who put guns in the ghettoes are today rejecting dialogue, while “we in Viv Ansanm, the people of the poor neighborhoods, the lowest of the low, whom they don’t see as human, who don’t have water or electricity, we want dialogue to take Haiti to another place.”

Meanwhile, scandal and accusations are rending the CPT. Haiti’s Anti-Corruption Unit (ULCC) has opened an investigation into three CPT members for trying to shake down Raoul Pascal Pierre-Louis, the chairman of the board of directors of the National Credit Bank (BNC), for 100 million gourdes (about U$757,000) in order to retain his post. In addition to soliciting the bribe, Louis Gérald Gilles, Smith Augustin, and Emmanuel Vertilaire not only “threatened my professional integrity,” Pierre-Louis charged in a Jul. 25 letter to Conille, “but also pose a serious security risk to me and my family” who are “exposed to threats of potential attacks.”

Smith Augustin expressed “indignation at the recent false and slanderous allegations associating [me] with acts of corruption,” but Louis Gérald Gilles and Emmanuel Vertilaire had not yet issued statements at press time.

The Monitoring Office (BSA) of the Montana Accord coalition, which also has a CPT seat and is generally inimical to the three men, has called for “the withdrawal of the authorities concerned in order to facilitate the work of justice,” a call which will surely increase rancor in the already divided council.

Finally, on Mon., Jul. 29, unknown gunmen fired shots near the large delegation of Garry Conille as he toured the General Hospital, not far from the National Palace, with Haitian National Police (PNH) chief Rameau Normil and the Kenyan commander of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) Godfrey Otunge. The attack began just as Conille was answering questions of CNN reporter Larry Madowo, so the ensuing panic, disarray, and flight of the PNH and MSS troops, along with the officials, was captured by many cameras.

It is not clear if soldiers of the Viv Ansanm coalition fired the initial shots – maybe as few as two – that triggered the huge PNH and MSS fusillade, but the images of cops firing their weapons wildly as they ran back and climbed into their towering U.S.-supplied armored cars were almost comical.

Contrary to some reports, the General Hospital had not been previously “retaken” by the PNH. Even before the first 200 Kenyans arrived on Jun. 25, the Viv Ansanm simply withdrew its forces from the hospital and area around it because it had no strategic importance for them, their spokesman told Haïti Liberté weeks ago. Clearly, however, if it was the Haitian armed groups that attacked the heavily-girded contingent of helmeted police and armored cars at the hospital, they did so with relative ease. There were no casualties reported in the confrontation, despite the intense gunfire recorded from many angles.