Posted Saturday, November 5, 2011

By Yves A. Isidor, Wehaitians.com executive editor

NASHUA, N.H., Nov. 5 - Haiti's unstable President Michel Joseph Martelly said today that it was never, in part or in full, his decision or that of his troublemaker administration to re-establish the Haitian army that was humiliatingly disbanded in 1995 after years of military involvement in politics, including an incalculable number of misguided coup d'etats, coup d'etat attempts, which many, even today, continue to loudly say are, too, responsible for the unwanted plethora of problems - two that are of blanket abject poverty and cholera since October 2010 has killed at least 6,000 people and sickened more than 476,000, for example - that unfortunately have never ceased to define the lives of nearly all Haitians, and as a result in the eye of most of the public of the rest of this planet citizens of the first black republic are not only fast increasingly continuing to be considered as nuisances, but pariahs.

More on Haiti's another insurmountable problem, cholera

A United States of America's marine, with the help of one of his knees, indignantly deprived a Haitian army member of his liberty as the invading forces (more than 20,000) were in the process of disbanding the long famously exclusive national force of terror, in 1995. (Wehaitians.com/file)

The largely radioactive president Martelly, who has been chastised by untold number of citizens, the domestic and international news media, including this journal Wehaitians.com, for on more than one occasion said, with certitude, that he will fulfill one of his campaign promises, that is reviving the long unneeded, proven useless dormant national military force (In 1915, about 330 U.S. marines seized Haiti without military resistance), at an initial economic cost of U.S.$95 million (which he has asked reluctant donor-nations/countries for), tough many were rather convinced that he was more inclined to create a new Tonton Macoute (officially, Volunteers for National Security) force or Duvaliers' murderous militia-type, today rather distributed blame, as usual, to people, without revealing their names, he said had circulating on the Internet a fraudulent presidential decree, giving many the impression the Haitian military, in practical terms, would soon no longer be a thing of the past.

Haiti's president h...

See video below at:  mag.ma

Using a progressive classification, as of the importance of an army vis-à-vis other pressing problems, on a scale of 1 to 10, with the former numerical value as "not important at all," this should, in fact, be the words uttered, stretched pretty far by a responsible president, one who, at the very least, understood what he was doing, as a far less number of the January 12, 2010 fierce earthquake's victims or 680,000 or so of them, from its peak of as many of 1.5 million in the immediate weeks after the unprecedented tragedy that tumbled Haiti into crisis, today continue to sleep in the open (where sanitation is not even a basic, as well as public health issue) with no end in sight, even in the distant future - one of the real, major internal security threats, not the external ones, such as a neighboring Dominican Republic's invasion of perpetually mendicant Haiti, imagined by Mr. Martelly. 

ILLUSTRATION BY MAXWELL HOLOYKE-HIRSH, VIA BLOOMBERG NEWS

So ferocious, bestial and primitive of a national military force was the Haitian army (its official replacement name, the gendamerie or "garde," since it was first disbanded by the U.S., in 1915) many always, in private, for fear of retribution, convincingly referred to it as rather the equivalent of a neighborhood gang. Apparently, with the help of one of its U.S.- donated guns it went as far as raping Haiti's flag.

The ill-repute president, who on October 12, 2011 nearly punched in the face Arnel Belizaire, a Haitian deputy he late last week ordered arrested, despite of his parliamentary immunity, as the 1987 and current Haitian constitution provides for (Article 115), urged citizens not to permit themselves to be manipulated by a given group of people, whom he again did not identify by name, whose sole purpose is to create more problems for the nation of Haiti.

What exactly the president, a man with an acid tongue who once again contradicted himself by uttering the unwanted words, "Haiti needs a new security force," meant by creating more problems for the nation of Haiti? Apparently, no lucid citizens could exactly comprehend what exactly he was referring to.

Because of a sombre history that is not limited to coups and brutality, all Haitians, the international community and others who have not only dreamt of a better Haiti, but continue to arduously work so the historically troubled nation will, hopefully, one day be a place where democracy and human rights are permanently the norms, totalitarian dictatorship, a thing of the past, must all say a big NO to Haiti's President Martelly plan to resurrect the army (if not hallelujah, that is permanently abolishing the long ceased to function as a military) or form a new Tonton Macoute force, one with absolutely no practical benefits for nearly all citizens of the small Caribbean corner, where quality of life, for example, sadly continues to be one that is the equal of dehumanizing poverty, and the latter, also the reason for Restavec or child servitude, with no end in sight.   

• In Haiti, an army that will establish an intelligence service to also put the media under surveillance

• Time for the peacekeepers to start handing over, but not to a new army

• Haitians train for a future with a military

• A new army for dirt-poor, mal-governed Haiti, an added-terminal cancer

  A profile of Haiti's national police My victims

Wehaitians.com, the scholarly journal of democracy and human rights

More from wehaitians.com

Main / Columns / Books And Arts / Miscellaneous