June 20, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 8, 1423

HINCHE (Haiti): The people of Haiti’s Central Plateau have a long history of rebellion — from escaped slaves who helped evict would-be conquerors to Charlemagne Peralte, a former army officer who led an insurrection against an American occupation in the early 20th century.

In an echo of earlier struggles, some rural areas are again seeing stirrings of a challenge, this time to what some peasant groups charge are increasingly oppressive tactics by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas Family ruling party.

Grass-roots organizers in places such as Hinche, 80 kms north of the capital Port-au-Prince, are attempting to rally farmers across the country of 8 million people under a banner of civil disobedience. In recent months, peasant groups have held demonstrations and built roadblocks with burning tires along the country’s Route National 1.

One prominent peasant figure is Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the charismatic 55-year-old leader of the 200,000-member Mouvman Peyizan Papay (Papay Peasants Movement) and affiliated groups, who was at one time one of the president’s closest confidants.

He has been organizing in the region for 30 years and has now become a vocal critic of the Aristide administration.

He said his own group presses for change on issues ranging from reforestation to the right to assembly.

“Stolen elections, corruption, this will do nothing to help the people here, and we refuse to accept it,” Jean-Baptiste said.

The peasant movements have gathered momentum in recent months and could pose a challenge to Aristide and his party in the impoverished Caribbean nation, some Haiti experts say.

“As that bond breaks down between Lavalas and the peasantry, incumbency could prove a terrific burden in the next elections should they be free and fair,” said James Morrell, director of the Haiti Democracy Project, a Washington-based think tank.

The government says it is addressing the concerns of those in the countryside, where subsistence farmers scratch out a living, with programmes such as literacy centers and health care plans but it is still meeting opposition.

Peasants have been vigorously protesting the government’s decision to build a free trade zone on farmland near the northeastern town of Ouanaminthe.

Aristide, who had the overwhelming support of Haiti’s poor when he first took office 11 years ago, returned for a second presidential term 18 months ago. His return has been marked by a continuous challenge from opposition parties over parliamentary elections in May 2000 which they contend were tabulated to favor Lavalas.

He also faces rural discontent. Aristide himself was one of the Papay Peasant Movement’s strongest supporters while working as a leftist parish priest in the late 1980s, and Jean-Baptiste served as the head of the transition team for Aristide’s successor, Rene Preval, in 1995.

During Aristide’s exile after being ousted by a military coup in 1991, the movement bore the brunt of army repression along with other popular movements before a US-led coalition returned him to power in 1994.

But Jean-Baptiste said he was appalled by the level of corruption in the final months of Aristide’s first term as Haiti’s president, and that the situation under his successor deteriorated even further.

Relations between the two sides reached a new low with the election of Lavalas party member Dongo Joseph as Hinche’s mayor after the disputed May 2000 elections. Joseph is not from the region and so was widely viewed in the Plateau as an outsider.—Reuters