Gassant and the Senate: A pointless showdown with no winners in sight

The current face-off taking place between Port-au-Prince’s chief prosecutor, Claudy Gassant, and Haiti’s parliament has thus far shown signs of almost all of the characteristic weaknesses with which the Haitian state seems content to shoot itself in the foot time and time again: Arrogance, intolerance, accusations of corruption and the plain inability of the parties involved to be able to see past the political considerations of the moment to the broader picture of the health of the state as a whole and the well-being of almost 9 million Haitians. All that is missing now from Haiti’s traditional political tableau is violence. Let’s hope it remains absent.

When Gassant, for reasons thus far clear only to himself, refused to appear with his superior, Minister of Justice René Magloire, before the judiciary committee of Haiti’s senate this week, the senators reacted as has been their wont for recorded memory, like roosters in a yard. Members of the body declared that they would summon Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis to declare a vote of no-confidence and, thus, forcing Haitian president René Préval to form a completely new cabinet at a moment when, for the first time in years, Haiti appears to be making modest progress on both the political and economic front.

Put simply, for the Haitian senate to force the Préval government into this level of crisis because of the actions of one public prosecutor would be suicide for the health of the Haitian state and the poor majority dependant on the executive branch and the senate to work together to do the people’s work, to bring jobs, healthcare, security and peace to this this impoverished and violence-scarred country.

Gassant is by many accounts a difficult though honest man, who since his return to Haiti one year ago has thus far succeeded in butting heads with everyone from his boss Magloire to Police Nationale d'Haïti (PNH) chief Mario Andrésol. Whether he is yet another among a long line of Haitian public figures who begin to suffer from gwo neg (big man) syndrome the moment they get a taste of power I cannot tell from my vantage point here in Paris. But for senators Gabriel Fortuné, Youri Latortue, Rudolph Boulos, Ricard Pierre and Rodolphe Joazile to evoke the possibility of toppling a government over some perceived slight by Gassant is irresponsible and dangerous and seems to show little respect for the millions of people who stood in line last year and voted Préval into office, free to select a cabinet of his choosing.

It does not help the appearance of opportunism that this month Haiti’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, succeeded in ousting Préval’s Minister of Culture, Daniel Elie, because, by many accounts, he was simply not willing to dole out government money in the fashion that the deputies were demanding. Nor does it help the appearance of impartiality that Senator Boulos’ brother, Reginald, is being questioned vigorously by Gassant at the present time.

Nor, must it be said, does it help Gassant’s case that he seems unbothered by the fact that those put into Haiti’s dysfunctional justice system tend to rot in jail for years without trial. The arrest of Haitian businessman Fritz Brandt and his son, David Brandt, sent a tremour through Haiti’s tiny elite but, really, they are only the tip of the iceberg in a system that contains thousands of nobodies who literally spend years in one of the most appalling prison systems in the world without ever seeing a verdict rendered in their cases. This aspect of Haiti’s justice system needs to be addressed energetically and immediately if the authorities ever want anyone to have any faith in the country’s courts. Holding people without trial was wrong under the regime of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, it was wrong under the 2004-2006 interim government and it is wrong now, simple as that.

If the Haitian senate wants to censure or otherwise take steps to remove Gassant from his post in accordance with Haitian law, that is their affair, but they would be advised to tread very carefully, as I fear that, with their threats to topple the Alexis government, they are close to joining their predecessors who, when confronted with their greater mission for the good of their country and the politically attractive opportunity at hand, always chose the latter, to the detriment of Haiti’s long-suffering people.

N'ap sonje w, Jean Do

Seven years ago today, on 3 April 2000, in the courtyard of Radio Haiti-Inter on the Route de Delmas in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, journalist and free man Jean-Léopold Dominique, and Radio Haiti's caretaker, Jean-Claude Louissaint, were gunned down, and Haiti lost one of the most powerful advocates for a free press and the enfranchisement of the peasant majority that the nation had ever seen.

In the years that followed, I watched as a young, Paris-educated barrister named Claudy Gassant fought against the weight of a corrupt state and a 200-year tradition of impunity, to try and bring justice to the slain men. During the first tenure of Haiti's president René Préval, until 7 February 2001, Gassant was supplied with security, vehicles ad other tools that he needed to prosecute the investigation. Upon the installation of the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2001, all of that was peeled away until Gassant was left virtually defenseless. Even before, he had reason to be afraid. His requests to interview then-senator Dany Toussaint were met with scorn by Haiti's senate, controlled by Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party, of which Toussaint was a member, with then-senate president Yvon Neptune dismissing Gassant as “a small judge that cannot summon someone from such a great body” and threatening to launch an investigation into his “exact motives.” In early 2001, Police nationale d’Haïti (PNH) assistant traffic chief Evens Sainturné, a former bodyguard of Aristide’s, demanding that Gassant return an armored vehicle that had been given to the investigation by Préval, and on 30 January of that year, driving through Port-au-Prince, Gassant’s car was cut off by a vehicle full of armed men belonging to Millien Rommage, a Fanmi Lavalas deputy who brandished weapons at Gassant from the windows of their vehicle and shouted that they could kill him anytime they wanted. Finally, in January 2002, Gassant fled into exile in the United States. At the time, Gassant, the staff of Radio Haiti-Inter and now-PNH chief Mario Andresol all charged the Aristide government with having intentionally blocked the investigation into the murder.

Over the years, I got to know something of Dominique's widow, Michele Montas, who bravely soldiered on running Radio Haiti alone until a Christmas 2002 attempt on her own life resulted in the death of her bodyguard, Maxime Seide, and forced her as well to flee into exile in the United States. She is now the spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon here in New York. Her courage, and the courage of the entire staff of Radio Haiti to soldier on under such conditions served as a great example to me.

Now, in 2007, Aristide is gone and Préval is once again president. Claudy Gassant has returned to Haiti, and is the chief magistrate of Port-au-Prince. But alas, as the press freedom group Reporters sans frontières said in a statement today, "the investigation that was relaunched two years ago has still not yielded any results and impunity continues to prevail in this case." Of the suspects two - Dymsley "Ti Lou" Milien and Jeudi "Guimy" Jean--Daniel - are said to hiding among the gangs of the capital's Martissant neighborhood, where I reported from this past summer, while others have fled abroad.

Jean Dominique and Jean-Claude Louissaint deserve better.

I close today with some lines from a radio broadcast Dominique made shortly before his murder, where he denounced the destructive violence that was tearing apart his country and directly addressed those who were trying to intimidate him:

I have no other weapon than my journalist’s pen! And my microphone and my unquenchable faith as a militant for true change! Over Radio Haiti, there is a silence to awaken the dead, the five thousand dead of the coup d’ètat; this is the truth that must emerge from this insignificant exercise in intimidation today. This is the truth that it is right to speak of this morning, the truth of a free man. Earlier I cited another free man, Laclos. I close with Shakespeare: “The truth will always make the face of the devil blush!”

Long live a free press. Viv Ayiti.