by MILO MILFORT and LAFONTAINE ORVILD
(IPS) – Several thousand marchers demonstrated against Haitian President Michel Martelly on Sunday, the anniversary of a bloody coup d’état that toppled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide 21 years ago.
With posters and slogans denouncing the rising cost of living, the government’s authoritarianism and corruption, and also calling for Martelly to step down, demonstrators made their way to the ruins of the National Palace, crushed in the devastating earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010.
“One way or the other, he’s got to go!” was one of the many slogans shouted by demonstrators, whose ranks included hundreds of supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas Family party, as well as people from parties and groups who once marched in the streets against the popular former priest and president.
Aristide was ousted in 2004 with support of these same political groups, and also in a coup d’état in 1991 that resulted in a brutal three-year military regime. Both efforts had overt and covert support from Washington.
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Last week, the minister of justice suddenly fired the Commissaire de Gouvernement (top government prosecutor) Jean Renel Sénatus for insubordination and for “disrespect”. The next 48 hours saw a virtual revolving door of two more nominations and then resignations for the same post, until it was finally filled on Saturday.
Quoted in the Haitian daily Le Nouvelliste on September 28, Sénatus agreed he had been insubordinate.
“In less than three months, the minister (of justice) asked me to execute 17 illegal orders. In these cases, yes, he can say that I didn’t execute orders and that I was disrespectful,” the former prosecutor said, adding that the minister had also asked him to arrest 36 people for a “plot against the security of the state and association with criminals”. Sénatus said he also refused to carry out those orders.
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