27403: Jean-Pierre- (News) The Other Regime Change -Max Blumental -Salon.com

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JJEANPIERRE1@aol.com

HLLN Note: "The Other Regime Change - Did the Bush administration allow a
network of right-wing Republicans to foment a violent coup in Haiti?" an
article

 written by Max Blumental, July 16, 2004, that extensively detailed IRI and
Stanley Lucas' role in the overthrow of Haiti's elected government was
originally published at  Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/07/16/haiti_coup/index.html  . Below
Max Blumental comments on the recent New York Times story: "Democracy  Undone -

Mixed U.S. Signals Helped Tilt Haiti Toward  Chaos."


*****************
Uncovering A US-Planned Coup In Haiti:  The Original Version

On Sunday, the New York Times ran a lengthy  investigative piece by Walt
Bogdanovich and Jenny Nordberg, "Mixed U.S. Signals  Helped Tilt Haiti Toward
Chaos," which claimed to expose how the a taxpayer  funded Washington non-
profit

with close ties to the Bush administration, the  International Republican
Institute, and its Haiti operative, Stanley Lucas,  fomented a coup in Haiti
that
deposed its democratically elected president,  Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
In fact, the story was remarkably similar to a story  I wrote nearly two
years ago for Salon.com. On January 3, 2005, a New York Times  staffer named
Ursula Andrews emailed me, asking for help with research. I was  excited that
the
newspaper of record was finally picking up on the story, and  complied with
their request. When the Times published its story, it contained no  citation of

my work.

So here is my article, "The Other Regime Change," in  its entirety. Unlike
the Times, my story includes well-sourced details of  Stanley Lucas' sordid
personal history, like his family's orchestration of a  bloody peasant
massacre,

his role in training death squad personnel, and his  campaign to destroy former

US Ambassor Brian Dean Curran. You may be surprised  at what your tax dollars
are funding in the name of democracy  promotion:

The other regime change

Did  the Bush administration allow a network of right-wing Republicans to
foment a  violent coup in Haiti?

- - - - - - - - - - -  -

By Max Blumenthal

July 16, 2004 | On  Feb. 8, 2001, the federally funded International
Republican Institute's (IRI)  senior program officer for Haiti, Stanley Lucas,
appeared on the Haitian station  Radio Tropicale to suggest three strategies
for

vanquishing Haiti's president,  Jean-Bertrand Aristide. First, Lucas proposed
forcing Aristide to accept early  elections and be voted out; second, he could
be
charged with corruption and  arrested; and finally, Lucas raised dealing with
Aristide the way the Congolese  people had dealt with President Laurent Kabila
the month before. "You did see  what happened to Kabila?" Lucas asked his
audience.

Kabila  had been assassinated.

IRI's communications director,  Thayer Scott, in an interview with Salon,
characterized Lucas' radio remarks as  "a comparative analysis of countries
that

embrace democracy and those that do  not."

Whatever the case, Lucas and IRI, a nonprofit  political group backed by
powerful Republicans close to the Bush administration,  did more than talk.
Throughout the last six years, IRI, whose stated mission is  to "promote the
practice of democracy" abroad, conducted a $3 million  party-building program
in

Haiti, training Aristide's political opponents,  uniting them into a single
bloc

and, according to a former U.S. ambassador  there, encouraging them to reject
internationally sanctioned power-sharing  agreements in order to heighten
Haiti's political crisis. Moreover, Lucas'  controversial personal background
and
his ties to Haitian opposition figures  with violent histories -- including
some who participated in a coup against  Aristide in February -- raise
questions

about whether IRI's Haiti program  violated its own guidelines and those of
its funders.

The  recent political turmoil in Haiti and in Venezuela (where the Bush White
House  tacitly supported a coup against President Hugo Chavez in 2002, and
where IRI  also has a murky history of involvement) reflect a troubling pattern

in the Bush  administration's prevailing approach to the export of
"democracy." When George  W. Bush entered the White House in 2001, he adopted a
policy of
studied neglect  toward Haiti, scaling back President Clinton's policy of
direct engagement while  appointing veteran anti-Aristide ideologues to key
State
Department positions.  Meanwhile, the well-connected, smooth-talking Lucas
acted as the Haitian version  of Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who helped
neoconservatives in Washington  promote the war against Saddam Hussein. Like
Chalabi, Lucas ingratiated himself  with powerful Republicans sympathetic to
the

concept of regime change in his  native country and lobbied for increased
funding
to the opposition groups he  advised and helped train.

Impeccably dressed and charming,  as a young man Lucas gained renown as a
Caribbean judo champion and  well-connected socialite. He is the scion of a
pro-Duvalier Haitian landowning  family from the town of Jean Rebel. According
to
Amnesty International and a  longtime Jean Rebel resident now in the U.S. who
spoke on condition of  anonymity, in 1987 Lucas' cousins Leonard and Remy
organized a machete-wielding  mob to hack to death 250 peasants protesting for
land
redistribution outside  their ranch. IRI's Scott dismisses the massacre as an
"urban  legend."

At the time of the massacre, Lucas was active in  plans to crush Haiti's
nascent democracy movement. According to Kim Ives, who  has known Lucas since
1986
and is editor of the independent Haitian weekly Haiti  Progres, during a
chance encounter in 1988 in Port-au-Prince, Lucas told him he  was training
Haitian soldiers in counterinsurgency tactics. "I'd always pictured  him as
more
of
a playboy than anything," Ives recounted. "That was the first  time I realized
he was a serious player involved with the soldiers preparing to  put down the
popular uprisings to come."

According to Bob  Maguire, a leading Haiti expert at Trinity College and
former State Department  official, Lucas' personal history raises serious
questions about IRI's  integrity. "Having this guy as your point person for
Haiti,
with this kind of  background, is just incredibly provocative," says Maguire.
"If
your organization  wants to have a useful, balanced program, how could you
have this guy as your  program officer?"

The role of figures like Lucas in the  coup suggests a complex web of
Republican connections to Aristide's ouster that  may never be known. What is
clear,
though, is that the destabilization of  Aristide's government was initiated
early on by IRI, a group of right-wing  congressmen and their staffers by
imposing draconian sanctions, training  Aristide's opponents and encouraging
them in
their intransigence. The Bush  administration appears to have gone along,
delegating Haiti policy to right-wing  underlings like the assistant secretary
for the Western Hemisphere, Roger  Noriega, a former staffer to Sen. Jesse
Helms, R-N.C. Not only did Noriega  collaborate with IRI to increase funding to

Aristide's opponents, but as a  mediator to Haiti's political crisis he appears

to have routinely acquiesced  with the opposition's divisive tactics.

In February 2004,  as insurgents went on the offensive and Haiti began
descending into chaos,  Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld outlined the Bush
administration's view of the  situation at a Feb. 10 press
briefing: "Everyone's

hopeful that the situation,  which tends to ebb and flow down there, will stay
below a certain threshold ...  we have no plans to do anything." Two weeks
later,
an international delegation  was unable to broker a compromise; Aristide
agreed to a power-sharing peace  deal, but the rebels declined. With the
insurgency
sweeping toward the capital  on Feb. 28, top Bush officials convened, but
rather than send in troops to  protect Aristide's government, they reversed
their
official position of support,  asking Aristide to leave the country
immediately under U.S. stewardship. Haiti's  elected leader left on a plane the

following day in the company of U.S.  diplomats, bound for exile in the Central

African Republic.

To be sure, Aristide was a corrupt, problematic leader -- but since his
ouster,  the situation in Haiti appears to have deteriorated to a point lower
than
at any  moment during his tenure. The looting that followed Aristide's
departure has  cost Haitian businesses hundreds of millions of dollars; most of
the
Haitian  national police force's weapons and equipment were stolen and over
half of its  officers quit; and the price of rice, essential to the diet of
Haiti's poor, has  more than doubled in the last four months. Moreover, recent
reports describe  rampant human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings
filling
the power  void.

For the majority of Haitians who live on one meal and  less than a dollar a
day, regime change has only brought more violence, chaos  and starvation.

The right-wing campaign to oust Aristide  has its roots in the GOP's
longstanding support for pro-U.S. dictators in Haiti.  In 1971, President Nixon

restored U.S. military aid to the brutal regime of  dictator Jean-Claude
Duvalier,
whom he considered an anticommunist counterweight  to Cuba. The Duvalier regime

eventually crumbled beneath a wave of popular  opposition in 1986; a
procession of GOP-backed puppets and military dictators  followed, until the
charismatic Aristide won Haiti's first democratic election  in 1990. But
Aristide was
overthrown a year later by FRAPH, a CIA-backed junta  led by Raoul Cedras, a
Haitian army officer trained by the U.S. Army and openly  supported by
prominent

Washington conservatives like Helms.

When Aristide fled Haiti in 1991, he was given sanctuary in Washington by
sympathetic liberal politicians and intellectuals, especially members of the
Congressional Black Caucus, who were eager to show solidarity with the first
democratically elected leader of the world's oldest black republic. In 1994,
under intense pressure from congressional Democrats, President Clinton
returned

Aristide to power by military force. Though Aristide accepted onerous
economic  reforms as a condition of his return, his legacy as a
liberation-theology
preaching slum priest thrust to power by Haiti's poor masses fueled a
perception  among conservatives that he was the next Fidel Castro.

The  GOP secured a majority in Congress in 1994. Soon afterwards Helms, who
chaired  the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; his counterpart in the House,
Ben  Gilman, R-N.Y.; and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss,
R-Fla.  (now considered a potential successor to former CIA Director George
Tenet)  passed a stream of bills ordering U.S. troops out of Haiti, terminating
a
host  of infrastructure-building initiatives there and imposing an embargo on
lethal  and nonlethal weapons to the Haitian national police force. Helms even
presented  a now-discredited CIA document on the Senate floor in 1995
claiming Aristide was  "psychotic."

With conditions deteriorating, Aristide clung  to power using a mixture of
firebrand rhetoric and repression, surrounding  himself with cronies and hiring

armed gangs to intimidate his opponents.  Meanwhile, confronted with a Clinton
White House that preferred to hold its nose  to Aristide's corruption and
focus on building Haiti's fragile democracy, a  coalition of Republicans used
IRI
as a Trojan horse. From the beginning of its  Haiti program, in direct
contradiction of many of its own guidelines, IRI  embraced reactionary
political

elements far more antidemocratic than  Aristide.

IRI was created by Congress in 1983. It has an  approximately $20 million
annual budget granted by its bureaucratic parent, the  National Endowment for
Democracy, the U.S. Agency for International Development,  and conservative
corporate and philanthropic groups. But past IRI activity  highlights an agenda
for
regime change far from democratic in its methods, from  organizing groups
that participated in a 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela, to  hosting delegates
from
right-wing European parties at a September 2002  conference in Prague to
rally support for war on Iraq. Its Haiti program is the  brainchild of its vice

president, Georges Fauriol, who is a member of the  Republican National
Committee and the Center for Strategic and International  Studies. At CSIS, a
conservative Washington think tank, Fauriol worked closely  with Otto Reich, a
hawkish
Iran-Contra figure who served as the Bush  administration's special envoy to
the Western Hemisphere until his resignation  this June. Fauriol, who rejected
an interview request, has worked as a Latin  America expert for CSIS since
the days when Duvalier ruled Haiti.

By 1992, while the U.S.-friendly Cedras' FRAPH death squads rampaged  through
Haiti's slums and slaughtered Aristide supporters by the thousands, IRI
hired Haitian national Stanley Lucas to head its operations there. Though
elections had already been nullified by Cedras, IRI spokesman Scott says the
group's
work in Haiti at the time consisted of "election monitoring." Lucas  himself
rejected an interview request.

For IRI's Washington  backers, Lucas meant unparalleled access to the key
anti-Aristide figures on  Haiti's political scene. By 1998, when IRI's
"party-building" program officially  began, Lucas spearheaded the training of
an
array
of small parties at IRI  meetings in Port-au-Prince. IRI's Scott characterized
the seminars as benign  lessons in "Democracy 101."

Indeed, Lucas and IRI's  involvement with some of Aristide's most unsavory
enemies suggested an  altogether different agenda. Among invitees to IRI's
seminars were members of  CREDDO, the personal political platform of Gen.
Prosper
Avril, the former  Haitian dictator who ruled with an iron fist from 1988 to
1990, declaring a  state of siege and arbitrarily torturing his opponents.
Avril

wrote about IRI's  meetings in his 1999 memoir, "The Truth About a Singular
Lawsuit," describing a  truce he signed "under the auspices of IRI" with his
former torture victim Evans  Paul. Thanks in part to the rapprochement, Paul
became the de facto spokesman  for the coalition of parties trained in 1999 by
Lucas and IRI: the Democratic  Convergence.

Despite IRI's efforts to create a credible  opposition to Aristide, the
Convergence proved a lame horse; the party was blown  out by Aristide's popular

Lavalas party in the 2000 local and parliamentary  elections. Yet questionable
vote counting prompted the Clinton administration to  block over $400 million
in

multilateral loans to Haiti. As economic conditions  deteriorated there,
Convergence changed its tactics. In addition to boycotting  the 2000
presidential
elections, between 2000 and 2002 Convergence rejected 20  proposed
power-sharing compromises designed to ease Haiti's political crisis. In  2003
the party
formed an ersatz transitional government to challenge Aristide's  legitimacy,
and its relationship with IRI and Washington Republicans grew even  cozier.

According to IRI's Scott, from 1998 to 2002, IRI  bolstered Convergence with
"less than $2 million." In 2000, $34,994 of that money was granted to IRI from
NED to junket Convergence leaders to several  meetings in Washington designed
"to open channels of communication" with  "relevant policy makers and
analysts." IRI met Convergence leaders again in  February 2002 in the Dominican

Republic with a delegation of congressional  Republicans including Caleb
McCarry, a
staunchly anti-Aristide staffer on the  House Foreign Relations Committee
who, according to a former senior State  Department official, "worked hand in
glove with Lucas to tie funding to the  opposition."

Secretary of State Colin Powell advised the  continuation of Clinton's Haiti
policy -- Aristide had eventually "corrected"  the election results -- calling
for increased international aid, but his  diplomatic efforts were stymied by
Convergence's rejectionism -- and by a White  House that seemed determined to
move Haiti policy in an opposite direction. By  2002, Bush had eliminated the
State Department position of special Haiti  coordinator and removed the
national security advisor from daily involvement  with Haiti. He also appointed

Helms' ideological heir, Noriega, first as the  U.S. ambassador to the OAS, and

later to assistant secretary of state for the  Western Hemisphere, in turn
strengthening the influence of IRI.

Meanwhile, IRI's Lucas began to sabotage the U.S. ambassador, Brian Dean
Curran, a career diplomat and Clinton appointee who had evidence that Lucas
was

undermining diplomatic efforts to resolve Haiti's political crisis. Seeking to
 weaken Curran politically, Lucas spread destructive rumors about his
personal  life, according to a close associate of Curran's who asked to remain
anonymous.  A journalist with access to U.S. diplomats in Haiti offered a
similar
account.  Curran's associate also said that Lucas threatened Curran and another

embassy  official, claiming they would be fired "as soon as the real U.S.
policy is  enacted." IRI refused to discuss Lucas' interactions with Curran or
embassy  officials.

In response to Lucas' freebooting, Curran  demanded that USAID block him from
participating in IRI's Haiti program. During  a March 10, 2004, Senate
hearing on Haiti, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., pressed  Noriega for details of
Lucas'
involvement. "The approval of this new grant was  conditioned on the IRI
[Haiti] director, Stanley Lucas, being barred from  participating in this
program
for a period of time because the U.S. ambassador  in Haiti had evidence that he

was undermining U.S. efforts to encourage Haitian  opposition cooperation with
the OAS efforts to broker a compromise. Is that not  true as well?" Dodd
asked Noriega.

"Yes, sir," Noriega  conceded.

Dodd continued: "Is Stanley Lucas still  involved?"

"As far as I know, he is still part of the  program," Noriega said. According
to IRI's Scott, Lucas was barred for only four  months by USAID.

Lucas' continued role frustrated Curran;  he resigned in July 2003. In his
farewell address in Port-au-Prince, Curran  remarked, "There were many in Haiti

who preferred not to listen to me, the  president's representative, but to
their own friends in Washington, sirens of  extremism or revanchism on the one
hand or apologists on the other," Curran  said. "They don't hold official
positions. I call then the 'chimeres' [a Haitian  slang term for "political
thugs"]
of Washington."

By the  time of Curran's departure, IRI's Haiti program was flush with a $1.2
million  grant from USAID for 2003 and 2004. According to IRI's Scott,
"roughly $200,000"  of that grant was used to junket over 600 Haitian
opposition

figures to the  Dominican Republic and the U.S. to meet with IRI. With IRI's
help, they formed a  new coalition called Group of 184 representing the "civil
society" wing of the  opposition. IRI currently hosts Group of 184's home page
on
its Haiti policy Web  site, which features photos of anti-Aristide
demonstrations in Port-au-Prince  last March. And Scott acknowledged that "IRI
played an
advisory role in Group of  184's formation."

Group of 184's power brokers were divided  into two camps: its majority
constitutional wing, which emphasized protests and  diplomacy as the path to
forcing Aristide out, and a hard-line faction quietly  determined to oust
Aristide
by any means necessary. The constitutionalists were  represented by Group of
184's spokesman and most prominent member, Andre Apaid  Jr., a Haitian-American

of Lebanese descent who controls one of Haiti's oldest  and largest sweatshop
empires. The hard-liners were led by Wendell Claude, a  politician who was
hell-bent on avenging the death of his brother Sylvio, a  church minister
burned

to death by a pro-Aristide mob after the coup in  1991.

While the constitutional wing mounted a series of  anti-Aristide street
protests through late 2003, provoking increasing unrest,  Claude and the
hard-liners hatched plans for a coup. They tapped Guy Phillippe,  a U.S.-
trained
former
Haitian police chief with a dubious human rights record.  He was to lead a
band of insurgents consisting almost entirely of exiled members  of FRAPH death

squads and former soldiers of the Haitian army, which Aristide  had disbanded
in 1995. For three years, they camped in Perenal, a border town in  the
Dominican Republic, using it as a staging point for acts of sabotage against
Aristide's government, including a July 2001 hit-and-run attack on the Haitian

police academy that killed five and wounded 14.

Lucas  appears to have had at least casual contact with the insurgents. In an
interview  by cellphone from Haiti, Phillippe said he and Lucas grew up
together and that  Lucas is a longtime family friend. And though Phillippe said
he
met with Lucas  late last year in the Dominican Republic, he maintained the
meeting was not  political: "He [Lucas] was helping organize a democratic
opposition. I really  don't know about his job because I never would talk about

politics with  him."

Others describe more formal ties between IRI and the  insurgents. Jean Michel
Caroit, chief correspondent in the Dominican Republic  for the French daily
Le Monde, says he saw Phillippe's political advisor, Paul  Arcelin, at an IRI
meeting at Hotel Santo Domingo in December 2003. Caroit, who  was having drinks

in the lobby with several attendees, said the meeting was  convened "quite
discreetly." His account dovetailed with that of a Haitian  journalist who told

Salon on condition of anonymity that Arcelin often attended  IRI meetings in
Santo Domingo as Convergence's representative to the Dominican  Republic.

IRI's Scott fervently denies involvement with the  insurgents. "IRI has never
dealt with Guy Phillippe or the leaders of other  violent groups," he says.
During Senate hearings on Haiti this March, Sen. Dodd  probed Secretary Noriega

about links between Lucas and Phillippe, and he, too,  issued a denial: "I
have never heard that [Lucas and Phillippe were associated  in any way], and to

my knowledge, it wouldn't be the case. It certainly wouldn't  be acceptable."

Besides violating its own stated  guidelines, IRI also may have broken the
rules of its chief funder, USAID, which  forbids grantees from working with
"undemocratic parties" that do not "eschew  the use of violence to overthrow
democratic institutions" or "have endorsed or  sponsored violence in the past."

In February 2004 the  insurgents attacked, crossing into Haiti and laying
siege to its second largest  city, Cap-Haitien. Rather than send troops to stop

them, the Bush administration  sent Noriega on Feb. 18 to attempt to stanch the

violence with a power-sharing  deal between Aristide and the opposition,
which was represented by Group of  184's Apaid. That afternoon, Noriega
presented
the proposal to Aristide,  accompanied by his general counsel, Ira Kurzban.
"Within two hours," Kurzban  said, Aristide agreed to the proposal.

But when Noriega sat  down with Apaid that evening, he handled him with kid
gloves. "Once we explained  to Noriega the situation in Haiti, he understood. I

cannot say that he pushed  us," said Charles Baker, Apaid's brother-in-law
and a Group of 184 board member  who was briefed on the meeting by Apaid.

"This guy's an  American citizen," Kurzban said of Apaid, who was born in New
York. "You don't  think if the U.S. wanted to put pressure on him, they
couldn't put pressure on  him? So it's like, OK, Andy,' with a wink and a nod,
'Take another couple of  days to decide.'" Needless to say, Apaid rejected the
compromise.

The following day, Phillippe and a band of 200 insurgents armed with  vintage
rifles and M-16's (some of which, according to Le Monde's Caroit, were
provided by the U.S.-armed Dominican military) captured Cap Haitien and began
their advance on Port-au-Prince.

On Feb. 28, Bush's top  foreign policy officials, including Dick Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza  Rice and Colin Powell, held a teleconference
meeting
and, according to the  Washington Post, decided to press for Aristide's
ouster. The next day, with  Haiti's police in full retreat and the insurgents
bearing down on Aristide's  residence, U.S. Embassy officials presented
Aristide

with a stark choice: stay  in Haiti without protection or accept a
U.S.-chartered plane into exile. He took  the plane. The following day,
Phillippe marched
into the capital, greeted  cheering supporters and boasted to foreign reporters

that he was "the  chief."

According to the Post, Bush was not involved in the  decision to press for
Aristide's ouster nor was the president aware a decision  had been made to
ferry

Aristide into exile. When Aristide was flown out of the  country on Feb. 29,
Bush had to be awakened from his slumber by a late-night  phone call from Rice
to inform him. It was only then that he authorized the  deployment of U.S.
Marines to quell the violence in Haiti.

Aristide's corruption and authoritarianism may have justified his ouster in
the  eyes of his opponents, but now that he is gone, is Haiti any better  off?

The answer, at present, is that by giving  anti-Aristide figures in
Washington and Haiti a free hand, the Bush  administration has created a
situation
worse than the one it inherited -- and  one reminiscent of Iraq after the fall
of
Saddam. In the wake of Aristide's  departure, widespread looting erupted
across Haiti; well-armed thugs terrorized  businesses and ravaged the country's

public infrastructure. Virtually every  prison in the country was emptied,
freeing both common criminals and human  rights violators -- including Stanley
Lucas' notorious cousin,  Remy.

Many Haiti experts, including Trinity College's  Maguire, project the next
elections there will be held sometime in the next two  years. For now, Haiti's
president is Gerard Latortue, a former World Bank  official hailed by Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush in a March 23 Washington Post editorial  for his "integrity and
selfless service." Yet with no domestic constituency,  Latortue has had to
kowtow to Phillippe and the insurgents, whom he has publicly  called "freedom
fighters." Like another Bush-installed leader -- Afghan  President Hamid
Karzai,

whose shaky administration relies on U.N. peacekeeping  forces concentrated in
his country's capital -- Latortue's government wields  little authority:
According to a June 15 press release from the nonpartisan  Council on
Hemispheric
Affairs in Washington, in addition to many hundreds of  Aristide supporters
murdered inside Port-au-Prince itself, convicted criminals,  former
paramilitary

leaders and other vigilantes retain effective control of  most of the Haitian
countryside.

And, as it did with  European governments on Iraq, the Bush administration's
Haiti policy has  provoked a diplomatic crisis in the Caribbean basin: Over
four months after  Aristide's departure from Haiti, the 15-nation Caribbean
Community still refuses  to recognize Latortue's government, and in June the
OAS

opened an investigation  into Aristide's ouster. U.S. troops handed over
control of the peacekeeping  mission in Haiti to the U.N. on June 20.

"One has to be  very concerned with the country's direction," says Maguire.
"An awful lot of  people who have been discredited in the past for abusing
power and people have  been climbing back into government. So far there is no
sign
that the new  government or the U.S. will confront these antidemocratic
forces."

An April press release from the independent Haitian factory workers'  union,
Batay Ouvriye, made an urgent plea:

"There is no  person legitimately in charge anywhere. A whole series of
upstarts have taken  advantage of this situation to set themselves up as the
authorities, as chiefs,  and, in the process, the people are really suffering.
THIS
SITUATION CANNOT  CONTINUE!"



----- End forwarded message -----