Plunging into Haiti: Clinton, Aristide, and the Defeat of Diplomacy

CHAPTER 13. Prime Minister Malval

165 Prime Minister Malval “In Haiti, you always blame the other person. You never take responsibility. It’s a national disease.” —A L I C E B L A N C H E T, aide to Prime Minister Malval Publisher Robert Malval was one of the first people to call President Aristide after he had been ousted in September 1991 and was living in exile in Venezuela. Malval urged his friend to mobilize the international community to restore him to office. But now as the international effort was bearing fruit in the form of an agreement signed by General Cédras to restore Aristide to office by October 30, 1993, the urbane publisher was growing disillusioned with the man he had agreed to serve. It didn’t help that the day after Malval was formally installed as prime minister—September 3, 1993—President Aristide left for Europe on a fifteen-day book tour. “What a contemptible thing to do,” Malval said later. “Also, it was a joke, because he was promoting a book that he hadn’t even written.”1 President Aristide’s trip raised more than a few eyebrows at the UN, in Port-au-Prince, and in Washington, because a lot of work had to be done if the deposed president was to return to Haiti on schedule. Amnesty and police laws had to be written and passed, a new commander-in-chief CHAPTER 13 1 66 PRIME MINISTER MALVAL of the FADH had to be selected and other steps completed to fulfill the Governors Island Agreement signed by President Aristide and General Cédras in early July. Prime Minister Malval, who was committed to making the transition work, found his efforts hampered from two sides. On the military side stood a nervous General Cédras and an antagonistic General Biamby and Colonel Michel François. On the constitutional side were President Aristide and his advisors in Washington, who thought the agreement had been forced on them by the international community and didn’t provide for the one thing they felt could ensure their security—the destruction of the Haitian military. They had also saddled Malval with a government that was weak and, for the most part, handpicked by Aristide from his loyalists. One of the most assertive of the new ministers was the minister of education, Victor Benoit, who had stepped aside in 1990 so that Aristide could run under the banner of the FNCD. Now he and his chief of staff, Micha Gaillard, tried to organize secondary school exams for September so that schools could open without further delays. Before baccalaureate exams could take place, teachers had to be paid and maintenance work had to be performed on school buildings. Through the new minister of finance Marie-Michelle Rey, they wrote to President Aristide in Washington asking him to release state funds that were at his disposal. Under an agreement that had been worked out, Ambassador Casimir had the power to oversee and sign for those resources, but the ministry of finance could annul this right at any moment.2 Weeks went by without an answer from Washington. Prime Minister Malval demanded an explanation, but didn’t get one. Minister of Finance Madam Rey was reluctant to invoke her power for fear of offending Ambassador Casimir and the president. So Victor Benoit and Malval had to raise the money themselves. Then there was the question of security for the exams. Benoit arranged a meeting with General Cédras. Cédras, who appreciated the new minister ’s straightforward approach, agreed to cooperate. The baccalaureate exams were held. It was a positive step forward in a country where conditions were deplorable and growing worse. International relief organizations estimated that they were feeding as many as one million people a day. Basic 167 PRIME MINISTER MALVAL services such as water, electricity, roads, and telephones were breaking down daily. “Tragedy does not capture what we see every day,” said a resident at University Hospital Center of Port-au-Prince—the country’s only major public hospital. “We are down to performing examinations without gloves, because there are none. We operate without soap, because there often is none. Sometimes the wards go for days without a simple washing . Why? Because there isn’t any water.”3 When Mike Kozak from the Haiti Working Group arrived in Port-auPrince the first week of September, he and U...