Latinnews Archive
Caribbean & Central America - 1 November 1985
Lafontant gets the push;OPPONENTS AND TOP AIDES TOO ARE TARGETS FOR DUVALIER
Decline and fall at the extremes of the Haitian political spectrum reached a dramatic turn in Port-au-Prince this month with the exile of one of President Jean-Claude Duvalier's closest personal advisors and, in an unrelated development, the killing of one of the regime's more militant opponents.
The departure from Haiti for France on 4 October by Roger Lafontant came less than a month after his forced resignation from the ministry of the interior and national security, and just two weeks following the premature announcement that Lafontant would be taking up a diplomatic post as Haiti's ambassador to Chile.
Lafontant began his political ascent during the early 1970s, when he abandoned his career as a gynecologist, serving in the national intelligence apparatus of President Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier. Following the elder Duvalier's death in 1972 Lafontant left Haiti, living for a time as a political refugee in Montreal. He returned, however, only to be appointed as the new regime's security chief when his predecessor, Luckner Cambronne, was himself exiled following a precipitous fall from political grace.
A figure of considerable personal power, Lafontant long served as the principal target of international criticism of the Duvalier regime's policies of repression and often draconian internal security. In recent years Lafontant had become locked in bitter personal struggles within the presidential cabinet, successfully engineering the ouster of Alix Cineas and Theodore Achille. Less successful, however, was his longstanding rivalry with foreign affairs minister Jean-Robert Estime, whose half-brother, Francois Guillaume, has been named to replace Lafontant.
While Lafontant's loyalty to President Duvalier was rarely, if ever, questioned, the apparent key to his downfall was his rivalry with the President's wife, Michelle Bennett-Duvalier. Although no official explanation has been publicly offered for Lafontant's expulsion, sources close to the presidential palace report that Lafontant is accused of complicity in the death last spring of one-time presidential mistress Gilberte Sales, in an attempt to implicate the first lady in a political scandal.
Other recent problems, including the unsolved but allegedly officially condoned murder of a prominent Catholic priest and the expulsion of several Belgian clerics who were critical of the regime -- which increased tensions between the government of this largely Catholic nation and the Vatican -- all reportedly chipped away at Duvalier's ability to sustain support for the often heavy-handed Lafontant. Indeed, the reintroduction of Theodore Achille to the cabinet several months ago now appears to have begun Lafontant's certain decline.
*Activist dies in raid
Only several days following Lafontant's departure for France under heavy security, a very different drama unfolded in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Carrefoure. On 9 October government security forces descended on the poor, quasi-industrial quarter known as a refuge for poor rural migrants, capturing the militant opposition leader Lionel Laine.Laine, who returned to Haiti clandestinely in July from exile in the US, died the following day, allegedly as a result of wounds sustained in the assault by government troops. The founder and secretary general of a small exiled opposition group, the national democratic progressive party (PNDP), Laine had attained notoriety as the result of his work as a physician and activist among the thousands of detainees passing through Miami's Krome Avenue detention center, the main processing point for clandestine Haitian immigrants in the US.Laine was well known for his advocacy of armed insurrection against the Duvalier regime and for his support for the most radical opposition factions.
The death of Laine and the capture of several of his supporters has bolstered the rise of Lafontant's successor, Francois Guillaume, while underlining the current strength of the first lady and her supporters at the highest levels of Haiti's government. The President's hesitancy in making public any criticisms of Lafontant, could, however, foreshadow some eventual rehabilitation of the exiled one-time 'superminister'.
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