HOSTILE TAKEOVER: Texas NeoCon Attempts Haitian Coup

By Cheryl Seal

This week, an electoral commission in Haiti ruled, in defiance of a previous ruling by that nation's Supreme Court, that Texas millionaire Dumarsais ("Dumas") Simeus could not run for president of Haiti.

A Texas millionaire as president of Haiti? When I saw that, buzzers and bells went off. My first thought was: Is this the latest NeoCon scheme? - turning poverty stricken countries that happen to offer cheap labor and/or natural resources into feudal kingdoms, presided over by corporate executives who will squeeze every ounce of cash, sweat and blood from a country, then move on. Just like the old timber barons did in the US in the 1800s - they called it "Cut and run."

Alas, after doing some digging, I discovered that my first thought appears to be right on the money - NeoCon money. Here's the whole story:

This fall, a major Bush supporter - one Dumarsais Simeus of Texas - made an attempt to run for president of Haiti. Simeus is a corporate player extraordinaire, make no mistake. After climbing the ladder from one company to another, he is now (among other ventures) the president of his own company, Simeus Foods. Although Simeus is black and was born in Haiti, he has long since left his black and/or Haitian identity behind - in the same way that Condi Rice, Colin Powell and others have left their identities behind in exchange for money, power, and a rightwing-white-male identity (yes, I include Rice in that). Simeus was instrumental in helping Bush win the Texas governorship and was a major fund-raiser for the 2004 Bush campaign.

Simeus's ties to the Bush administration have been made quite obvious. In late September, Condi Rice made a thinly veiled pitch for Simeus's candidacy: According to a report by USA Today, Rice urged Haiti to register "any candidate who wants to participate in the elections." This comment, said USA Today, was "an apparent reference to Haitian-American businessman Dumarsais Simeus, 65." However, thanks to an effective PR machine, Simeus has managed to play down his NeoCon leanings and play up the "I'm just a common guy from humble beginnings" routine. If you do a google search of Simeus, you'll see the same press release-derived bit from an AP story over and over: "Dumarsais Simeus remembers running through fields barefoot as a child while his parents, illiterate peasant farmers, worked the land in Haiti to feed him and his 11 siblings." If it sounds similar to the Bush "I'm just a humble Texas rancher" bit, it really isn't surprising. Simeus's campaign manager is Rob Allyn, a Dallas-based GOP political strategist who worked for the Bush campaign. Allyn has laid the "Simeus is just a poor boy made good who cares about the common man" bit on with a trowel.

But scratch a little past the down-homey paint job and and you soon discover that Simeus is just another NeoCon. A few decades ago, he helped found Haiti's first investment bank, PromoCapital and is currently the bank's chairman. Promo bank has representatives in D.C. and Aventura, Florida. PromoCapital's assets were frozen for a while when it was suspected of funding the 1991 coup that overthrew Aristide the first time. The assets were "unfrozen" in 1994 after Simeus made a show of aiding the return of Aristide. PromoCapital is now also suspected of funding the latest Aristide overthrow as well.

Anthony Fenton, writing in the "Black Commentator" states: "Some of the real motivation behind the recent US-led overthrow of President Aristide is emerging as US policymakers and their corporate henchmen hatch plans to put Haiti in the fiscal vice grip of neoliberalism....The Haitian-American Investment Bank – PromoCapital – has recently been circulating propaganda, foregrounding a recent letter of Sen. [Mike' Dewine's, that calls on his "colleagues" for support of the Hero Act [see next paragraph]....Judging by some of the names on the list of PromoCapital shareholders and founders, this legislation has been 13 years in the making. At least nine of the seventy people named as PromoCapital shareholders and founders were known or suspected financial backers of the 1991 military coup, which overthrew President Aristide and proceeded to slaughter well over 3,000 people."

The HERO act was introduced by Republican Senator Mike Dewine, who helped block any attempts to probe the theft of votes in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election and may, say some, have helped engineere that theft. HERO is being denounced widely by activists as a thinly disguised tool of the NeoCons - a "rubber stamp for colonialism." One activist - Kate A. says that under the promise "to bring peace and prosperity and democracy to Haiti," the act is "actually nothing more than the usual legislation to aid wealthy investors in their control of a third world economy, a.k.a. making the economic rape of other countries legal, a.k.a. raping and looting by the elite : or rich folks who "find" things all over the world."

Simeus claims that a group of US-based Haitian business people begged him to run for the Haitian presidency. However, the decision to run occurred shortly after Simeus was appointed to Jeb Bush's "Haiti Task Force." In any case, even people who had admired Simeus were turned off by his presidential aspirations. Marie Bell, who was on the Haiti Task Force for a time, then left, was disturbed by the move: "We've been fighting for rule of law and he wants to make his own rules. This is chaos. He is not helping."

Bell is referring to what has amounted to Simeus's forcing himself onto the Haitian ballot - using a suspiciously Bushie tactic: manipulation of the country's Supreme Court. After being barred from running for a very good reason - he is not technically a Haitian, living and earning his millions in Texas - the Haitian Supreme Court overturned this ruling. This should come as no surprise: When Aristide was ousted in 2004, guess who was temporarily planted in his place? Boniface Alexandre, the chief justice of the Haiti Supreme Court. Alexandre is about as honest and upright as Scalia - worse, because he has had more power. AHP (Agence Haitienne de Presse) news from Haiti reported in January 2005: "According to Mr. Monchery [Fednel Monchéry, a member of a committee investigating Haiti government corruption] during the first ten months of the transition government, the number of cases of misappropriation of funds discovered in the civil service is considerably higher than under previous governments. What is worse, he said, is that the sources of corruption are being sustained from the office of the Prime Minister and the personal staff of the President of the Republic, Boniface Alexandre."

When the Court ruled in Simeus's favor they were establishing a very, very dangerous NeoCon-engineered precedent: That people with even the vaguest claim to dual citizenship - who have not lived in a country for years (Simeus left Haiti in 1970), can bring their millions back and, in essence, buy a presidency. I suspect that Simeus is a test case: if he can make this "ruling" stick, then the NeoCons will use the "Haiti precedent" to "legally" insert their henchmen into other poor nations. Look at Ahmed Chalabi - he is a NeoCon plant, who had been, more or less, drummed out of the Middle East as a conscience-less con artist (he cleaned out Jordan's treasury before going on the run).Bottom line, the NeoCons are not only getting away with murder - they are trying to legalize it.

Boston.com:Dual citizenship puts Simeus run in doubt

www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2005/10/19/would_be_candidate_fights_for_chance_to_change_haiti/

On the Simeus controversy: Political Affairs Magazine

www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/2120/1/129

Plan Haiti: Great Commentary from Black Commentator

www.blackcommentator.com/88/88_reprint_haiti.html

Haiti: Corruption in the Coup Government (scroll to Jan. 24, 2005 entry)

www.haitiaction.net/News/AHP/2005/01/26/02.html

Kate A's blog:

kateablog.blogspot.com/