May 1: Mobilization for anti-privatization march picks up steam

Haiti Progres, This Week in Haiti,
Vol. 14, no. 5, 24-30 April 1996

A broad coalition integrating many of Haiti's most long-standing and prestigious popular organizations has come together to build the first massive demonstration against the Preval administration's project to privatize Haiti's state-owned enterprises, among other neo-liberal economic reforms. The large march will take place appropriately on May 1, International Workers' Day, in Port-au-Prince.

The protest is particularly timely because officials from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) are presently in the Haitian capital designing with Haitian government officials the neo-liberal structural adjustment program which, if implemented, would bring even more hardship and hunger to the Haitian people.

Workers, small peasants, small merchants, students, state employees, let's say NO to the death-plan of the IMF and World Bank, reads one of the many leaflets circulating in the capital announcing the May Day march. Privatization and opening up the country = more unemployment = more high cost of living = more suffering.

The May 1 coalition - which is rallying new organizations as the date approaches - includes such national formations as the National Popular Assembly (APN), the Collective for Mobilization Against the IMF and World Bank, SAJ/Veye Yo, and Tet Kole Ti Peyizan. Also adhering to the call is the union of workers in the electrical authority EDH, the teachers union UNOH, the human rights group CHANDEL, the student federation ZEL, and womens' organizations like SOFA and RFP.