Aristide Party Rejects Haiti Election Role

U.S.-backed interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue hopes to name a new nine-member electoral commission by Saturday to run elections in 2005 to pick a new president and parliament.

Aristide went into exile on Feb. 29 in the face of an armed revolt, but his Lavalas Family political party, which remains popular among Haiti's poor, said Latortue's administration had failed to halt a "witch hunt" against its members.

"How can they expect us to participate when our members cannot gather, when they are persecuting us and killing us?" party spokesman Gilvert Angervil told Reuters.

Latortue and Justice Minister Bernard Gousse and have denied allegations of political persecution.
Eight pro-government parties and civil organizations, all opposed to Aristide, have already chosen their representatives.

Convicted death squad boss Louis Jodel Chamblain, one of the military leaders of the bloody revolt, handed himself in to police last week in what he called a demonstration of the anti-Aristide forces' commitment to justice and democracy.

Lavalas on Monday hosted a gathering on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince of about 100 party members who said they had been forced to flee provincial towns in fear of their lives.
Josette Telfort, 26, a mother of two, said four men in camouflage she believed were former soldiers had broken into her house in the town of Hinche and shot to death her husband, Elie Telfort, and cousin, Jacky Jean-Baptiste.
"One said, 'Where are the chimeres?' And they shot several times," she said, using the Creole word for the gangs critics say Aristide armed in order to enforce loyalty.
"I could not even cry. They told me to shut my mouth. They were not chimeres, but just supporters of President Aristide."
Residents said rebels who have yet to be disarmed by a 2,500-member U.S.-led peace force burned down the Lavalas Family headquarters in Hinche on Sunday.

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