S. Florida Haitians assume control of government in strife-torn nation

Louis Noisin, the former president of the Senate, said he's returning to Haiti today to serve as a consultant to his friend and television co-host, Prime Minister Gérard Latortue.











Some experts said tapping the talent of South Florida's Haitians might only be the beginning. They think the appointment of Latortue sent a signal to other Haitians living abroad that they, too, can participate in rebuilding the country.

"Right now, I think the diaspora needs to become more visible, and people who have been away for 25 and 30 years ... need to think about how they can help the country move forward," said Marc Prou, executive director of the Haitian Studies Association, a Boston-based organization of researchers. "I think there's a bankruptcy of ideas and know-how in the country. We have to become the driving force, bring some of the skills back home."

Latortue arrived in the country Wednesday accompanied by retired Gen. Herard Abraham, a Miami Shores resident whom he plans to make minister of defense. Latortue has said he wants his Cabinet to include Smarck Michel, a prime minister under former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Both Abraham and Michel were contenders for Latortue's position.

Noisin, 77, previously served in the government of President Leslie Manigat but fled in a 1988 coup d'état.

"All of us, we have one dream, and that is to take back the country and make it reborn of its ashes," said Noisin, who teaches about Haiti's culture and politics at Florida International University. "The country was in the wrong hands at the wrong time."

Another South Florida resident whose name has been floating in the Haitian community as a contender for chief of staff is Robert Ulysse of Boca Raton. Neither Latortue nor Ulysse could be reached late Thursday to confirm.

Haiti lost much of its intellectual talent under the Duvalier regimes. Claude Louissant, a Broward County human services regional coordinator and Haitian lecturer, said many of those people are now retired professionals who have a lot to offer the country.

"When you talk about Latortue and Noisin, you're talking about an older generation who, before they die, would like to make a contribution," he said. "To me, these guys are heroes for wanting to do that. Haiti has everything to gain by having people like [them] return to the country."

It wouldn't be the first time that Latortue, Noisin and Ulysse have worked together.

As recently as Sunday, they were co-hosts of a weekly program, Revue de la Semaine, on the Haitian Television Network of America. The show is a weekly review of the events in Haiti and around the world.

Noisin said they have also been working together on a book called Plan of Modernization of Haiti, to be published by a Palm Beach County company.

He said the group didn't plan to be involved in the new government, it just happened.

"It's not a thing where Gérard said he wanted to be prime minister. His name just came about, and a lot of people backed him," he said. Latortue, a former Haitian foreign minister and United Nations executive, is surrounding himself with people he knows and trusts, Noisin said.

He said their wives, who will remain in South Florida, are nervous.

"For the moment all of the wives are shaking for their husbands," he said. "My wife would not want me to be in danger. But I tried to convince her that a man doesn't know when he came to life, and he doesn't have to know when he's going to die. So if I have to die trying to save my country, that's a good death."

He disregarded criticism by some that people like him have been away too long to understand the needs of the country.

"We're Haitians first, and wherever we live doesn't matter," he said. "We know the country, we're from the country, we study the country, and we teach about the country. We don't need to physically be somewhere to know what we are talking about."

Noisin, a native of Cap-Haïtien, has spent most of his adult life abroad.

He left during the dictatorship of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, traveling the world on behalf of the United Nations and teaching at universities. He returned to Haiti in 1980, nine years after the death of Papa Doc, to build a private university in Cap-Haïtien. With the 1986 fall of Duvalier's son and successor, Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, Noisin thought a new era had begun for Haiti.

He helped develop the country's constitution and became president of the Haitian Senate in 1988. President Manigat's government was overthrown four months later, and Noisin and his wife, Denise, fled the country.

But this time he thinks things will be different.

He said it has been 500 years since black people arrived to Ayiti [as it was called by the Indians] and, like the phoenix, which lived for 500 years and then was reborn from its ashes, it's time for Haiti to live again.

"2004 is the rebirth of Ayiti," he said. "And I will be part of it."

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