A group of disparate opposition parties and social organizations,[1] it was crafted and built by the International Republican Institute.
The International Republican Institute did all it could to urge the DC to build a national electoral constituency that could rival Aristide’s FL party at the polls ..."[2]: 190 Leading figures in the Convergence Démocratique made no secret of their intentions at the time of Aristide’s reinauguration as president in February 2001; they openly called for another US invasion, ‘this time to get rid of Aristide and rebuild the disbanded Haitian army’.
Failing that, they told the Washington Post, ‘the CIA should train and equip Haitian officers exiled in the neighbouring Dominican Republic so they could stage a comeback themselves’.
[2]According to Peter Hallward, Between June 2000 and February 2004, the CD rejected each FL offer of new elections right through to the final attempt at a peaceful resolution to the conflict, a CARICOM-brokered proposal approved by the OAS in mid-February 2004, whereby Aristide would accept one of his opponents as his prime minister, hold new legislative elections and serve out the remainder of his term with severely limited powers.
The CD refused it just as immediately and then somehow managed to ‘persuade’ its imperial patrons to follow suit, leaving Aristide with a choice between exile or civil war.