Haiti and the entrenched business of the NGOs

By Jean H Charles


“There are plenty of reasons why countries have made mistakes. Often their decisions are driven by a particular interest group or a coalition of them whose short-term gains stand at odds with the nation’s long-term interest. Some interest groups have captured countries and dragged them down, some have been resisted,” said: Alan Beattie in False Economy. Yet, history is not determined by fate or national culture, it is determined by people and by leadership.

The unhappy story of Haiti after its glorious outburst from a slave entity to a free nation is the story of one damned thing after another, as would say Arnold Toynbee. There was first the complete destruction of the very profitable sugar industry of the island to force the French colonists to leave and then there was the constant repositioning of the entrenched interests to stiffen the national economy to the point of completely killing indigenous capitalization.

The last group of entrenched interests compromising the future development of the country is the positioning of the NGOs as a passage oblige for the national recovery.

Haiti before and much more after the earthquake of January 12, 2010, has been invaded by an army of NGOs from all corners of the world, in addition to its own enterprising ones. The Haitian government does not know the actual numbers of non-governmental organizations working in the country. It is estimated at 8,000, more than any other country in the world except maybe India with a population of more than a billion people.

The tiny town of Leogane has more than 800 NGOs trying to find a mission. They have profited from the loose regulation and coordination from the governmental authorities to propagate and operate at will, sometimes in contradiction with each other and the long term vision of the needs of the nation.

Some countries have been impoverished by unbridled capitalism; other nations have seen their country’s productive force stagnated by Marxist policies. Haiti will prove to the rest of the world that resting on the NGOs to create wealth in the country has produced just the contrary.

The biggest culprit is the MINUSTHA of the United Nations, a mammoth operation designed not with the interest of the nation in mind but with its own needs as priority. There is something at odd with a standing army with all the military gear ready to fight against a nation that refuses to fight.

The blinded vehicles of the MINUSTHA, making their way in the crowded streets of Port au Prince at crucial peak traffic time, with their cannons pointed at the mothers with their children in hand, trying to navigate the cars and the crowd to reach the school doors, provides a spectacle comical and cynical.

There was first the very arrogant Edmond Mulet in charge of the operation, replaced now by the very humble and collegial Mariano Fernandez Amunategui, who will either run a charm operation for the MINUSTHA to remain longer in the country or facilitate its demilitarization to transmute into a facilitating force for infrastructure development in Haiti.

UNICEF for its part has bloated the previous Haitian administration with thousands of brand new vehicles that feed the greed, the corruption and the venality of the high executive echelon without proper safeguard that these assets will be used for the good of the nation.

CIRH (Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti) -- the Clinton instrument to facilitate the reconstruction of the country after the earthquake -- has disbursed in the last year the amount of $4 billion without minimal visible impact for the displaced population.

The myriad of NGOs circulating in rental vehicles enrich only the car rental companies, and those who can lease their villas, their warehouses and, according to the witty and whimsical Haitian people, their wives and their daughters.

The previous Haitian government has refused to create a strong NGO coordination under the umbrella of a sub-cabinet minister. Other countries such as Indonesia or even reclusive Burma have recovered faster from cataclysm by channeling the efforts of the NGOs through a guided governmental apparatus.

I met recently a discreet diplomatic delegation from Rwanda visiting Haiti to advise the new government on its policies with the NGOs. Rwanda before the genocide was run almost entirely by the NGOs. The new president, who received high accolade from the concert of nations in his handling of the national economy and the national reconciliation process, has taken effective measures to diminish the influence of the NGOs in the country.

Is it a signal that Haiti will finally take its fate in its own hands in creating the conditions to build a nation free of exclusion, enhanced with sane institutions and adequate infrastructure for the benefit of the population that will enrich itself and enrich the country free of the bloated NGO apparatus that represents an interest group as malignant and entrenched as the old government was for the Haitian reconstruction.

August 1, 2011

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Bahamas Blog International

Is Haiti in better shape than a generation ago with the advent of democracy?

Haiti's twenty-five-year flirtation with democracy: A failed experience!
By Jean H Charles


I remember where I was, twenty five years ago, on February 7, 1986. I was leading, along with community leader Wilson Desir, a parade in Brooklyn, New York, celebrating the departure of the dictatorship that had gripped Haiti for thirty five years under Duvalier pere and fils governance.

In the jubilation that engulfed the Haitian community, joy and good wishes were shared by the whole New York citizenry with the Haitian people.

A nurse from the Philippines wanted to see Marcos and his Jezebel wife Imelda thrown out of her country.

“The people power” born in Haiti would spread like wildfire in the Philippines to chase Marcos out of power in September 1986.

An old man from Poland, tears in his eyes, dreamed with me of a motherland without the militarism under Russian leadership. Lech Walesa would come some years later (1989) to deliver Poland from the grip of the Russian army.

As if on cue, twenty-five years later, another wave of people power, this time born in Tunisia, is shaking the entire Arab world. It is demanding the departure of Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt with an iron hand during the last thirty years. He was grooming his son to become the next chief of state, as the people say enough is enough!

Jordan, Syria, Yemen all have their political and social convulsions demanding the advent of a nation that shall become hospitable to all. In this age when the internet, Twitter, texting and other means of fast communication are becoming an effective tool of militancy, the era of dictatorship is fading away at great speed.

The Haitian Constitution promulgated one year after the departure of Jean Claude Duvalier, as well as the successive elections, did not safeguard the nation against the culture of illiberal governance.

Twenty-five year later, to the question whether Haiti is in better shape than a generation ago with the advent of democracy, the answer is a clear and unequivocal no.

There are improvements in the area of freedom of expression, yet there is a deep deceleration in the area of environmental, food, personal, and public health security in spite of massive foreign intervention.

The western style of democracy, with recurrent elections, has been in Haiti a bad vehicle for dispatching essential services and efficient institutions. The concept of nation-building has not been in the lexicon of governmental praxis.

Haiti is still the land of a wide schism between the vast majority (87%) of the population living in a fragile environment, in extreme poverty, without education and formation, versus a minority (13%) highly sophisticated in full control of the political, financial and social level of the society.

A brief vignette of the governments after the departure of Jean Claude Duvalier reveals a pattern of corruption, foreign interference with bad faith, inadequate leadership, and complete indifference to the fate of the population.

I rushed to Haiti after February 7, 1986, to help the military government establish a Haiti hospitable to all. In spite of my personal relationship with the military leader, I was not received as a friend because I came to reconcile Henry Namphy (the military leader) with Gerard Gourgue (the civilian leader) for the sake of the nation, instead of getting into the gossip of the day. Namphy led by a gang of venal military officers would be chased out of office a year later after the burning of a church packed with worshippers.

The transitional government of Ertha Trouillot introduced in Haiti the complete stronghold of the international community into the Haitian res publica, leading to the UN occupation, the advent of the mobster style government of Jean Bertrand Aristide, followed by his nemesis Rene Preval, who wears a velvet glove while presiding over a nation sliding at great speed into an abyss without end.

In contrast to Haiti over the past twenty-five years, the experience of Singapore, Malaysia, China, Vietnam and even next door Dominican Republic, based on the Renan doctrine, with no foreign intervention in following their own footprint has achieved within a generation the building of a nation with a growing middle class, delivering good services with essential infrastructure.

Haiti, at the dawn of a new generation in its experience of democracy, is engulfed profusely with a foreign intervention that seems to sustain the old culture of squalor for the majority and enlightenment for the minority.

Edmond Mulet, the chief UN resident with its machine of deterrence (MINUSTHA), has sided with Rene Preval, the decried president, to sustain a legislature bent on keeping Haiti in a failed democratic mode, postponing the advent of the emergence of true democracy in the nation.

The timing of the transition from one regime to another, the link that could break the chain of injustice, is once again hijacked by a foreign hand with a strong grip, this time with international glove.

At age 25, the Haitian democracy must take a new turn. It cannot be continued nor replicated beyond Haiti’s borders. The complete absence of governmental leadership, supplemented by the so called force of stabilization, has been a recipe for disaster.

Haiti democracy will grow in age gracefully when it takes charge of building its own army (replacing the MINUSTHA) that will protect its environment and its people; when it will root its population in their localities with ethical institutions and adequate infrastructure and when, last but not least, she will take the national determination to leave no one behind!

This is the formula for a successful democracy. So far, the western democracies, the international institutions have prevented these steps from taking root in the underdeveloped countries like Haiti, while they are the staple policy in Europe and in the United States.

The exceptional models of Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam that rely on their own culture, the strength of their people united as one to defend and to enhance the motherland, while treating each citizen as a potential jewel that should be polished for the glory of the nation will soon become the international canvas copied all over the world!

Thomas Friedman, in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, put it best: “Tharir Square (the site of the protest in Cairo Egypt) will be for now on the wave of the future.” The generation in waiting is fighting for a better standard of living, not for a cause but for Egypt or Haiti, starting with each one of them.

Once again, as two hundred years ago, the failure of the international institutions in the last twenty-five years to incubate on their watch, true democracy in Haiti is a lesson for all nations to learn from.

Note:
A test of the maturity of the Haitian democratic process: In the tradition of Justice John Marshall, the issue of removing or retaining the Haitian president, who remains in power after its mandate can and should be solved not by street demonstrations or a dicta by the UN resident Edmond Mulet but by the judiciary, the Haitian Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation) that will decide whether Rene Preval can remain into power beyond February 7.

February 12, 2011

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Bahamas Blog International

With friends like the UN, OAS and CARICOM, the Republic of Haiti needs no enemies!

By Jean Herve Charles


The Republic of Haiti was present at the baptismal fountain at the creation of the United Nations in 1946. Its active and diligent diplomacy facilitated the emergence of several countries from colonialism or occupation to nationhood -- we can mention amongst others Libya, Ethiopia, Belgium and Israel as the direct beneficiaries of Haiti’s international leadership.

The Human Rights Charter was drafted by none other than the Haitian delegate Mr Emile St Lot, the Rapporteur of the 3rd Commission of the 94th Session.

Yet, in 1957, some ten years later, when the Duvalier dictatorship established its grip into the country, the UN did not come as a friend to help Haiti liberate itself from that repression, instead it spirited to Africa the best minds of the nation (those who could have forced a change of the status quo) for a nation building project in the Congo as that nation was emerging from its colonial status.

Those Haitian doctors, lawyers and teachers did such an efficient job in helping the Congolese to become nation builders that they were soon declared persona non grata by the same UN that cancelled their contracts. From there, the Haitian pioneers went to Quebec, Canada, where they helped the land of Cartier to become fully developed. They went also to the United States where they established themselves in Flatlands and Flatbush, New York, renovating and stabilizing the neighborhoods fled in haste by the Italians and the Jews.

In the meantime, in Haiti, successive governments, whether dictatorship, militarism or populism, have continued to engulf Haiti into an abyss where a return to the homeland could not be organized.

Against the good advice of learned veterans of the UN operation overseas, not to invite the UN into your country -- “the UN does not leave a country, once it has been invited in; nor the fate of that country will be improved” -- the government of Ertha Pascal Trouillot introduced the UN into Haiti to supervise the election.

The UN has managed since to remain in the country under different acronyms for the past twenty years. It is now under MINUSTHA -- a mammoth operation involving more than seventy countries.

With no concern for the environmental impact, MINUSTHA has flooded the Haitian capital with cars and other vehicles going and coming to and from no specific destination, with no specific purpose. The real concerns of the country in food and personal security, political stability and social integration have remained unattended. Yet the UN has stated as its purpose: “to be a critical factor in the consolidation of social peace stability and the rule of law in Haiti”.

Mr Edmond Mulet, the UN resident, has monitored against the advice of the Haitian civil society an election flawed in its conception and unacceptable in its final delivery. When the Haitian masses went on a rampage to manifest their anger at the outcome of the election that does not reflect the popular vote, the UN retreated to its barracks instead of protecting life and limb.

The lowest rank of the MINUSTHA professional draws a tax free salary of $81,508 per year while the senior staff commands a minimum of $166,475 annually.

To add insult to injuries, the French scientists have just proven that the UN Nepalese contingent was indeed the carrier of the cholera germ into Haiti, killing 3,000 people, sending 40.000 to hospitals and exposing the entire nation to the contagion.

The only compensation that Haiti may derive from the UN experience will be to benefit at the UN departure, of the war equipment, the cars and the trucks brought into Haiti, for the building of the country’s own army in the future. Haiti will need, though, a responsible and nationalist government to negotiate such an important and sensitive deal!

The UN stabilization force has not been a positive experience in the rest of the world either. After forty -- 40 -- years of regretful engagement in the Congo, the UN has been disinvited from that country.

President George W. Bush did try to reorganize the UN to make it more relevant to the pressing needs of the world poor, but Mr. Bush engulfed himself prematurely and regretfully in Iraq, compromising his credibility and aborting the American-led UN reorganization project. Le Monde, the French newspaper has recently described Haiti as the Waterloo of the UN Stabilization force!

May it rest in peace for the emergence of an effective UN nation-building force that will help poor nations of the world to educate their citizens, rebuild their infrastructure and create relevant institutions for their people!

The Haitian experience with the OAS and CARICOM has not been any better. Bundled together for the first time and only in Haiti, the joint operation was commissioned by the Preval government to supervise, monitor and tabulate the result of the election. The United States has offered a purse of 12 million dollars for the operation. The coffer was handed to a veteran of Haitian Affairs, Colin Granderson, who enforced the OAS imposed embargo that destroyed the flora and the Haitian economy some fifteen years ago.

He is now pushing the Haitian political crisis to another abyss. Mr Granderson, back in Haiti, embedded with the predatory Haitian government, is at the heart of the tabulation that provided the contested figures in the last election. He has been described as an opportunist chameleon who sought to sleep with the military when they were in favor, with the populist when the tables have been turned; he is now Preval’s best hope of legitimizing a criminal fraud. The delegation of a forensic international auditing firm will certainly shine light on the dirty hands who falsified the tabulation of the ballots.

Hopefully this time around, his stint in Haiti will be the last one!

The OAS has also taken on the responsibility of providing the Haitian people with electoral identification cards and the electoral lists. The operation has been conducted with such inefficiency, chaos and disregard for elementary safeguards that it seems it was pre-arranged to provide the snafu of the November 28 election day.

The combination UN, OAS, Caricom is instrumental in facilitating the negative Africanization process of Haiti where rival tribes have been killing each other for decades, while the spoils went to the former colonizer. With the vast majority of the Haitian people determined to bring about fundamental change in the country, the old guard loaded with the national and the international purse at its disposal will maintain the fight with all its might, even igniting and perpetuating a civil war in Haiti.

With friends like the UN the OAS and CARICOM, Haiti indeed needs no enemy!

Stay tuned for next week’s essay on “Deconstructing the latest Haitian political crisis”.

December 18, 2010

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Bahamas Blog International

Haiti and the international community

By Jean H Charles:


There is a tug of war going on, right now between the nationals of the Republic of Haiti and a sector of the international community. The citizens of Haiti, the candidates to the presidential election, the political parties, the civil society, the churches (with the exception of the Voodoo imam) are all in unison refusing to go to the poll under the baton of the current president and the current electoral board.

The international community led by Edmond Mulet, the UN resident in Haiti, is pushing full speed ahead for the election to take place on November 28, 2010, under the direction of the discredited principals. Who is the toro (the bull) in Haiti? The people of Haiti or the international community? This determination will soon come to a final decision. The cost of the election as set by the board is around 27 million dollars. The Haitian government has earmarked only 7 million, expecting the additional 20 million to come from the international community.

What are the issues behind the tug of war?

The present Haitian government for the past ten years (in spite of the presence of international observers) has exhibited a pattern of deception, fraud, strong-hand maneuvers, abuse of the state purse for politicking, even commanding execution killings to lead the result of the election to suit its political ambition.

The devastating January 12 earthquake has brought about a paradigm shift in the mind and the determination of the people and the political class in Haiti to bring about significant change in the way business is conducted in the country. It is clear that, six months after the disaster, the Haitian government has not risen up to the task of leading the way for the reconstruction of a new Haiti.

As such there is a line on the sand. Akin to 1800 when the former slaves refused to go back to the slave plantations under the command of Napoleon and his deputy Bonaparte, the Haitian people in 2010 are united, ready to fight, not to return to the status quo of the past, the culture of disrespect for the majority of the people, the culture of corruption with arrogance. If history is a guide that helps to pierce the future, I am predicting the Haitian people will have the upper hand in this tug of war.

What are the stakes?

The stakes are high, Haiti’s name and future is on the radar of the international press. Some 1.5 million people are under tents that are being tested by the inclement weather. Half a million people may have perished with inhumation in the ground or under the rubble without proper identification. Internal migration in and out of the city of Port au Prince, not by choice but by necessity, is widespread. The emotional stress of some 4 million, nay their physical being has not been addressed.

Rene Preval and the international institutions with crocodile tears on their faces request an election for the sake of political stability. Indeed, moderate free and fair elections took place in Haiti during the last twenty years only during the political transition -- Trouillot -- Latortue -- that led to Aristide and Preval governments.

An international community ready to bring solace to the Haitian people would welcome an enlightened transition that would provide coordination for the recovery, leadership for the reconstruction and equity for a free and fair presidential election.

When the Preval government has demonstrated that it is unable and unwilling to provide elementary first aid to the refugees of the earthquake, compounding its task with a mammoth crucial presidential, legislative and local sheriffs’ election is foolish at best, aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise at worst.

Already the liberty of the press has been compromised. The threats, the menaces have become stronger. Even a well known Haitian American of the caliber of Wyclef Jean has been a target for elimination because of his position that paints the true picture on the ground. Dr Tunep Delpe, a well known political leader, was saved from assassination through the diligence of some alert citizens. Social and political blogs have been closed because of genteel but persistent threat against the blogger.

What is the alternative?

Legitimacy has been the concern of those seeking the umbrella of political stability. The present Interim Haiti Reconstruction Committee, created to manage the business of rebuilding the country, is running on a slow line. Rene Preval, the Haitian president, is at best lukewarm, at worst suspicious of the committee. He took months to name an executive director.

When he did it was his buddy instead of the best economic mind that the country has produced. (No offense to my buddy!) The French Ambassador to Haiti, Didier Le Bret, qualified the situation as “inexistent progress”. US lawmakers labeled the members of the Haitian government as “virtual incapacities”. Senator Richard Lugar of the US Senate characterized the Haitian president as “a self-destructive individual”. The ordinary citizen said the government is nowhere visible.

On the eve of the impending hurricane season, utmost care and attention should be focused on the at-risk population, numbered now at some three million people. The international community should have a hands-off attitude, when the Haitian people as a whole are putting in process a mechanism for denying legitimacy to the corrupt, inept and maybe criminal Haitian government.

It should have been the province of the court to make such a political decision. The Preval government has been so derelict in its duties and constitutional obligation that he has failed to name the Chief Judge for the past five years.

The Haitian Constitution has ample provision for a vacancy due to unexpected circumstances. The most senior judge of the Supreme Court shall run the executive office assisted by a prime minister of popular consensus.

I have already suggested names of individuals with high degree of competence, passion and equity ready to assist the international community and the Haitian people to help Haiti engage in the fast road of recovery for the welfare of the people, not the present bogged down politics of disaster profiteering mixed with arrogance and indifference towards those in distress.

Pierre D Sam with 20 years experience abroad with the FAO and twenty more years experience locally, with successive Haitian governments, as well as younger economic experts in food and environmental security such as Jean Erich Rene and Guichard Dore would fit jointly or individually the bill with elegance, expertise and competence.

A national strike was scheduled for this week, an atmospheric deformation filled with rain and hell is scheduled to hit Haiti hard this weekend. There has been demonstration on the street every day; time is of the essence to bring at least and at last well deserved solace to the resilient people of Haiti!

July 26, 2010

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Bahamas Blog International

Up to 300,000 people killed in Haiti quake, says UN

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) -- Haiti's devastating January 12 earthquake killed between 250,000 and 300,000 people, the head of the United Nations mission in the country said Thursday.

Until now, the Haitian government death toll was more than 220,000.

April 21 "marked the 100th day since the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti, leaving between 250,000 and 300,000 people dead," said Edmond Mulet, the head of the UN mission in Haiti.

Mulet also said that 300,000 people were wounded in the disaster, and more than one million people were left homeless.

The 7.0-magnitude quake left much of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince in ruins, destroying infrastructure and the seat of government and causing a humanitarian catastrophe in a country already considered the poorest in the Americas.

Mulet, speaking at a press conference, said that he wants the UN Security Council to send an extra 800 police officers to provide safety in the refugee camps.

"In the history of humanity one has never seen a natural disaster of this dimension," said Mulet, adding that the Haiti quake death toll was twice the toll of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.

Mulet said that the next 12 to 18 months will be "critical," noting that peacekeepers in the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) will focus on five areas: helping support the government organize quick elections, coordinate "post-disaster" humanitarian aid, provide general security, support the Haitian government in carrying out its reconstruction plan, and "help Haiti rebuild its human capital."

Concerning security, Mulet said MINUSTAH forces will help the Haitian National Police have "a more visible presence" to help the tens of thousands of people living in 1,200 refugee camps.

Mulet, a native of Guatemala, took over the UN mission on March 31, replacing Tunisian Hedi Annabi, who was killed in the quake.

If the Security Council accepts Mulet's recommendations, the overall number of UN police in Haiti will rise to 4,391.

When the MINUSTAH peacekeeping soldiers are also counted -- though Mulet has not asked for an increase in this force -- the total UN force would reach 13,300 supported by more than 2,000 civilians.

Separately, Mulet said the Haitian government on Thursday ordered a three-week moratorium on the forced evacuation of refugees camping out on private land, schools or markets.

For nearly two weeks, the authorities and private property owners have urged people squatting on their property to leave.

More than 7,000 people who took refuge at the Port-au-Prince stadium were moved out 10 days ago, and last week some 10,000 Haitians living in a school were ordered out.

"There are students that want to return to their schools to continue their studies, and there are refugees living in the schools. So in order to avoid clashes, a moratorium was established," Mulet said.

UN officials have opened two refugee camps on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince in order to accept some 10,000 refugees currently in danger of being affected by flooding as the Caribbean rainy season is set to begin.

Mulet also said that Haiti "is going on the right path" towards reconstruction, and that he was showing "prudent optimism." He also urged people to "not underestimate the size of the task and the challenges that Haiti faces."

April 23, 2010

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Bahamas Blog International