Haiti in the time of indifference and insanity

By CLAUDE ROBINSON




AFTER sparing Jamaica serious damage, Tropical Storm Tomas gathered hurricane strength Friday morning heading for Haiti, threatening further suffering on people traumatised by an indifferent global response to disaster after disaster after disaster.

As yet another disaster appeared imminent, global news media and international humanitarian and non-governmental organisations were expressing deep concern for the hundreds of thousands of Haitians who prepared to face Tomas's fury in the flimsy tents they have called home since the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010.

Without knowing the impact of Tomas on Haiti at the time of writing, we can draw from history to predict that the focus of concern will shift soon and the high-sounding words will not be matched by practical deeds.

Ten months ago, we witnessed an impressive outpouring of sympathy as ordinary people, institutions, governments, and international organisations from all around the world responded to the death, suffering and destruction that the category 7.0 earthquake wreaked on the second oldest republic in the Americas region.

More than 220,000 people died, about 1.5 million were made homeless and the Government was unable to function because the entire institutional capacity was in rubble.

After some initial bungling and bureaucratic humbug, humanitarian aid began to arrive, even though some of it was not getting to the people in need.

Despite all the activity and the presence of thousands of international aid workers, and despite the promises made at international forums, more than a million Haitians still live on the streets between piles of rubble.

And, on top of the earthquake disaster, a recent cholera outbreak has claimed more than 400 lives and sickened hundreds more. It is widely suspected that the outbreak originated with the Nepalese unit of United Nations peacekeepers on the island.

Back in January everyone with the authority and resources to act agreed that rehabilitation and reconstruction should move quickly to avoid an outbreak of disease in crowded camps and to house people properly before the hurricane season. So the events that are unfolding now were predicted and could have been avoided.

How could things turn out so badly after such a promising start? The proximate reason is that governments have not lived up to their commitments. Some 50 nations and organisations pledged a total of US$8.75 billion for reconstruction, but just $686 million of that has reached Haiti so far -- less than 15 per cent of the total promised for 2010-11, according to a recent investigation by the US-based news agency, the Associated Press (AP).

Caught in the logjam of American politics


One reason, according to the AP: "Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the US promised for rebuilding has arrived" in Haiti. And the other countries haven't done much better.

On a trip to Haiti in October former United States president Bill Clinton, who is the point man on reconstruction efforts in Haiti, explained that the money from Washington was delayed because of "a rather bizarre system of rules in the United States Senate".

He was referring to tactics used by Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn to block the flow of the entire package because the senator believed that $5 million of the provision "will be wasteful", the AP investigation revealed.

Senator Coburn's actions are part of a broader strategy by the Republican opposition in the US Congress to force the Obama administration to make deep cuts in the budget.

"Since I believe that we are still essentially a sane as well as a humane country I believe the money will be released, and when that happens that will also give a lot of other donors encouragement to raise their money," Clinton said in Haiti.

Few would quarrel with Mr Clinton's assessment of the humanity and decency of ordinary Americans, but the 'sanity' of the political process is another thing altogether.

Initial responses from Republican leaders to the gains made by their party in last week's mid-term elections affirm that there will be even greater opposition to President Barack Obama in the two years leading up to the 2012 elections.

In fact, Senator Mitch McConnel, the minority leader in the Senate, said Thursday that the real objective of the opposition was to make Mr Obama a one-term president while Senator Coburn said he would repeat the same tactics used to deny the Haitian reconstruction. He said Wednesday that if President Obama fails to cut spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, he may block an increase in the debt limit and risk federal insolvency.

Meanwhile, the lack of funds has all but halted reconstruction work by CHF International, the primary US-funded group assigned to remove rubble and build temporary shelters. Just two per cent of rubble has been cleared and 13,000 temporary shelters have been built — less than 10 per cent of the number planned, the AP report said.

Need for passionate advocacy


But while political infighting in Washington may explain the current financial logjam, there is a deeper explanation for what Myrtha Desulmé, president of the Haiti-Jamaica Society and a passionate advocate of the rights of the Haitian people, described as "genocide" in a conversation with Ronnie Thwaites on Independent Talk last week.

Ever since black people in Haiti waged a 13-year successful revolutionary war against the colonial might of Europe and declared their independence January 1, 1804, the Haitian Republic has been met by a pattern of crippling blockades and embargoes, isolation, aggression, invasion and punitive measures by Europe and America.

The imperialists found Haitian independence unacceptable on two levels: The military defeat of the major European armies by blacks led by Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines flew in the face of the notion of white superiority. Second, creating a successful black state out of a slave society would send the 'wrong' signal to enslaved Africans in the rest of the region.

Accordingly, Haiti was subjected to economic strangulation from the beginning. In 1825, France offered to lift embargoes and recognise the Haitian Republic if the Haitians paid out 150 million gold francs as restitution to France for loss of property in Haiti, including slaves.

Having no choice, Haiti borrowed money at usurious rates from France, and did not finish paying off its debt until 1947, by which time Haiti had become the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

In 2004, at the time of the 200th anniversary of Haiti's independence, the Haitian Government put together a legal brief in support of a formal demand for "restitution" from France. The sum sought was nearly US$22 billion, that is, the original 150 million gold francs, plus interest. France summarily rejected the claim.

There have been other interventions ranging from the US invasion and occupation from 1915 to 1934, at the request of the big New York banks to which Haiti was deeply indebted, to the more recent removal and exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and banning his party from the upcoming elections.

Of course, external aggression has been compounded by a string of dictatorships, environmental degradation, natural disasters and domestic misrule.

So what is needed now is not more expressions of sympathy. First, there has to be a new advocacy to pressure the US and the major donors to honour their current and historic commitments. This will require more than lip service from Caricom.

Former Prime Minister PJ Patterson, Caricom's point man on Haiti, has to become more vocal in advocating financing of the Action Plan for Haiti's National Recovery and Development that has been developed to rebuild the national infrastructure, modernise the main economic sectors and rebuild social infrastructure, including health and education. This may require more than his usual quiet diplomacy.

Also, regional voices in the media and the NGO community have to be more engaged and tell the Haitian story to other Caribbean people so that the country is not seen only through north Atlantic lenses.

kcr@cwjamaica.com

November 07, 2010

jamaicaobserver

Bahamas Blog International

The President of Haiti and the concept of leadership

By Jean H Charles:


The earthquake of January 12, 2010 that shook Port au Prince and its surrounding areas could not find a country so ill prepared for such catastrophe as the Republic of Haiti. It has no building code enforcement mechanism, property insurance is not mandatory; squatting on public land (and on private property) by internal migrants is not prevented by public authority and the Haitian government has failed to heed the advice of national and international experts in preparing its people for elementary steps to be taken in case of an earthquake disaster.

Countless people have died because they have rushed into crumbling buildings thinking they were facing the end of this earth. By contrast, similar or stronger earthquakes in San Francisco, have produced only 64 deaths, and in Chile 200 deaths. Haiti may have more than 500.000 deaths, making this disaster one of the most devastating events in modern history!

It is as such, proper and fit to look into the leadership style of the Haitian government, in particular its president, Rene Preval, to understand why there is such a large discrepancy in the protection of life and lamb in Haiti. I have met President Preval twice in my life. I met him some five years ago, when he was out of power (Preval has been president of Haiti twice) in the bucolic village of Marmelade where he retreated after his first term as president. I was the guest of one of the advisers of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide on his trip to Marmelade as the village was celebrating its patron Saint, Mary Magdalena. My friend was representing the president at the official Catholic mass in the village fiesta.

After the ceremony, friends and officials were invited to the president’s parental home for what I was expecting to be a small gathering with some coffee, Haitian patties and the customary pumpkin soup. To my distress, Preval (not president then) did not offer anything to his guests. I later presented to Mr. Preval my congratulations for dotting his village with the rudiments of good living that I am expecting to see in all the other villages of Haiti: a good school, access to internet, paved streets, a bamboo furniture factory. I suggested to him that such aura of welfare should be extended to the other two surrounding villages of Dondon and St Michel, creating as such a halo of sustainable growth in the region.

He left me thirsty for an answer or even an explanation of why he could not go further. I met President Preval again last year at a meeting arranged by the Clinton Global Initiative in New York while he was an official guest of the annual Conference. I shared with him the project for the decentralization of Haiti, while using some of the funds of the Petro Caribe dollars (an arrangement where Haiti receives oil from Venezuela below market price with 60% paid up front and 40% financed with a soft loan to be repaid in 25 years at one per cent interest) to initiate such a policy. His non-commitment as well as the non-engagement of his economic advisers is symptomatic of the style of government of President Rene Preval.

The president of Haiti does not understand that the buck stops with him. His most important task is to make decision. He would engage commissions for different tasks, but when the commission is over, the president must decide on one alternative or the other, yet the work of one commission after the other is catalogued into a drawer with no cause for action.

President Rene Preval comes from a middle class family in the northern part of Haiti. His father, Claude Preval, was a competent agronomist with a sterling reputation who scaled the rank of public service to become a Minister of Agriculture under President Paul Magloire. Rene did his elementary studies at George Marc College run by a friend of the family, one of the best mathematicians that Haiti has ever had. He was sent later to Brussels to complete his professional studies. To the deception of his father, young Rene was more interested in Marxist dialectic than in pursuing a regular course of study leading to a professional degree. He enrolled on his own in Lumumba University in Moscow.

On his return to Haiti he tried a bakery business, where he reconnected with some friends from Brussels, in particular Claudette Antoine Werleigh, who was engaged with Jean Bertrand Aristide in the underground movement to uproot the dictatorial and military regime of the Duvaliers. He was presented to Aristide by Werleigh; history has it they became like Siamese brothers.

From 1991 until today 2010, in the last twenty years President Rene Preval has occupied one way or the other the seat of power in Haiti. I have again, with permission of a friend, attended a Lavalas-Lewpwa meeting in the town of Terrier Rouge, Haiti, where the members have pledged they would hold power for the next forty years in Haiti.

President Preval’s most important task in ruling Haiti has been to uphold that pledge. No decision is taken without that goal in mind. On his last visit with President Barack Obama last Wednesday, his main request was not to help the millions of Haitians get out of the fetid and horrid tent cities into their ancestral villages with all the amenities that would retain them there; it was instead to get 100 million dollars to conduct an election where he would manipulate the electoral machine to perpetuate his grip unto power.

President Preval and his Siamese brother Jean Bertrand Arisitide during these last twenty years (20) have managed to sink Haiti into an abyss much deeper than the twin father and son Duvaliers have done in their thirty five (35) years of bad and dictatorial governance. He is proud of two achievements: road building and governance continuity. Yet these trophies are pregnant with the seed of corruption. Employees and government officials known as graft specialists are maintained or promoted. The program of road building is funded through the Petro Caribe trust that the president refuses to put into the regular public treasury account for transparency and accountability.

Leadership is the complex set of character that distinguishes one leader from the other. After the depression of 1929, President Herbert Hoover believed that the government should stay out the personal lives of the citizens, as such prolonging the crisis. By contrast, Franklin D. Roosevelt, upon assuming office in 1933, brought a pro-active leadership, offering a new deal to the American citizens, while instilling into the men and the women of America to live according to their means; pennies were saved, belts were tightened. His motto: “The only fear we have to fear is fear itself”, resonates again today. The president used the crisis to attack several fronts at the same time, funding to revitalize business, food and shelter for the needy and job creation in the big projects that last again today; America was reborn, stronger and better.

After the 9/11 attacks, the rest of the world saw itself as American, we thought frivolity was no more a cashable currency but this expression of good will was squandered and not turned into a new blood to push forward the American manifest destiny.

Haiti’s disaster lesson could go to waste if President Preval does not change course in his style of leadership. As President Obama just told President Preval, the country is set for another disaster as the hurricane and the rainy season is on the way. The world cannot continue to look at Haiti with the same detachment that it did in Rwanda or in Burma.

President Preval, as well as his Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive, keeps complaining about the ill-engagement of the international organizations in Haiti yet the appointment of a strong Minister of Coordination with the NGOs (with a small portion of their funding going towards financing that Ministry) would go a long way in helping service providers and Haitian refugees to receive much needed solace.

A project of decentralization with adequate funding going towards the small villages will propel Haiti into an orbit it has never been in before. An influential member of the Preval government has told me he has not been able to convince the government that he should engage into that path, instead of building the tent cities. The horde of refugees is needed for election time. Buying each vote with a token is easier and preferable to the government than the welfare of each individual.

For those guardians of the status quo in Haiti, the souls of those half a million unnecessary deaths will haunt you at night, scratching your feet and preventing the benefit of a peaceful night while turning your days into a mortal zombie!

As I have said in previous columns before the earthquake, the year 2010 is a turning point for Haiti; the whole legislative body, all the mayors, and all the sheriffs of the rural villages as well as a new president must be elected.

As goes Haiti, so goes the rest of the world! It was first to uproot the world order of slavery in 1804; it was again first to propagate the people’s revolution of 1986, it was first to start the food riot in 2004, questioning the developed world payback to their agriculture industry; the chain of earthquakes in this decade has started first with Haiti.

Helping to usher a democratic, fair and competent leader in Haiti, away from the plethora of corrupt, inept and non sensitive Presidents that Haiti have known for the past 60 years, will be the signal that this world is ready to enjoy a string of a better years to come!

March 13, 2010

caribbeannetnews

Bahamas Blog International