Haiti is a failed State and a weak and vulnerable society which must be resolved by Haitians

Bringing peace to Haiti demands an absolutely critical step: there must be justice for the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse 

Democracy and Security in Haiti

Statement of the OAS General Secretariat on Haiti

  August 8, 2022

Democracy and Security

The institutional crisis that Haiti is experiencing right now is a direct result of the actions taken by the country's endogenous forces and by the international community.

The last 20 years of the international community's presence in Haiti has amounted to one of the worst and clearest failures implemented and executed within the framework of any international cooperation.

This is not to blame the individuals who, with a vocation for service and altruism, worked as cooperators and made their best efforts—in some cases giving their lives—for Haiti.  These persons deserve our greatest respect and remembrance.

Instead, this failure has to do with 20 years of erratic political strategy by an international community that was not capable of facilitating the construction of a single institution with the capacity to address the problems facing Haitians.  After 20 years, not a single institution is stronger than it was before.

It was under this umbrella provided by the international community that the criminal gangs that today lay siege to the country fermented and germinated, even as the process of deinstitutionalization and political crisis that we see today grew and took shape.

Then, seeing its failure, the international community left Haiti, leaving chaos, destruction, and violence behind.

Right now, it is absurd to think that in this context of destruction, the Haitians—left completely alone, polarized, and with very few resources—would be able to rebuild or build the kind of security, deinstitutionalization, and development project that could enable its 12 million inhabitants to once again live in peaceful coexistence: Without resources, in a climate of violence, without technological capabilities, without financial accumulation, without any of that today, they want us to believe a completely endogenous Haitian solution could prosper.  This is not so.

Without the basic conditions of democracy and security, the country today is suffering from the international community’s lack of ideas and real capacity, as well as from its own structural problems.  This is the international community that never knew if it should leave the MINUSTAH in place or remove it, an international community that thought that contributing money was the same as having ideas, an international community that thought that paying its own consultants would solve Haitians’ problems.  Obviously none of that was possible and none of this is possible.

Democracy

Building democracy requires citizens, strong institutions that must be constantly strengthened, and a political system with the capacity for dialogue, as well as honesty.  Essentially, it requires the branches of State government to be in place and with the independent capacity to act.  It requires the exercise of and full respect for liberties and fundamental guarantees (and for the State to ensure it) in the framework of the fullest possible exercise of economic and social rights, along with an electoral process that is trustworthy, fair, and transparent.

The exercise of power in keeping with the rule of law and administrative and institutional efficiency in providing solutions to Haitians’ problems are basic conditions for the functioning of the State that were never guaranteed by the international community in Haiti, that were never built by the international community in Haiti, and that Haiti fundamentally does not have.  We should be clear that what we are facing is, more or less, a failed State and a weak and vulnerable society.  The worst of all worlds: a weak State and a weak civil society.

This must be resolved by Haitians, there is no question about that.  But the international community has a role to play.

Haitian society is very vulnerable and polarized.  Its institutions are weak, its organizations are weak, and the path must be struck toward building them from zero, or even less than zero.

Without reducing polarization, without building capacities and bridges between Haitians, this will not be possible.  Without dialogue, it is impossible.

Building Haitian democracy means encouraging capacity for dialogue, which includes building mutual trust among the various social and political actors in Haiti.  Today, there is no system of checks and balances, neither politically nor socially.  On the contrary, violence is prevalent, as is the abuse of force internally, actions with criminal intent, failed institutions, and a lack of civil society capacity.

Bringing peace to the country demands an absolutely critical step: there must be justice for the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.  Without shedding light on the truth and without justice, no progress can ever be made towards reconciliation and harmony.

To begin to address these issues, the following processes must be built up:

• An institutionalized and inclusive process of dialogue that includes all the political forces that can possibly be brought together for it.  Within that process, the international community can contribute resources and build bridges between the stakeholders to strengthen all of them and place them on a path towards building organizational and institutional capacities.
• A trustworthy, fair, transparent electoral process.
• An institutional security process for the country.

These processes require the cooperation of the international community, obviously in everything with regard to the necessary resources, whether financial, human, or material.

We would be fooling ourselves to think that any of this could be built without the support of the international community, that none of these processes are needed to ensure the country can find its way out of the crisis facing it and that still impacts the country’s political and socioeconomic outlook. This will not be possible without the international community paying the bill.  Not many members of the international community have the capacity to do so.  Therefore, the responsibility for paying this bill falls to only a few who must not and cannot delay in taking up their responsibility, as time is running out for Haiti, with everything that is happening simply worsening the situation.

Obviously, we should expect internal Haitian forces to oppose these three processes, to oppose the institutionalized dialogue because that process can have the advantage of bringing political stability to the country, which would seriously impact a number of interests that today prevail in Haiti.  Obviously, those forces will also oppose a trustworthy, fair, and transparent electoral process because the current ways and means of taking power have been completely different.  There will also certainly be opposition to developing an institutional security process for the country with a strong commitment of the international community because doing so would dismantle the current situation in which violence perpetrated by armed gangs and organized crime predominates.

When we look at Haiti’s current situation, we understand why there were internal forces—with external complicity—that wanted MINUSTAH withdrawn.  Doing so simply paved the way for a situation like the one we have today.

It is absolutely necessary to reverse the process of violence by implementing other institutional conditions and securing a different international commitment to bring the violence under control and disarm the armed gangs.  It is crucial to reign in the territorial operations of organized criminal groups.  But more of the human, financial, and material resources for this must come from the international community.  Haiti does not have the prepared and trained human resources.  It does not have the financial capacity, nor does it have the technical capacity to address the current security situation.  Taking another path would therefore be a complete distortion of reality.

Similar capacities must be developed to implement a process of dialogue leading to a free and fair electoral process.  We believe that the entire international community has a role to play, but it is crucial to concentrate all of the resources for these processes into a single institutionalized and centralized mechanism, not overlapping and ineffective volunteer efforts.

These processes are absolutely necessary, and it is crucial to launch them as soon as possible, with the dialogue process being the first one.  It should be assumed that the other two processes will be based on the first, not on completely external extemporaneous decisions not aligned with what the country’s social and political culture are capable of receiving and doing.  However, it is obvious that Haiti does not have the resources and that the resources have to be provided to Haiti through an institutionalized process by the international community with a strong monitoring component and capacity to combat corruption to prevent the resources from being diverted and misused.

Bringing peace to the country demands an absolutely critical step: there must be justice for the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.  Without the truth being brought to light and without justice, no progress can ever be made towards reconciliation and harmony.

Based on the work done under these three processes, a new Constitution will have to be drafted that fixes the grave deficiencies and problems of the current Constitution.

• An autonomous, strong, and responsible Central Bank
• A strong, efficient, and independent justice system
• An educational system capable of providing real solutions to the needs of Haitian youth and children
• An incremental investment process toward providing work and jobs to Haitian men and women

Ignoring this need would mean completely ignoring reality.  Taking the approach of waiting for Haiti to develop its own capacities without international assistance would take years.  The country does not today, nor will it in the near future, have the conditions for accomplishing this alone.

Attempting to resolve the crisis and Haiti's serious problems without any of these elements would mean we are in the final phase of self-deception, which would not be so bad except for the fact that we are also deceiving the Haitian people into believing that we have a real solution for them.

As we continue to wait for the situation in Haiti to improve, the problems worsen.  According to UNICEF, many schools have been closed for three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Attempts to reopen them have been frustrated by the criminal violence affecting communities throughout the country and the extortion to which school authorities are subjected.

The international community, international financial institutions, the multilateral system, and the international financial community of donor countries must make a decision: whether they want to industrialize Haiti sufficiently to ensure work for nine million Haitians, or whether it is economically more profitable to continue absorbing Haitian migrants and let host countries accommodate them as and how they can and in such economic conditions as they can offer.  This is a critical decision because on it depends whether the Haitian situation continues in a state of permanent crisis with increasingly tragic dimensions, or whether we can move toward a process of transformation in which we ensure sufficient investments on sustainable terms and, therefore, the social stability of the country.  It is necessary to ensure a strategy that includes the “what comes after?” aspect.  That includes the importance of the educational model and job security conditions.

Furthermore, Haiti's future prosperity depends on the development of its youth. Chronic malnutrition in children is irreversible, reducing their cognitive capacity by 40%. To build a sustainable future in Haiti, its human capital must be highly trained and able to compete in local and international job markets.  The current deficiencies in food security, caused by the low investment in agriculture and the difficulties of transporting food due to blockades imposed by criminal groups and poor infrastructure will only move the country further from its goal of eliminating extreme poverty.

In order to stop the academic backsliding and the malnutrition suffered by Haiti’s children as quickly as possible, the internal war must be ended.  We publicly reiterate our request for an end to armed violence in the country.

It is urgent to continue working to increase security and begin the democratization process.

Source

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

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Deconstructing the Haitian political crisis

By Jean Herve Charles



The Republic of Haiti is at a stalemate. A national election took place on November 28, 2010. It was encrusted with so much irregularity, government-led violence and polling manipulation, including international mishap and corruption, that the final results cannot be proclaimed. One of the most popular candidates, Joseph Michel Martelly, was relegated to the third place, denying him the right to a second round of balloting.

There was rioting, and protests all over the country. The candidates, the pundits and the electoral board as well as the international community are all shooting at each other, diverse formulas to redress this gross disrespect for the sacred principle of democracy, which is the right of the people to choose their own leader without interference.

Haiti, as most third world countries, is familiar with the strength of a long hand (national and/or international) that manipulates the electoral transition to ensure that political stability is equal to or tantamount to the status quo.

There was an election recently in St Vincent and the Grenadines. The people of St Vincent at home and abroad for the past five years in the media and out loud have cried out against the arrogance and the ill advised policies of their government. Yet at election time, the same Prime Minister, Dr Ralph Gonsalves has been returned to power for the next five years, albeit with a slim majority.

Rene Preval, after two five-year, non consecutive mandates has led the Republic of Haiti with a desinvolture so pregnant with ineptness that all types of catastrophes are falling to his people, inundation with landslides, earthquakes with disastrous consequences, rampant disease such as cholera, causing thousands of deaths and immense hospitalization. Yet his slogan of political stability is translated into using all the state and international resources to put his own son-in-law into power to continue the culture of keeping Haiti in the state of squalor.

My eureka in the process of the deconstruction of the national and international link of the Haitian political crisis started in September 2009 at the Clinton Global Conference in New York. I was hobnobbing with world leaders when a personal friend introduced me to the mighty and the powerful of this earth as the next head of state of Haiti. One of them took my friend on the side and told her, “Do not listen to this lad; the next president of Haiti will be the wife of President Preval!” President Preval was not married yet to his present wife; the wedding took place in December 2009.

In the meantime, God himself got into the fray! A powerful earthquake on January 12, 2010 shook the land under the capital, Port au Prince, destroying most of the governmental buildings and killing more than 300,000 people. A plan B was designed by President Rene Preval. He would incubate the former Prime Minister Alexis as his successor. Alexis had a good following amongst the legislators, but he was decried by the people as a poor policymaker when they forced him out during the first stage of food riots that would circle the whole globe in 2008.

This choice was secretly endorsed by the international community. The American Democrat Party was ready to lend its best technicians in campaign practices to the Unity Party. I had no information or knowledge about the preferred candidate of the Republican Party.

At a conference organized by the OAS in Washington for the Haitian Diaspora to participate in the reconstruction of Haiti, I was warned by one of the operatives that my intrusion into Haitian politics was not welcome, Alexis was their man!

CARICOM, through their associate director Colin Granderson, was proposed and accepted to anoint, supervise, tabulate and give credence to the gross organized deception that the Haitian people have called a selection not an election. CARICOM has no funding for such operation.

Another plan was devised to have the American government and the American taxpayer pay for the macabre exercise. It did so to the scale of 12 million dollars, with no strings attach, with Mr Granderson doling out the dollars at his choice under the pretext of international observation.

Elizabeth Delatour Preval has other plans; she does not get along with Frederika Alexis, a strong willed lady in her own right. The reigning First Lady will not accept that the aspiring first lady occupies the National Palace. She put her veto to the choice. President Preval had to come up with option C. Jude Celestin, his aspiring son in law, was the nominee of the brand new party, Unity, reconstructed overnight as the Senate and the assembly deserted the president in his choice.

Massive resources of the national treasury brought some of them in line; Jude Celestin had an open checkbook to plaster the country with posters and giant billboards. His credentials for the top job of the nation has been honed by the president who created the CNE (outside of the governmental scrutiny) to build roads and provide national sanitation. He was also in charge of collecting the bodies after the earthquake.

The people of Haiti have decided to grant a failing grade to the Preval government that exhibited any constructive leadership under the lowest standard of good governance during the last five years. The balloting of November 28, 2010 reflected that evaluation.

Yet, through national and international connivance, (OAS, CARICOM and the Canadian expert in charge of the tabulation) a massive fraud was concocted to position the candidate of the government as eligible for a second balloting.

The people of Haiti as one have stood up to stop this gross violation of their rights. The political crisis has since been in full force. The Haitian Constitution has provision for such a crisis. A new government must be in place on February 7, 2011 to replace the Preval administration. In his spirit of callousness, he has avoided during the last five years to name a chief of the Supreme Court who by law would be named the next chief of state in case of political stalemate.

The Constitution foresees also the investiture of the oldest judge of the Supreme Court as president in case the chief judge is not available. The Haitian civil society, the international community, the political parties will agree to nominate a prime minister who will organize a government in the spirit of the Constitution to organize new elections and lead the transitional reconstruction of the country.

The people of Haiti have exhibited, according to the Wall Street Journal, a saintly patience and resilience during the successive waves of national trauma. Haiti is not St Vincent and the Grenadines; its patience with an arrogant and inept leader, unwilling and unable to hear and empathize with its suffering, is not without limit!

Stay tuned next week for an essay: One year after, taking stock of the Haitian situation: Building Corail or rebuilding Haiti!

December 25, 2010

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog Internaional

Haiti and its flawed electoral process!

By Jean H Charles:



The Haitian Constitution stipulates that regular presidential elections shall take place every five years on the last Sunday of November, with a presidential inauguration to take place on the following February 7, to correspond ab eternum to the day the Haitian people delivered themselves from the Duvalier dictatorial regime.

The earthquake of January 12, 2010, has destroyed the capital city of Port au Prince as well as surrounding cities of Jacmel, Leogane, Petit Goave and Grand Goave, with more than 1.7 million people sleeping under a tent, sometimes in the rain amidst squalor and the mud. Vital records have been destroyed, the dead have been cremated without proper state sponsored identification and the Preval government has exhibited a culture of deception, corruption, and perversion of the electoral process. It is a perfect storm to create a disaster in lives lost in the next few months. It is also the perfect tool for maintaining the status quo through a flawed electoral process.

Yet the international community, through the voice of the OAS Assistant Secretary General Albert Ramdin, the United Nations representative Edmond Mulet, the CARICOM delegate PJ Patterson, is pushing full speed ahead for a flawed election to take place under the baton of Rene Preval, a master mind of cunning, double talk, and plain disregard for the plight of the majority of the Haitian people.

He personifies the man Paul Berman would qualify in his recent book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, as the Pretender, saying different things to different audiences with no truth and no conviction to either. He is neither a capitalist, nor a socialist, nor a nationalist. He is “a dark smudge of ambiguity”. Here are some relevant facts on Preval’s past election records.

* The election of April 6, 1997 was set for the renewal of one third of the Senate; he forced upon the electorate Fourell Celestin, a recently drug convicted. There was opposition from the Electoral Board, causing its president Leon Manus to be spirited by an American helicopter to safer pasture abroad to avoid injury to his person.

* The election of May 2000 as well as the election of November 26, 2000 was mired in irregularities and disfranchisement of the majority.

* The election of April 21, 2009 has repeated the canvass of the election of April 6, 1997, with President Preval incubating with state funds the candidates of notorious human rights violators. There was very low national participation.
He was on his way of forging ahead with his macabre plan of succeeding himself through his newlywed wife or one of his trusted companions when, to quote the malicious Haitian people, God got Himself into the fray and allowed the earthquake the very afternoon after a crucial meeting of Preval in the national palace to seal the election in his favor.

May 18 commemorates the weaving of the flag made with the blue and red piece of cloth from which the white piece symbolizing colonial France has been extirpated. On this very day of celebration, the people of Haiti are demonstrating en masse, on the street demanding the forced departure of the Preval government so they can go on with their lives, and ensure a fairly clean election.

Will Preval and the international community, through misguided policy, succeed in maintaining a status quo that will lead to disaster in the coming months of the hurricane season with millions of people at risk? Or will the Haitian people succeed in forging a new order of business in running the Republic of Haiti?

To solve this dilemma, I will peer into the history of the Haitian Revolution and the story of the United States Black Emancipation for inspiration as to the outcome of this David and Goliath re-enacting the biblical battle.

I am now 64 years old. I have only lived 11 years in my youth in the bliss of the dream of living in a country where hope was part of the staple of the daily life. Yet I belong to the 10 percent minority of Haitian people where the roof was sound, the food was always on the table and the best education was a given expectation and a reality.

For the past 50 years, the mass of Haitian have endured a living hell. Through dictatorial regimes Duvalier pere and Duvalier fils, through military regime, Namphy, Avril and, Regala, through the populism regimes of Aristide and Preval, through government of transition, Malval, Latortue, it has been for Haiti and for the Haitian people: the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The United Nations, through several acronyms:

* MICIVIH February 1993- May 1998 to support the embargo against Haiti
* UNMIH September 1993- Jun 1996 to support the American military intervention
* UNSMIH July 1996- 1997
* UNTMIH August 1997 – November 1997
* MIPONUH December 1997- March 2000
* MINUSTAH April 2004 to present

(Source: http://solutionshaiti.blogspot.com/2009/01/haiti-facts-and-foreign-occupation.html)

have promised that they will stand fast to support and help the Haitian people to gravitate towards a better life. Yet, Haiti has since been sinking deeper into bigger risk in food security, diminution of human life protection and severe environmental degradation. It was Edmond Mulet of the United Nations who picked up Rene Preval from his hamlet of Marmelade to help to catapult him into his second mandate. Mr Mulet has today the odious task of helping Preval to choose his successor.

The Haitian intellectual and political class has for once entered into a holy alliance with the masses to say no to this plan. They have decided that Haiti must enter into a new paradigm where the children will be fed and schooled, where taking a leaking boat to Miami or the Bahamas is a nightmare of the past, where the government will work with the Diaspora to create a land hospitable to all, where the flora will be replenished with precious wood such as mahogany. They also plan to unleash the creativity of the critical mass of Haitian people for their own benefit and their personal wealth accumulation.

The international community has responded with unusual humanity and compassion to the earthquake-stricken Haiti with ten billion dollars, the corrupt regime and the partisans of the status quo will easily sink $100 billion with no apparent result for the Haitian people. They have discovered a brand new concept: disaster profiteering.

It took the advent of Abraham Lincoln after sixty years the American Independence to recognize that “American slavery had been an offense that God was ready to see destroyed”. Frederic Douglass, the black American avenger, saw the Federalist War against the South as a path to the nation’s healing, even “when the cold and greedy earth drinks up the warm red blood of our patriot sons, brothers, husbands and fathers, carrying sorrow and agony into every household.”

Will the deaths of some 300,000 Haitian people be in vain? Parodying Lincoln “with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds”! This is the rallying cry of the new Haitian coalition that plans to remake the Haitian Revolution of 1804 in 2011 not with bullets but with ballots. We need a culture of respect for the electoral process.

Indeed, two hundred years ago, Napoleon Bonaparte succumbing to the pressure from the former colonial planters of Haiti, formerly St Domingue, invaded the country to re-establish slavery dismantled by Toussaint Louverture. Napoleon succeeded in kidnapping Toussaint but the roots of liberty were too deep to be uprooted. The Haitian indigenous army rebuilt and energized by the Congress of May 18, 1803 submitted a definitive blow to slavery for the benefit of the entire world. The only predecessor to this epic story of defying slavery was a vain attempt by Spartacus against the Roman Empire in 73 BC!

The Western world has succeeded in realigning Haiti to a de facto slavery condition through the connivance of its own leaders after the assassination of the black avenger, Jean Jacques Dessalines, in 1807. Haiti is today, after two hundred years, a de facto apartheid regime. The labeling is cheap but the facts are convincing. Not one of the 565 rural hamlets of Haiti has received any funding for infrastructure and institution building. Seven million Haitian people out of the 9 million population live in extreme misery, neglect and ostracism from their own government.

The holy coalition amongst the Haitian civil society, the masses, the Diaspora, the intellectual class is determined to dismantle that status quo. No amount of intimidation and pressure from the Haitian government and its allies – the so-called friends of Haiti- will stop this new alliance. Haiti needs a café au lait revolution a la Martin Luther King or a la Nelson Mandela to create a culture of inclusion for the majority.

The Vatican some two hundred years ago was supporting slavery! It did oppose the recognition of Haiti! Victory is always on the side of morality. In the long run! There is a Creole proverb that says: la guerre avertie pa tue co-co be. Cicero said it best: Caveat Consules!

May 22, 2010

caribbeannetnews

Bahamas Blog International

A tall order for the next president of Haiti

By Jean Herve Charles:


The president of Haiti, Rene Preval, according to the Haitian Constitution in its articles, 134.3 and 149, cannot seek another mandate nor can he prolong his tenure beyond February 7, 2011. He has sent legislation to the Haitian Congress seeking a prolongation of his term until May 4, 2011. Such steps in the past have caused the demise of two Haitian presidents, Dumarsais Estime in 1950 and Paul Eugene Magloire in 1956.

The next president of Haiti will have a tall order on his or her shoulder; he will have to combine the vision of John Marshall and Winston Churchill after the Second War in shaping the reconstruction of Europe for the rebuilding of the country; the magnanimity of Abraham Lincoln in preserving the Union while going to war against the rebelling South; the gallantry of Nelson Mandela in embracing his white jailers after his decade of imprisonment and he will need also the bravura of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in redeeming the United States to make good on its promise of one nation under God.

He will have first to delve into the state of the state of Haiti, the reasons why it is in a situation where, when you apply even the minimum standard of welfare and modernity, Haiti fell short in hospitality to its citizens before the earthquake of January 12, 2010.

The brand name Haiti is forever associated with the concept of a nation that defies the world order to dismantle the practice of slavery as it was implemented all over the Western Hemisphere. The gallant Haiti of 1804 is also the infamous Haiti of 1806 that assassinated its liberator, Jean Jacques Dessalines, and eradicated its name from the national frontispiece for the next one hundred years.

Henry Christophe, the second in command, tried but failed to inculcate the concept of nation building into the entire country. Supported by the French secret diplomacy, Alexander Petion succeeded in taking away the full command of the entire territory from Christophe. He succeeded also in imprinting the Haitian cultural ethos that we have today, Papa Petion and his subsequent successors is alright as long as he has a legacy that counts a lyceum in Port au Prince, Lycee Petion, and a city named after him, Petionville.

The citizens of Haiti have come to the reality of expecting little from their government and their government has assumed the obligation of providing not even the minimum standard of services to its citizens. Imagine, out of the 565 rural hamlets in Haiti, not five, not three, not a single one is equipped with electricity, potable water, decent roads, affordable habitat, incubation of business and entrepreneurship.

This Haiti, ruled by mulattoes and few illiterate black presidents during the first one hundred fifty years of its life as a nation, has caused an occupation by the Americans in 1915 and underdevelopment in every aspect of the national life. The indices in health, education, infrastructure and welfare were below standard in the entire republic.

Around that time, Jean Price Mars, a towering figure, a Martin Luther King, a Nelson Mandela ahead of the time, came with a message and a promise of redemption. He failed, though, to create a school and a movement that would carry the concept that we are all Haitians, as such beautiful and proud, deserving respect from each other, and services from a government for the people and by the people. By contrast, Lorimer Denis, Francois Duvalier and Dumarsais Estime, his students, succeeded in prostituting the concept of black is also beautiful into a doctrine of noirisme. It is now time for blacks only to get into the seat of power and influence.

Paul Eugene Magloire, the ideological neutral president, failed to realize the extent of the abyss of the Haitian social structure between people of the same nation, to bring about much needed correction. As such, his successors, Duvalier, Aristide and Preval, with their strict application of the noirisme doctrine have sunk Haiti into an abyss so deep that the world was taken by surprise on January 12, 2010, when the lead was raised into the open on the state of squalor so widespread in the entire country. In fact, the black presidents of the last fifty years have been as delinquent in their governance of Haiti as the mulatto presidents have been in their one hundred fifty years of government.

To solve the puzzle, the next president will have to shift into another paradigm of conceptual thinking to move Haiti into a sustained development mode. If we expect each president only to build their own trophy city: Petionville, Magloireville, Estimeville, Augusteville, Prevalville, we may wait another one hundred years before Haiti is equipped with rudimentary structure of modernity.

To apprehend and solve the problem of Haiti, he must apply the Renan Doctrine of solidarity and welfare for all. Ernest Renan, albeit his racists remarks about blacks, has laid down the best known formula to create a nation that shall become harmonious and hospitable to all. His criteria called for the full control of one’s border with one’s own army to do so. He called for the love and the admiration of the founding fathers through civic education into the mores and the ethos of the nation; last but not least, the obligation to leave no one behind, alien or not, minorities as well as the majority to create a nation harmonious for all.

The next president of Haiti will have to go beyond the politics of slogan to institute true affirmative action programs in the form of incubating small business enterprises to fill the deep divide between the different social classes in the country.

He will need to call on investors – national and international -- to form a public- private partnership to build roads, airports, ports and power plants. He will have the task of decentralizing the institutions to make them hospitable to all citizens, while rooting out the virus of corruption. He will need also to effectuate a better coordination of the mission and the tasks of the many nonprofit organizations – ONG -- established in the country.

The new government will need to go back to the drawing board to stop the implementation of the tent cities. No nation ever developed under a tent city. The internal refugees shall be encouraged to return to their ancestral homes with funding, and institutional resources to root them in the new setting. The Republic of Haiti has 140 small towns, 565 rural hamlets and 10 major cities beyond the capital that would welcome the refugees with open arms with a minimum of national funding. In fact, the amount of money wasted in temporary tent cities would have already put Haiti onto the road of reconstruction if this ill advised policy had not been implemented.

Last but not least, he will need to build artist’s villages to rekindle the creativity of the critical mass of Haitian artists. The next president shall also try to make Haitian people smile and laugh again while they tell stories and jokes with the wit that is the hallmark of the Haitian ethos.

Haiti in 2011 will have to lead an epic battle, not with bullets but with ballots to recreate or perfect 1804. In 1807, it made a left turn from the founding fathers’ doctrine and dream of creating a Haiti and a world that would be full of opportunity for all, instead of a dog eat dog principle, with the crumbs going to the perceived meek and the lowly.

The United States, with the advocacy of Dr Martin Luther King and the leadership of Lyndon Johnson, has embarked on the road of a more perfect society. It is a work in progress; it has already produced the first black family in the White House, the Obama family.

Recently, some countries in Asia, Singapore and Malaysia, in particular, have understood the strength of the Renan doctrine. Their government has sought to apply the principle in their governance practice. Malay, Indians and other ethnic groups have learned to live and coexist with each other for the glory and the wealth of the nation.

In the Caribbean, Haiti occupies the last place in development with Guyana because of their governance discriminatory practice. The Indo Guyanese have their own political party, the PPP, and the black Guyanese have also their own, the PNP. The Indo-Guyanese, in the majority, that occupy the seat of power, pay a lip service to the black Guyanese, pauperizing the country for both.

There is a movement now in Trinidad to export that movement onto the political canvas with the Unity Party organized by the Indo-Trini citizens. I am predicting it will not succeed; Patrick Manning will win the May election on the strength of the tradition of multi cultural harmony in Trinidad between most of the ethnic groups.

The new Haitian government will have to engage the Diaspora and the true of friends of Haiti all over the world to create the space of hospitality for the majority of Haitians. We have seen not only on TV but with our own eyes how there was no respect for the living nor for the dead. Pretending, as some counterparts in the international community want us to accept the status quo as the guiding light to continue a legacy and shape the future of Haiti, can only lead into a Goudou-goudou or a Poseidon much stronger and much destructive than the one on January 12, 2010.

Haitians will have to deliver, albeit with their ballots, the blow the Haitian founding fathers delivered to the troops of Napoleon in November 1803 to create a country hospitable to all.

I have laid down the hospitable doctrine in several articles (the Haitian solution part II) in www.Haitinetnews.com. One should visit the site in the commentaries section.

To conclude, Haiti and its new government should reflect and ponder on this message:

I have been without sleep, and I have fought, sometimes alone
And if I have been fortunate enough to transmit into your hands
The sacred legacy that you have trusted with me
Remember it is now into your hands to cherish and maintain that
Sacred Nation.

Jean Jacques Dessalines
Message to the Nation
On January 1, 1804

May 8, 2010

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Bahamas Blog International

Haiti, one month after the event

By Jean H Charles:


The Haitian people that are usually so creative and so witty in their imagination, one month after the event have not found a name to designate the earthquake that occurred on 1/12/10. It is still l’evenement: the event. This lack of leadership in naming such a major occurence represents the state of the state of Haiti four weeks after the devastating earthquake that wrought the country with a force it has not seen in the last 250 years.

I was in New York when the earthquake struck Port au Prince and its environs of Leogane, Jacmel, Petit-Goave, Grand-Goave, Petionville, Kenscoff, Croix Des Bouquets, Miragoane Ganthier and Gressier. With the rest of the world, I was glued to CNN to watch with horror the extent of destruction and of deaths that 37 seconds of seism could produce in a country where a building code was not in force. I flew to Port au Prince two weeks later through Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Most of the major hotels in the Dominican Republic, filled with journalists, rescuers and officials of international organizations, served as a staging point for the trip towards Port au Prince, Haiti.

Early on the next day, my three American companions and I rented a car and drove to Haiti. The long ride to the border was uneventful. I enjoyed watching the young Dominican kids with the same uniform, kaki pants and blue shirt, all over the country, coming or going out to school. The activity started building up at the Haitian-Dominican border of Jimani. Long convoys of trucks with food, medicine and other building materials from all over the world were in line to enter into Haiti to help in the recovery.

I told my companions, be ready to watch how beautiful is the Haitian side with a major lake stretching for miles, the lake Azui, unspoiled, unused, ready to become a major tourist recreational center once the country has a government up to the task. The first two cities on the way to Port au Prince, Malpasse and Fond Parisien have very little destruction. Life seems follow at a normal pace.

The next two cities, Ganthier and Croix des Bouquets gave the indication of what to come when we arrived in Port au Prince, houses after houses were resting on each other as if they were little toys. Some were flattened with two or three stories one upon the other. I was told they still have people in decomposition underneath. The majestic and brand new American embassy was erected firm and untouched by the elements.

Late in the evening, we made a tour of the suburb of Petionville. The destruction was all around us, shacks and villas were flattened without discrimination of rank or status. Yet there was a feeling of normalcy. The restaurants spared by the earthquake were opened; the streets were filled with vendors as the parks were occupied by makeshift tent cities with orderly people trying to survive the unimaginable.

The next day, I saw the destruction in all its magnitude, the proud National Palace, gone; the Palace of Justice completely flattened, the offices of the ministries destroyed, the tall office of taxation completely eliminated. The entire commercial district is gone; the state university; school of medicine, school of law, school of nursing are destroyed. The same thing for most if not all the churches, the national cathedral flattened, with its Archbishop underneath. The famed Episcopal cathedral with its fresco of beautiful Haitian art was completely in ruins.

My home on the same River Street where some one thousand college students perished underneath their school, remained without damage. My father of 97 years old standing tall as a bamboo stick was presiding at the reconstruction of the fence wall, sleeping in his room, while a camp of refugees took shelter underneath the canopy in the yard.

The weekend of Valentine’s Day that corresponds this year with the usual Carnival time was dedicated to the commemoration of the event one month after. The vast Champ de Mars that corresponds to Savannah in Port of Spain or Time Square in New York was filled with people praying to God for saving their lives, singing to the Maker from the baton of an ecumenical group made of Protestants, Episcopalians, Catholics and even voodoo practitioners. Even the falling sun was in the party, several people saw a miracle in a brighter and shinier sundown.

At St Louis, King of France, my own parish church, the Sunday service took place in the yard. The beautiful and historic church was destroyed by the earthquake. An official of the government, Mr Daniel Henrys, in charge of the National Patrimony Institute, has chastised in a letter, on the net, the vicar for completing the destruction without his authorization.

The priest told me to let him know that he has visited his office several times in the past requesting help to maintain the church edifice. He has failed to come forward. His crocodile tears are now as hollow as the fall that causes the seism. The vicar with a leadership that is lacking in the Haitian government is ready to rebuild bigger and better. The congregation has never been so large and so ready to give and share.

I have visited the country from the northern border of Ouanaminthe to far away in the south from the epicenter of the earthquake in the city of Anse-a veau, I have seen the Haitian people ready to rebuild, the international community on site and ready to help but the Haitian government is not up to the task. An influential member of the government has told me he is trying, albeit without success, to move the executive into decentralization or funding the small cities to receive the refugees from Port au Prince, Preval is sticking to the tent cities as the policy of the government.

One month after the event, the fault on land has all the ingredients of a lack of vision and leadership, lack of compassion and lack of coordination. It is as wide as the fault underneath the capital that caused the seism. I have seen the lack of coordination in the devastated city of Leogane, where Canada and Venezuela have set up tents for the refugees. The Bolivarian tent city, well organized, is a transitional model that should be replicated; the Venezuelan soldiers living with the refugees are social workers, teachers, cooks and community organizers. The Canadians on the other side, too happy to enjoy the sun of Haiti away from the rigor and the thaw of winter of the Great North, did not display such discipline or coordination with the Venezuelan contingent.

There is a culture of lack of compassion for the refugees in the tent city. Food, water and public hygiene should be brought to the people. They need not go to a far away place for half a bag of rice distributed (orderly by the Americans, and disorderly by the United Nations).

There is also a lack of vision and leadership in the governance of the Republic. The American government has directed its two last presidents Clinton and Bush to coordinate the help for and towards Haiti. The Preval government does not exhibit the same high level crisis mode to bring the country to some normalcy. Its culture of each one for himself does not suit this emergency situation.

The Haitian constitution prescribes that the presidential election takes place on November 28, 2010, and a new president starts office on February 7, 2011. Can Haiti afford one more year of poor governance in this time of crisis? Will the Constitution be violated by not holding a timely election? If Haiti will have a provisional government on February 7, 2011, should not this provisional government takes place now, not only to manage effectively this tragic crisis, but also to conduct free and fair election?

Haiti is at a juncture where most nations are jockeying to take the lead in influence and in importance in the country. Nicholas Sarkozy will be visiting Haiti on February 17, the first ever by a French president to set foot on Haitian soil after 500 years, during or after colonial time. China promised to bring about the same change into Haiti that it has been able to realize for 800 million peasants, raising their level of life from squalor to middle class status in less than a generation. Italy has dispatched a full battalion to Haiti after the controversial declaration of its best expert in disaster management. The United States, still haunted by the Wilson doctrine of Americas to the American, sees Haiti under its sphere of influence. Latin America energized by ALBA wants to play a role in Haiti to repay a debt owed since Simon Bolivar.

Will the Haitian people profit from this disaster to enjoy at least and last the bliss of welfare and happiness? The stars are lining up for such an event. They need though a leader that provides vision, direction, leadership, compassion and coordination of international aid.

February 16, 2010

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Bahamas Blog International