Greece in the Mediterranean, like Haiti in the Caribbean, needs to start creating a new generation of citizens who accept the concept that duty is the reverse side of privilege... ...The nation will move forward when each citizen does his part, in paying taxes, in volunteering for the common good, and forsaking the vain desire of spending what you do not have...

Haiti, the Greece of the Caribbean

By Jean H Charles


St Lucia dubbed herself the Helen of the Caribbean.   Helen was that goddess of Greek mythology, daughter of the god Zeus and the goddess Leda.  She was so beautiful that she had hundreds of suitors, including king and princes.  Wedded to Menelaus, prince Paris of Sparta abducted Helena, causing the mythical Trojan War.

Because of the beauty of the land and the charm of its people, St Lucia was abducted by France and England successively some forty times, justifying the legendary surname of Helen.

Haiti’s connection with Greece has more to do with modern Greece than with Ancient Greece.   I was inspired by two recent columns in the New York Times to draw the comparison between Haiti and the debacle happening these days in Greece.

Russell Shorto in a New York Times Magazine essay: The way the Greesk live now laid down the underpinnings of the economic setback that caused social disruption in Greek society.

It all started with the legacy of the culture adopted during the Ottoman Empire.   Greece, abducted by the Arabs, tried to defend herself the way she knew best.   To fight the distant ruling of the Caliphate against paying taxes, the Greeks adopted the concept of fakelaki (little envelopes) for bribery or looking the other way.

The culture of faking the sentiment of patriotism according to Aris Hadjigeorgiou (a Greek writer) is now ingrained in insidious ways where upper echelons of Greek media intertwined with the political structure prevented reporting of financial mismanagement that may cloud any hope for resolving the crisis.

In business as in politics, mismanagement leads to debacle.   In such a situation, still citing Aris, the people who can, angle for escape routes abroad and the peasants flee to the cities.

National political leadership is at a low web.   The Greeks keep talking about Sarkozy, Merkel and Obama as the guiding lights to get them out of their mess.   Yet Greece was the mother of democracy where, before Christ the concept of collegiality, hospitality and patriotic instinct was the norm in the res-republica.

Patriotism or the lack thereof is not only the province of the Greek boundaries.  An article in the New York Times 1 March edition described how some Russian immigrants who settled themselves in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn have organized themselves to bilk successively the health system, the housing industry and the insurance business.   (Who says the communist system produce good citizens?)

According to a senior law officer prosecuting the case, “The Russian mind set is: if you are not scamming the government, you are not doing what you are supposed to be doing, you are looked upon as a patsy.”   The Soviet system helped to groom a generation of post Soviet criminals in the United States with a culture that breeds disdain for the rules and a willingness to cheat to get around them.

Transporting ourselves into the Caribbean, we find the same scenario in Haiti, the motherland of nation-building.

There is a huge discrepancy between the concept of liberty, equality and fraternity enshrined in the Haitian flag and the reality on the ground.

Jean Pierre Boyer, the third president of Haiti, introduced a rural code in article 19 and 20th that prevented any store to operate wholesale or retail in any of the rural counties of the country, as such blocking national commerce in the hinterland.

While it is not the law of the land today, it is still the practice.   The majority of the people who live in the rural areas are regarded as marginal citizens who can be exploited on a whim.   Boyer, who agreed to pay to France the indemnity debt of 15 million francs, laid upon the peasants and the Dominican territory, then part of Haiti, the tax earmarked to pay the ransom.  The Dominicans rebelled, leading to their independence on February 27 1844.

The Haitian peasants are still under the yoke of that political, economic and social discrimination, which explains why Haiti is so poor.

The rest of the population, akin to the Greeks, develops a fake patriotism culture that makes the country an easy prey for foreign meddling.   Successively, the French, the Germans and the Americans, through usury loans to satisfy the debt, contributed to exacerbating the contradictions that nourish unpatriotic sentiments in Haiti.  The Haitian governments were almost without exception predatory governments that used state resources to either remain in power or to terrorize their own population.

The promotion of common good, the very essence of government, is replaced by the naked search for individual interest and advantages.   This practice vitiates even the altruistic motivation.   The non-profit organizations, national and international, established in the country found it easy to engage in the fake service mode, compounding the misery of the population.   The United Nations, with its gargantuan scheme, the MINUSTHA, is one of the biggest culprits.   Haiti, under the guise of prime war assignment, is one of the most coveted foreign posts.

The perversion of the term of democracy is pervasive.   From the former president Rene Preval, who prescribed the doctrine of each for thyself to the present legislature that puts roadblock at each step of the executive because entrenched interests have not been satisfied, we have a country that keeps failing to become a nation.

Greece in the Mediterranean, like Haiti in the Caribbean, needs to start creating a new generation of citizens who accept the concept that duty is the reverse side of privilege.   The nation will move forward when each citizen does his part, in paying taxes, in volunteering for the common good, and forsaking the vain desire of spending what you do not have.   It was Abraham Lincoln who promoted the notion that a nation is the aggregate sum of moral citizens working for the common good, providing individual satisfaction for each one.

To conclude, I would like to share this poem posted on the web by the prolific Haitian poet-attorney, Serge H Moise:

These loudmouths
They always know what to do
And once at the helm of affairs
One never sees them hone
What they say they wanted to redo
They grow like leopards
Yet these are just the loudmouths
And once the situation is confused
They meet every empty handed
They can be heard on FM signal
Play to flaunt
They are also at Ramasse
Where the same hackneyed
Verbiage is
As for those in the Diaspora
They do not care that they will
Praising exuberantly all skills
Unable to imitate their bosses
Militating in action and advance their holes
They are intoxicated with their megalomania
They are available as saviors
Always turn out cheaters
And when the situation is confused
They meet every empty handed
With their air of buffoons
Attitudes of cowards
Those who treat us to con
Seem to be right
Despite these claims
Devoid of convictions
The small republic back
Curling up on the ridiculous

March 6, 2012

caribbeannewsnow

Haiti and a new road towards sustainable change

Definitive solutions to the problems of Haiti

By Jean H. Charles

I have been simmering long and hard trying to find the definitive solutions to the problems of Haiti.  I have, in a two-part column a week before the earthquake of January 12, 2010, presented a detailed plan for Haiti’s re-building.   Whether it has inspired the policymakers and the NGOs’ directors to take the course and lead Haiti after the earthquake into sustainable development, the result is not visible to the naked eye!

Haiti has failed to use this crisis resulting from an act of God to transform itself into a growth oriented country.   As such I am urged now to condense in a four-point part, how Haiti can take a new road towards sustainable change?

1. First and foremost, Haiti’s urgent problem is the revival of its environment.   The famous French environmentalist Jacques Cousteau some thirty years ago in a moving documentary “Waters of sorrow”, warned that Haiti’s vegetation cover was only 15%.   Urgent actions should be undertaken immediately to reverse this ecological disaster.

I remember a day after the inauguration of Jean Bertrand Aristide on February 7, 1991, I advised his executive assistant, Henry Claude Menard, that I was observing the complete destruction of the flora for bread making and the dry cleaning plants.  His answer that we do not have time for such triviality was indicative of what was going to happen to Jean Bertrand Aristide and to Haiti some years later.

Haiti’s vegetation cover is now only 2%.   If drastic actions are not taken, Haiti vegetation cover will be soon 0.2%.  There will be no Haiti to enjoy after any redevelopment is undertaken.  As such I am proposing that all effort should be focused on tree-planting, sewers and ravine cleaning. Haiti must engage itself in the culture that made Dominica the Nature Isle.   Stop destroying its trees for daily survival and engage in systematic tree-planting and soil conservation.

I am proposing this citizen to citizen movement.  On November 18 and May 18, Haiti celebrates its heroes and its flag days.  The government should declare November 17 and 18, and May 17 and May 18, volunteerism days.  Starting on May 18, 2012, a vast marketing program should start on preparing seedlings with black bags of all the fruits consumed in the homes. Churches, schools and businesses will engage group leaders to promote the movement.

The first planting will take place on November 17 and November 18, 2012, with mature plants in all the homes, the churches and the schools.  The mountains surrounding the towns and the cities of the country will be the first target of this environmental action.

Once the first volunteer days are over, immediate action will be taken to prepare with seedlings gathered for the next planting days that will take place on May 17 and May 18, 2013.  As such, Haiti will slowly become a second Nature Isle in the Caribbean after Dominica.

2. Having renewed the physical environment, we shall now attack the spiritual environment.  Haiti is a country not a nation.  It will not be developed unless and until the sentiment of appurtenance is cultivated by and amongst all the sectors of the society.  Haiti is the product of the culture of swimming to get out on your own without communal life support.  It is the culture of hating and hurting one’s own brother and sister.  It is the culture of damaging the environment without the conviction of destroying one’s own patrimony.

Dr Tunelb Delpe, a political leader, has for the last twenty years called for a national conference to reconcile the nation with itself.   His appeal has gone nowhere, in part because of his own non-articulation of the goals and motives of such an initiative.  We must create a Haiti that shall become hospitable to all.  I have often said in this column that Haiti practices the culture of discrimination against 90% of its population.  It practices political, economical and social discrimination against 85% of its population that represents the rural and the urban favellas dwellers.  It practices political and social discrimination against 4% of its population that represent the Diaspora.  Last but not least, it practices political discrimination against 1% of its population that comprises the mulattoes.

A country cannot become a nation with such an endemic discriminatory practice and culture.  I am observing how Haiti is amassing more and more resources without the sentiment of appurtenance that would make a difference in services delivery.   Bishop Pierre Andre Dumas of the Diocese of Nippes region of Haiti is another voice in the desert promoting this love and concern for each other.

The sentiment of appurtenance is the glue, the blood and the oil that can transform the individual energy into a force that will move mountains to create a prosperous nation.

I am suggesting a massive campaign of solidarity mixed with concrete actions to attack this gangrene of each one for each one promoted by the last governments of Haiti in particular the Rene Preval government.

3. These renaissance actions must start in the rural counties of Haiti, not in City Soleil or Canaan – Port au Prince -- the two largest slums of the Caribbean.   I came back yesterday from Jacmel the picturesque city on the southern coast of Haiti.  Driving through the mountains to Jacmel is pure delight, crossing the small rural villages of Macassin, St Etienne, Cormier, Fondwa, Tom Facto and Decouze, before crashing into Jacmel; it is easy to lay the groundwork for the renaissance of the region.

An excellent school in each one of the villages, with institutions, infrastructure and economic incubation that will spur the monetization of the human and natural resources of each region will make a significant difference in the way citizens value their nation.   They will be no more nomad Haitians that seek a better life in the slums of Canaan or a leaky boat towards The Bahamas or Florida.

4. This proposition cannot be outsourced to the international community.  It must be owned, executed and implemented by the Haitian people themselves (of course the cooperation of the international community is welcomed).

My resolution this year is to demonstrate a positive attitude towards life in general.   This search for a solution is the first of many more to come.   With the support of the political platform Repons Paysan that succeed in electing a president in its young age of two years, the platform will not wait either for the NGOs or even the president of Haiti to start this movement of renaissance that must begin with the peasants of Haiti in their own neighborhoods!

January 21, 2012

caribbeannewsnow