Haiti needs its own national army

By Jean H Charles



President Joseph Michel Martelly of Haiti has revealed in camera to several foreign embassies accredited in the country the blueprint of the new national army that he plans to restore to the territory. The reaction has been viscerally negative abroad yet applauded with both hands in the country.

Haiti needs its own national army.

Akin to the United States that was founded through the battlefield by its own army under the commandment of its first president, General George Washington, Haiti was also founded by its own indigenous army under the command of Jean Jacques Dessalines.

Its army is an organic structure of the country; its absence is felt negatively by all its composites. In case of disaster (they are coming often now!), the population is vulnerable without immediate help unless it comes from the Dominican Republic or the United States. (Which one is preferable?)

The porous borders of the country are open invitations for drug dealers, bandits of all quarters to come in, and open business to the detriment of the social fabric of society.

The arguments against the reinstallation of the army are spurious at best, disingenuous at worst.

Haiti needs no army because 35 other countries in the world are conducting their business without one. A cursory look at those countries will reveal immediately that they are in large part principalities with no fewer than 100,000 people: the Vatican, Vanuatu, Monaco, etc., yet Haiti has 10 million people.

Haiti has no money -- it should spend its asset on other priorities. Security is foremost the backbone for the accumulation and the preservation of wealth for any nation or for that matter any person.

Haiti has a history of a repressive military force that does not respect its limits and boundaries; it has often been involved in the politics of the nation. It is true the army was a tool of repression used by the dictatorship of the Duvaliers, yet the same army was seen as a liberator when it sided with the people to force the departure of Jean Claude Duvalier on February 7, 1986.

Haiti has MINUSTHA a multi nation force invited by and extended into the entire country by the Haitian government. I may have sent the first salvo denouncing the presence of the international force as the biggest international fraud against the nation in my column. Now the chickens are coming home to roost! It is decried by the entire population for being ineffective, an elephant in your bedroom, and a carrier of epidemics such as cholera and involved in sordid practices such as multiple violations of young men and women.

It was Ernest Renan, the father of the concept of nation building, who instructed the founding fathers past and present that no country can have the pretention of becoming a nation if:

1) it does not have the full control of its borders and its territory,
2) while protecting its citizens in their locality and
3) rooting them with sane institutions and adequate infrastructure in
4) insuring that no one is left behind.

Haiti as the first free black country in the world does have the pretention of becoming one day a nation hospitable to all its citizens in full control of its borders equal to and in collegiality with its neighbors.

President Joseph Michel Martelly, elected on a wide plebiscite for change, will have to dice out the New York Times, the Miami Herald, the Times and other foreign papers that have all decried the concept of Haiti building its own army. The blueprint for the new one is a modest force of 3,500 soldiers, with a budget of only $94 million, with some of the funds going to pay back disbanded officers sent home two decade ago without compensation and to institute a universal civic duty force made for and targeted to the youths of Haiti.

This force is a nickel and dime expenditure in comparison to MINUSTHA, with a purse of $700 million per year, with dubious result in security and in stabilization.

The country will seek to inherit the full military base installation of MINUSTHA, not as a war trophy but as a compensation for harm done: 5,000 people perished in the cholera epidemic; the country will have to deal for a long time in the future with the consequences of that scourge.

President Martelly or his Minister of Foreign Affairs will have bread on the ground in dealing with each one of the foreign contingent of the MINUSTHA family to negotiate the passing to the new Haitian army the the trucks, the armaments, the cars, and all other war and civilian materiel brought into the country.

The new Haitian army shall be an army for the people and with the people. In addition to its security duties, it shall be a force for the renewal of the environment, an incubator for the transfer of technology, ferment for civic bonding and nation building and a model citizen army, with some of its men and women sent abroad through the United Nations to help other nations in difficulty.

The Haiti that claimed its independence against all foreign odds two centuries ago needs its own national army to defend its territory, its resources (the Japanese fishing fleet is plying the territorial waters of Haiti with impunity) and its people against all foreign might now!

October 3, 2011

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Bahamas Blog International

Haiti and the issue of colour

By Jean H Charles

There has been recently continuous chatting on the Haitian cyber space regarding the issue of colour.

The chatting might have been caused by the pictures sent by those opposing the government of the inaugural ball, where most were of light skin colour, in a sea of black skinned Haitians in the country.

It might also have been caused by the rejection of the proposed prime minister, Gerard Rouzier, by the Haitian parliament. Gerard Rouzier is a mulatto; the Parliament is in majority black. Haiti for the past sixty years has been discriminating against the mulattos on the political side. They can succeed economically but they should not occupy high political positions in the government. This form of discrimination has been a secret code of modus operandi in the Haitian political panorama.

The debate started with an essay by one of the most talented Haitian economists cum agronomists, Jean Erich Rene, titled The Issue of Colour Is an Old Story in Haiti.

Daly Valet the director of one of the most important newspapers in the country, Le Matin, responded: the issue of colour is not dead!

I have entered into the fray to conclude and rule that the issue of colour is indeed alive and well in Haiti.

I have often commented in my column that Haiti and Guyana occupy the last wagon on the economic locomotive of the Caribbean. That situation is due chiefly because of the issue of colour. In Guyana, the PPP (People’s Progressive Party) with a majority of Indo Guyanese and white descendants of the Portuguese (52%) hold control of power with a clear disdain of the black minority (48%) who took refuge in the PNC (People’s National Congress). It is a country with two heads, one looking on the right and the other head looking on the left.

Thank God, Haiti does not have this radical political division, but on the political, social and economic side, Haiti, after the assassination of its founding father Jean Jacques Dessalines, is also a country with two heads; one looking at the right the other looking at the left.

Dessalines wanted to create a country where black and mulatto would live in peace and harmony in a hospitable Haiti. He failed lamentably in that dream. To immortalize the sentiment of hospitality, he offered his daughter Celimene to Alexander Petion. He was rejected. Dessalines believing that Petion had rejected Celimene because she was black never forgave him.

In fact, two hundred years later, Haiti has less inter marriage between black and mulatto than the United States, which started its experience of nation building only forty years ago, circa 1968. America in general, downtown Brooklyn in particular, has more marriages between white and black than Haiti between mulatto and black (of course, all proportion respected).

Henry Christophe, the second president of the country, was so vexed by that situation he took refuge in the northern part of Haiti when the parliament led by Alexander Petion in cohorts with the French took the decision to strip him of most the presidential powers.
On his way from Port au Prince to Cape Haitian he ordered to kill all the mulattos with the quip that “these citizens will never become true Haitians!”

The kingdom of Henry Christophe was destroyed seventeen years later with all the ethos of nation building sentiments. The republic of Alexander Petion survived for 150 years. It is a republic with disdain for the majority of the Haitian population that gravitated to the mountains to people rural Haiti. The only state presence in the rural village has been and is a decrepit school where the teachers arrive at 12.00 pm to leave at 2.00 pm.

During those 150 years there were two window opening opportunities. The first one occurred in 1902 when Antenor Firmin opposed Nord Alexis in the presidential election. The second took place in 1930 when Jean Price Mars was running against Louis Eugene Roy. Both Antenor Firmin and Jean Price Mars were advocating the concept that the Haitian elite should take in consideration the fate of the majority poor in bringing about fundamental change in the way the country treated its citizens.

On each of these occasions, the Haitian parliament supported by international hands has defeated these champions of human rights and of hospitality for all. They have forestalled all efforts towards nation building.

Jean Price Mars, an eminent anthropologist, crisscrossed the country with his lectures about the intrinsic beauty of the black race. He was indeed the forefather of the concept of black is beautiful. Yet his school was prostituted by the politicians such as Lorimer Denis, Francois Duvalier, Dumarsais Estime into a concept that now it is time for blacks to have their fair share to the detriment of all others.

That philosophy, called noirisme, is now the politics of the day. It started with Dumarsais Estime as president in 1946; it did have a hiatus under the presidency of Paul E Magloire, who ruled under the ostrich ideology that the issue of race is not important and it is over.

The noirisme concept came back with a vengeance under Francois and his son Jean Claude Duvalier. It has been muted into a clan politics in full force under Jean Bertrand Aristide and Rene Preval.

These successive governments have refused to look into the welfare of the majority of the population. The Duvalier clan, the Lavalas clan, and the Lespwa (Preval) have lived high and well while the people were vegetating in misery. It was one of the most elaborate political schemes of imposture that now is entrenched after sixty years on the Haitian firmament. They are pretending that their unlimited ambition, greed and avarice are in harmony with the fundamental interests of the nation.

The correct solution, pruned by Mars and Firmin, was Haiti should belong to all its children, black and mulattos -- rural Haiti as well as the Diaspora; they should all enjoy the abundant and the resilient resources of the country.

The year 2011 represents for Haiti a new beginning. Akin to 1902 with Antenor Firmin and 1930 with Jean Price Mars, Haiti is yearning for a country where the rule of law is in force where the peasants are seen like human beings with the right to health, education, spiritual and material prosperity.

Joseph Michel Martelly who won on the political platform of repons paysan (the peasant challenge) can play the ostrich game like Paul Eugene Magloire and pretend that the issue of colour is dead and over.

He can also extend the life of the predatory culture of Aristide and Preval that pays no attention to the distress of the population.

He can also, because he has been elected with a large mandate to bring about radical change into the Haitian ethos, challenge the retrograde mentality of exclusion so proper to Haiti and to the Haitians.

He should put an end to the political, economic and social discrimination against rural Haiti that comprises 85 percent of the population. He should also attack the social and the political discrimination against the Diaspora (4 percent of the population) and last but not least he should stop the political discrimination against the mulattos (1 percent of the population).

That culture of discrimination cannot end with pious wishes but must be confronted with laser beam targeted affirmative action of economic incubation for the rural and urban poor. The government should immediately take steps to facilitate the voting process of the Haitian residents in foreign lands in the Haitian consulates or any other facility provided by organizations such as Woman’s League of voters or its equivalent.

Last but not least, President Martelly should end the political discrimination against the mulattos. It may have been his intention in nominating Gerard Rouzier as his prime minister, but he must engage first into the leadership of education and training before making such a bold step. Machiavelli is still right. It is never easy to bring about a new form of political order.

The year 2012 will be the Guyanese year. Presidential elections will take place. The indo Guyanese and the black Guyanese will have to decide to create the rule of law in their own country where all the composites – black, indo and white -- will enjoy the bliss of hospitality for all.

When this is done, the Caribbean will enter into a new era where the concept of one market of good and human services is possible from The Bahamas to Belize. The two social gangrenes of the region, Haiti and Guyana, have put their house in order. Their citizens will travel to enjoy, buy and socialize in the sister nations. They will be no more, international nomads always seeking for a better sky to compensate for an unfriendly home, inhospitable to their human needs and aspirations.

July 4, 2011

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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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