Haiti at the dawn of a new era!

By Jean H Charles



On Saturday, May 14, 2011, Joseph Michel Martelly was sworn in as the 56th president of the nation of Haiti. It has been a transition fought for and earned by the people of the country against all odds, national and international. The first round was mired with irregularities that only popular anger forced corrective measures to put Michel Martelly on the next round of the balloting.

The second round was enmeshed with allegations of corruption by and in favour of the legislators affiliated with Unity, the government sponsored political party. President Martelly has a cry of heart, begging the electoral board not to derail the beginning phase of his lobbying effort to tell the world that Haiti, free of political strife, is once again open for business!

This island nation, well known now all over the world, because of the devastating earthquake that destroyed its capital on January 12, 2010, has been languishing in economic stagnation for the past sixty years because of poor at best, corrupt and criminal governance at worst.

The first one hundred days will indicate the new direction of the Martelly government. The masses deprived of the most rudimentary indices of amenities – water, electricity, decent roads -- have high expectations from the new regime.

The recent earthquake has brought into the country widespread devastation, and it has brought also universal cooperation from the most obscure to the well known international service agency. To the naked eye as well as to the astute observer, it seems as though such massive outpouring of help went into the country as a flood pours into an open field.

Haiti is the best field study of the axiom that “those who can, will not, and those who will, cannot.” The government of Michel Martelly wants to prove that those who will can turn things around very quickly if there is a convergence of the right actors with the right policies. A day before the inauguration of his mandate he energized a million men and above all women to take a broom to clean the streets in a mass movement of voluntarism.

The right policies include turning around the two parts of the head that form the nation to make it look at the same vision of the future for each citizen. This operation demands an affirmative action on behalf of those who are the most deprived of financial incubation to create products with plus value to increase their wealth. It demands also reaching out to those who already have, with tax incentives to build a national economy that will satisfy the expectation of a 10 million strong population with growing purchasing power.

The right policies called for the (re)building of the infrastructure of the nation, starting with the smaller rural counties to the capital. For the past two hundred years in the life of the nation, no rural county, nay no town or city, has received a minimum annual earmarked funding for the building or the upkeep of essential services such roads, sewers and waste disposal, potable water, electricity and internet services.

The Preval government created the CNE (National Center of Equipment) to build and maintain local roads. That instrument was transformed into an electoral machine, turned sometimes into a criminal enterprise at the service of one man instead of the nation.

The Martelly government will need to revamp this institution to supplement and intensify the contribution of the EU – European Community – in infrastructure support to Haiti.

The new government is very friendly to the concept of PPP -- public-private partnerships -- to circle the country with all the modern infrastructural apparatus -- transportation, fiber optics, ferry services, electricity, and communications, etc.

Efficient international trade requires, as said Alan Beattie in False Economy, good communications, cheap and reliable transport, as well as certainty about getting the goods on time to the customer along with the certainty that the exporter will get paid on time. Haiti is too close to the largest market in the world (the United States) not to take advantage of that opportunity.

The institutions in Haiti in the Preval government have been either an instrument of propaganda with minimum service delivery or a private fief of someone close to those in power to distribute favors, exact pay offs and humiliate and frustrate the ordinary citizen. To obtain a passport, pay domestic taxation, or receive a certified copy of one’s birth certificate, you must visit the capital, stay in a long line and sometimes pay a corrupt broker to obtain service that should be in the regular line of business of each county.

The Martelly government will need to institute in its first one hundred days the culture of hospitality in the delivery of services. That culture should be extended also to the coordination of the international organizations so they can become more effective in their mission as well as the mission of the government in becoming a state friendly to its citizens.

Last but not least the Martelly government will need to extend a hand to the Diaspora so it can energize the reconstruction of the country. He has done so at a gala given by the Diaspora in his honor. He told the crowd, at last “the Diaspora has its own government.” The new amended constitution gives the voting power to the Diaspora. With rights comes also responsibility. I have demonstrated in an earlier essay that the Diaspora as a tool for nation building can be organized only from the home country. The Haitian government must be the moving force incubating the regional organizations to make them effective tools of the Haitian recovery.

The input of the Diaspora has been so far as fragmented as the support of the international organizations in Haiti: a flood spreading into an open field. The sustainable effect has been minimal at best. The forthcoming Diaspora sponsored civil society plan to provide each town with an endowment of 3 million dollars per year for infrastructure and institution building should receive the full blessing of the Haitian government.

The energy of the new president, Michel Joseph Martelly, gives the possibility of forecasting the dawn of a new era of Haitian leadership in the Caribbean. The big international issues, such as the smooth insertion and the re-education of the criminal returnees, the free flowing of services and labor throughout the region, the control and the management of the illegal drug business will find a firm hand in securing the Caribbean basin for growth and development.

Last but not least, the last time there was some muscle (for the best or for the worst) engagement from the big brother (the United States) in the financial situation of the Caribbean was during the governance of Ronald Reagan. The Obama government will have to look at its neighbour, the Caribbean area, and provide at least the 3 billion dollars annual aid that Ronald Reagan, thirty five years ago, provided to the region. Haiti will provide the leadership for such engagement!

May 16, 2011

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Haiti, the big picture

By Jean H Charles



The Haitian people, after the birth of democracy some twenty-five years ago (the Haitian Constitution was adopted on March 29, 1987), have put their faith in three leaders to lead them on the road towards development. Michel Joseph Martelly is the last one.

There was first Gerard Gourgue, who never made it to the balloting box as the election was disrupted by gunfire on the sad day of November 28, 1987. The military regime in place then, allegedly under international directive (the Reagan government mistakenly attributed leftist leanings to Gerard Gourgue) opened fire on innocent people in line for voting, committing the crime of lese democracy. Dozens were killed, the proceedings were disrupted, and Gerard Gourgue, a fiery human rights lawyer, never made it onto the altar of the national frontispiece.

The convulsion brought in a slew of de facto governments until the election of 1991, when the Haitian people chose a fiery anti-American cum leftist leaning, former Catholic priest Jean Bertrand Aristide as their leader. The experience was cathartic. Aristide turned out to be a divisive personality bent on pulling apart the very fabric of the Haitian national ethos. Twice ejected out of the country, he is now back home, allegedly as a private citizen interested mainly in the area of education.

There was in between Rene Preval, a nemesis of Jean Bertrand Aristide, the beneficiary of choice of the international community. He was not, because of his persona and his lack of commitment to the welfare of the people, a popular choice.

Some twenty-five years later, after the departure of the dictator Jean Claude Duvalier, the Haitian people have chosen an iconoclast music band leader, Joseph Michel Martelly, to avenge the country and to create a nation that shall become hospitable to all.

The birthing of this dawn of democracy was not easy. As elaborated in my previous columns, the government as well as a large section of the international community tried to convince the electoral board that the popular voice should be ignored to the benefit at first of the candidate of the government in power (Jude Celestin). Later, in the second round, the call was to shake the numbers for the benefit of the wife (Mirlande Manigat) of a former president, elected twenty years ago under a cloud of illegitimacy.

The big picture is: Haiti and its people for the past five hundred years have been seeking its own place in the sun. During the first three hundred years, a bloated colonial class has been living off the land like princes and princesses from the slave labour of the masses who will become the citizens of the first black independent nation in the world.

During the last two hundred years, special interest groups, have succeeded as would have said Alan Beattie (False Economy) to halt and even send in reverse all economic progress in the country.

The literature on sustainable development is now interested in seeking out why some countries succeed and why others fail. I have been for a long time perusing the reasons why Haiti has been and has remained a constant basket case. Some of the reasons are deep and structural. Some are circumstantial.

Because of my long and personal relationship with Henry Namphy (the strong man General after the departure of Jean Claude Duvalier) and Gerard Gourgue, I have tried to reconcile both military and civilian leaders for the sake of the nation. I either did not try hard enough, or the animosity between the two men was too deep and to entrenched. The end result, Haiti missed twenty-five years of solace and good governance!

The structural impediments are many and varied. Using a page story from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I would say at the beginning: “Knowing the right thing to do to enrich your nation is hard enough; bringing people with you to get it done is even harder.” The founding fathers, Toussaint Louverture, Jean Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe knew how to transform the mass of slaves into productive and creative citizens.

They could not rally the team of the other generals to conceive and build a nation hospitable to all after winning the war of independence. As such Haiti lapsed during its first century into fratricidal struggles brought about by interest groups that captured the resources of the country and dragged the nation down.

Around 1911, came about Dr Jean Price Mars, Haiti’s own Dr Martin Luther King, who taught the nation it must love itself and engage in nation building. The politicians transformed his doctrine into a clan policy entrenched in the Haitian ethos today.

Haiti suffered also for a long time from the resource curse as depicted in Pirates of the Caribbean. It was first its majestic mountains filled with mahogany trees that attracted the French and the Spanish. Later gold and sugar cane made this island the pearl of the Antilles.

After independence, corruption and mismanagement exacerbated the resource curse whereby Haiti became the failed-state poster child of the Western Hemisphere. Through dictatorship, military government and illiberal democracy, the nation did not deliver any significant services to its citizen.

Joseph Michel Martelly has demystified the last bastion of literati and pundits who could not believe that the Haitian people would identify themselves with a commoner in politics, backed only by his passion for Haiti as his pedigree, on his way to the higher office.

I am predicting the Martelly government will be a success for Haiti and for the region. He will have enough Haitian people at home and in the Diaspora, as well as well intentioned members and nations of the international community who will lend a hand to build a nation that will at last create an aura of hospitability for all.

After five hundred years, it is about time!

April 9, 2011

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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

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Perfecting the Dominican Republic while pulling the Republic of Haiti into nation building

By Jean Herve Charles


The Dominican Republic on the island of Ayti (made up of the Republic of Haiti and the Dominican Republic) has been for the past ten years the darling nation for investors, tourists and travelers. Its budding infrastructure is equal to or even better than any developed country. Santo Domingo has a brand new subway metro system; the highway from Santiago to Santo Domingo is smooth, large and efficient. The Dominican Republic has achieved food security for its people while feeding Haiti with all types of produce from coconut to plantain, including eggs and macaroni.

It is led by Leonel Fernandez, a savvy New York based lawyer with the street smart of a Manhattan cab driver, yet draped with the finesse of a well bred gentleman issuing from a proud and good family. He is forging the Dominican Republic ahead according to the defined Renan Doctrine repeated so often in my essays on nation building process.

You will recall, it includes:

– A strong army to protect, defend and enhance the territory while valuing national heritage through the veneration of heroes, and the passing through of the ancestors’ code of morality and conduct.

-- rooting the citizens in their localities with infrastructure, institutions and services as well as cultural traditions so they will not become internal nomads in their own land, moving from villages to the cities, from the cities to the capital and there seeking a better life abroad.

-- Last but not least taking all the necessary steps to leave no one behind, including the aliens and the belongers.

The Dominican Republic has a strong army visible from the border to the capital. Travelling from Port au Prince by bus to Santo Domingo, you will be scrutinized by no less than 19 different army posts that check your visa your passport and your belongings, ensuring that each visitor has been invited in. The army is also ensuring that each tree is not uprooted unless there is a permit or it is in the interest of the largest forest to do so. Last but not least the military plays its part in the development of infrastructure as well as in the protection of the civilians in case of disaster.

The government has also done its best to root its population in their localities. Whether the citizen is living in Bani or Santiago, they have easy access to decent and low cost transportation. The children of the country wear the same uniform all over the nation -- khaki pants with a blue shirt -- representing a concern of the government to provide basic education to the next generation of Dominican citizens. Services are well represented all over the country, the Dominican week-end is alive and vibrant, so vibrant that the well-heeled Haitians do not spend their weekends in Haiti, from Friday to Sunday they flock to Samana, Cabaret or Puerto Plata for fun, fete, and frolic.

The Dominican Republic needs improvement, though, with the concept of leaving no one behind. Perfecting the Dominican Republic will mean making the country hospitable to the entire population whether they are citizens, visitors or aliens. This concept is difficult to accept and to implement. Yet is the hallmark of a great nation on its way to complete fulfillment. It will imply the enforcement of strict control on the borders. The end result will be all those who are already inside the territory must receive the red carpet treatment in terms of education, health care and economic development. They are the potential citizens who will continue the process of nation building of the Dominican Republic.

To avoid the story of the battle of Sysive where victory is all always at hand but never achieved, the Dominican Republic should engage the Republic of Haiti in the process of nation building and development. While in the past it represented a magnet mainly for the Haitian farmers in the sugar field, it has now became a magnet for the young Haitians in search of a proper higher education instruction and a secure job at the end of it. We have seen earlier, it is a magnet for the Haitian businessmen who leave the Haitian capital at the weekend, avoiding the stress of, as well as the lack of a night life in Haiti.

The culture of complete indifference of the Haitian government towards its citizens is detrimental not only to Haiti but it is also detrimental to the Dominican Republic, which shares the same borders. The Dominican government must have a policy of enhancing good governance in Haiti. Its own future is at stake.

The international community, (United Nations, OAS and CARICOM) has professed good will towards Haiti. This manifestation of good will has not been translated into a minimum of welfare for the Haitian people. I met recently the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Dominican Republic in Santo Domingo while the UNICEF president was camping in the capital en route to Haiti. Looking me in the eye, the Minister of Foreign Affairs told me: ‘‘We have re-directed our policy towards Haiti.” He did not elaborate.

The fact is the Dominican Republic has been extremely generous toward Haiti after the earthquake, even offering the building of a large university in the northern part of the country. The Dominican Republic has also profited handsomely from the Haitian catastrophe, being the vendors of choice of all the necessities that are utilized for Haiti’s recovery.

The Dominican take off will be fully operational when it includes Haiti on the locomotive train. With a population of 20 million people (10 million on each side of the border) this Caribbean market, well integrated in tourism, tropical organic produce, services and industry, will have no competitor in the Western Hemisphere.

Haiti needs above all good governance that breaks away from the tradition of corruption and the lack of respect for its own people. It is the business of the Dominican Republic to foster such happenstance. Haitian civil society, the opposition must be regarded as a natural ally in bringing about that fundamental change in the country.

The Dominican Republic in contrast to the international partners completely embedded with the predatory government must follow these three principles:

a) Facilitate the largest democratic forces inside the country.
b) Rely not on the functioning government but on a democratic principle ... for example: “leaving no one behind” for its policies on Haiti.
c) Speak to everybody not only to friends.

The people of Haiti are now angry over the theft of the vote in the last election. The national police as well as the MINUSTHA were totally nonexistent in protecting life and limb during the political and electoral crisis. Under a flawed or a fair election, the people of Haiti have chosen Joseph Michel Martelly as their viable leader for the next five years.

Does the redirection of the Dominican government policy toward Haiti include also facilitating the respect of the voice and the vote of the people of Haiti in the last elections?

Stay tuned for next week's essay: With friends like the UN, OAS and CARICOM, Haiti needs no enemy!

December 11, 2010

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What's next for Haiti?

By Jean Herve Charles


The elections of November 28, 2010 represent a watershed for the nation of Haiti. The government has tried to disrupt the proceedings through violence, manipulation and plain inept practice. Yet the people have stood fast to vote en masse for fundamental change against a regime that was neither communist nor capitalist but disguised with the veil of democracy while wearing the gangster suit of misappropriation, indifference to misfeasance and just plain arrogance.

This charade was facilitated by the international community that could not be naïve about the true colors of the Executive and the Legislative that seem to function just for their own insatiable benefit to the detriment of the needs and the interest of the people of Haiti.

It has been as such for the past sixty years, to be exact, fifty four years, when the government of Paul Eugene Magloire was forced into exile in December 1956 while he tried to remain in power beyond his designated mandate. There were first the dictatorial regime of the Duvalier father and son that lasted thirty five years, than the military regime of Namphy, Avril and Cedras followed by the anarchic and demagogic regime of the Aristide and Preval, which is now twenty years old.

Throughout that ordeal, the Haitian people have suffered, repression, misery, exile, occupation, natural and consequential catastrophe, disease and major epidemic including this outbreak of cholera.

What’s next for Haiti?

This island nation that was once the pearl of the Caribbean for three centuries during the French occupation has known only hard times during its self governance, which is now two hundred years old. The only successful slave revolt to lead into a nation-building experience in the world, the Republic of Haiti was doomed to fail as it challenged the world order of black enslavement. From a de jure slave controlled entity it was transformed into a de facto failed nation where the majority of the people were subjected to the same humiliation and the same deprivation endured by their forefathers.

As in Africa, where black rulers contributed to the sale of their subjects for the perpetuation of the Atlantic Middle Passage, successive Haitian presidents have facilitated the degradation of the environment, the pauperization of the population and the brain drain of the best minds that could have build the nation and challenge the status quo.

Enter this era when Joseph Michel Martelly, a Haitian bad boy, iconoclast and true patriotic, stands ready to shake things up and bring about the Haitian Renaissance. He will need to call upon the vast reservoir of the Haitian Diaspora, dispersed as the Jewish population all over the world. He will need also to challenge the international community that used a wall of silence and accomplice to incubate a toxic transition at each window of opportunity from squalor to more squalor.

Haiti, well positioned as a pearl in the middle of the Caribbean chain, can become the catalyst for the true growth of the region. It has a natural physical beauty with a pastoral life reminiscent of Switzerland minus the snow but filled with sea sand, sun and surf. It has a large population -- ten million people -- that are creative, industrious and resilient.

They only need to be educated; a high school coupled with a technical component in each neighborhood shall be the staple for the basis of the country recovery. The first shift for instruction – 8.00 am to 12.pm -- shall be dedicated to the very young. The second shift -- 1.00 pm to 5.00 pm -- to the not so young, and the last shift -- 6.00 pm to 10.00 pm -- will be reserved for the adults.

Haiti was the product of its indigenous army; its very creation was laid down by its founder father the General Jean Jacques Dessalines as a gift that should be cherished with care and devotion. As such it cannot continue to exist without its essence. The new government shall invite the UN deployment force to leave the country so it can reconstruct its own army hopefully with the butin de guerre of all the war toys – tanks trucks and equipment -- brought into the country by MINUSTAH. This new army shall protect the environment, safeguard the population in case of disaster and facilitate the rebuilding of the country through technical assistance.

The successive callous governments have caused the population to become a nation in transit. From the deserted and abandoned rural villages the people have migrated to the small cities en route to the shantytowns of the larger ones, marching on to the capital causing environment disaster of biblical proportions. The audacious ones have embarked on leaky boats for illegal travel to The Bahamas, Florida and beyond in search of a hospitable sky.

The new Haitian government shall root its population with infrastructure and adequate institutions in their own locality. It shall have also an eye for leaving no one behind with an affirmative action program on behalf of those with no lineage pedigree.

Is Michel Martelly the black knight bent to avenge the nation and its people against the curse of misery, mistreatment and malediction? The next five years shall bring the ascent of a new and prosperous horizon for Haiti and for its neighborhood all over the remaining chain of the Caribbean islands. Haiti shall regain its tradition of enlightened leadership for the region and for the world!

December 4, 2010



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