Deconstructing the demise of prime ministerial nominees by the Haitian senate

By Jean H. Charles



The Haitian Senate has recently rejected Bernard H. Gousse as the next prime minister of Haiti. It is the second time the Senate as well as the House of Representatives have shot down nominees sent by the new president of Haiti, Michel Joseph Martelly, to form a new government.

The first nominee, Gerard Rouzier, was dismissed on the grounds of allegiance to a foreign country. Gerard Rouzier was the honorary Consul for Jamaica in Haiti.

The true reason was Mr Rouzier was a mulatto. The old political clan that still controls the Senate practices the political exclusion against the mulattoes from occupying high executive position in the government such as president or prime minister. The decibel level of racial insults has been elevated so high that the term “affranchis” has been affixed in the open debate onto a senator by another senator because of the light skin color of his epidermis.

Bernard Gousse did not get the nod on the spurious grounds that he did not receive a discharge from his old function as a former justice minister. He was discharged through a governmental decree used before to approve Jacques Edouard Alexis another prime minister.

Bernard Gousse was a no nonsense justice minister under the Latortue government. He pursued with diligence and with a firm hand, conspirators of the Lavalas regime bent on creating mayhem and violence under the logo Operation Bagdad in the country after the forced departure of their leader Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

Under the guidance of Aristide nemesis, Rene Preval, who ruled Haiti during the last eight years, those conspirators are now Senators of the Republic. They vowed to give Bernard Gousse his marching orders. He was dismissed in spite of the fact that all his documentation was in order. He could not even get to the stage of the normal constitutional process of presenting his political vision that could serve as the true template for decision making.

In his letter of departure, Bernard Gousse told his detractors from the GPR senatorial political platform that GPR -- the platform used by the clan Lavalas Lespwa -- will mean: Gousse Pi Red meaning Gousse will be there for the long haul!

This is the battle raging now in the country. Will the old clan that promised to remain in power for forty years (they have already concluded twenty years: 1991- 2011) continue to rule Haiti?

Using the lowest standard of evaluation, the Lavalas cum Lespwe cum Unity has failed Haiti miserably during the last twenty years. It is engaging today into a macabre dance of survival to continue the culture of corruption, complete disregard of the needs of the Haitian population and the misappropriation of the international cooperation resources under the guise of government.

The Martelly regime, elected in a plebiscite under the motto of change, is inflexible. His prime minister and his government must reflect the change brought about by the Haitian people.

Some twenty years ago, the Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who is the long hand behind the recalcitrant senators, defied the president of the Haitian Senate Eudrice Raymond to name his prime minister Rene Preval without consulting the president of the Senate as per the terms of the constitution.

On the day of the inauguration, on February 7, 1991, I had to restrain with both hands the president of the Senate, who was ready to fight physically with the newly elected president. I should have let the fight go on. Haiti would have saved the last twenty years of mayhem and misrule!

The fight to bring about a prime minister and a cabinet at the behest of the old regime is at the crux of the matter. The senators willing to facilitate the advent of the new order have forced a philosophical debate on the concept of nation building in Haiti. Should Haiti continue to be a pariah state in the midst of an avalanche of international cooperation?

The debate did not take place; on the strength of their numbers (16 vs. 14) the GPR senators defeated the motion to lay the nomination of Bernard Gousse on the table.

The OAS facilitated the will of the people of Haiti in forcing the withdrawal of Jude Celestin, the candidate of the old regime. This same OAS let in place the senators and the assemblymen selected by and forced upon the electorate through corruption and violence by the Preval regime. Was it by naiveté or by design?

The fact is three months after the inauguration of the new president they have succeeded in blocking the formation of a new government. The Haitian case need not arrive at the Somali situation for an opportune position. Good governance is at the root of all sustainable solutions for Haiti.

Helping Haiti to usher into the path of good governance will solve the drug transshipment business, the illegal immigration and the environmental degradation endemic to the country.

Haiti waited twenty years until the advent of a caring president; contrary to the Miami Herald’s editorial opinion, Martelly should take the time necessary to build a government willing to break away with the culture of corruption, the culture of predatory governance!

The resilient and gallant people of Haiti deserve a government at the scale of its mighty mission of freedom ring, torch bearers in this world!

August 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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May the good people of the world align themselves with the people of Haiti to facilitate the birthing of this true era of democracy!

Have no fear, 2011 will be a great year for Haiti and for the world!
By Jean H Charles



On November 1, 2009, I attended for the second time (the first one being at the Brooklyn Museum in New York) a voodoo ceremony celebrating the guedes (the good and bad angels). The voodoo mambo or priestess made the prediction that 2010 will be an excellent year for Haiti and for the world.

In fact, 2010 was the worst year in Haitian history and in the rest of the world.

In Haiti, a devastating earthquake killed 300,000 people, while leaving 1.5 million homeless. A cholera epidemic brought into the country by the United Nations has killed 5,000 people; it might go to 10,000 before leveling off.

Throughout the world, according to a study made by the Center for the Study of Catastrophes of the United Nations, 2010 has been one of the most costly and deadly for decades. With 373 catastrophes, 200 million people without homes, 400,000 dead and $110 billion economic losses in the US, $18 billion in China and $4.5 billion in Pakistan, the year has wrought calamities beyond recorded observation. Haiti has rung the alarm bell but it was repeated in Chile, Russia, China and Pakistan.

The prediction that 2010 would be a great year for Haiti and for the world was indeed a voodoo prediction, filled with holes and spurious expectation!

Based on the natural principle, after the bad weather is the good one, after the rain is sunshine, have no fear! God has promised He will not bring about the deluge twice to mankind; I am predicting that 2011 will be a good year for Haiti and for the world.

The signals are already there. Tunisia that lives under a dictatorship for the past thirty years has booted out its dictator at the beginning of the month of January. The people want nothing more than true and real democracy. Egypt is on the verge of packing up Mr Mubarak, who ruled as a dictator for the past thirty years. Yemen and maybe some more of the repressed Muslim or Gentiles countries will be taken the lead of Tunis to tell the dictators they have no clothes, they should let the people go!

2011 will be a determining year for Haiti to find, at last, solace after experiencing with dictatorship, militarism and anarchism as a tool of governance. In reviewing the literature on Haitian history, I was surprised to find this gallant nation has been suffering for the past not 50 but 500 years the ignominy of humiliation, repression and plain disregard of their human dignity. For three hundred years during slavery it was the de jure bondage, right after the independence during the next two hundred years it was the de facto enslavement.

Throughout this long history, the ruling nationals intertwined with the international sector have always conspired to keep the masses at bay, ignorant, poor and not in control of their destiny. This February 7, 2011, Rene Preval, sustained by a sector of the international community, at the end of his mandate will either succeed in having the upper hand to continue the culture of squalor in Haiti or he will be butted out by the people power to yield the scene to enlightened governance that puts the needs and the aspirations of the people on the front line.

I am observing in Haiti a global waste of international resources with no significant impact for the population. The United Nations, with a purse in Haiti of $865 million per year, is the biggest culprit. Encircled with a total wall of silence, the 42 nations that comprise the personnel of MINUSTHA are engaged in a scam of diligence and make believe when they know that we know they are completely useless.

The only harm endured by the UN military in Haiti is the wearing of a heavy helmet under constant 90 degrees Fahrenheit weather. For all the propaganda of a violent population, the Haitian people are peaceful, resilient, and going about doing their daily business of survival with a saintly resignation and a shrug that necessitates a personal and collective overhaul.

The thousand of NGOs that took up residence in Haiti after the earthquake are maneuvering like chickens without heads. Without direction, coordination and vision they are spending the international funds mostly on their own needs first, on the needs of the Haitian people maybe or after.

The Preval government, using words instead of action, is busy bilking the NGOs and the international institutions instead of helping them to help his people. In a perverse symbiotic relationship that feeds each other, the government and the international institutions are comfortable with each other, afraid of standing up on the side of the Haitian people.

In the flawed election, planned and coordinated by the Preval government, with the logistic support of the UN and OAS, the people of Haiti have misled the prognosticators and the polls to keep their candidate close to their cards.

When the discredited Electoral Board pushed the government candidate for a second run, putting aside the candidate who carried the popular vote, all hell broke loose. There was rioting all over the country, in particular in Les Cayes (the southern part of Haiti). OAS/CARICOM, an incubator of the criminal conspiracy, was called again by the same Haitian government to correct its wrong.

This time, it has no other choice but to reverse the results and put the popular candidate Michel Martelly in the second round, setting aside the government candidate Jude Celestin.

The drama is not over because Jude Celestin is pulling the patriotic bell to generate national sentiment in his favour. Jean Claude Duvalier, with his surprise visit, is shuffling the cards. Jean Bertrand Arisitide has a expressed strong interest in returning into the country, putting the weight of his popularity in the mix. Rene Preval, in spite of his mediocre leadership standing, wants to remain the broker par excellence of the Haitian political transition.

Haiti will necessitate cesarean section to give birth to a new nation hospitable to all. I am confident the political skills of the people have reached a mature level to handle the birthing of true democracy without too much pain and suffering. .

Closer to home, P.J. Patterson, the Haiti CARICOM Representative, has called for helping Haiti to become the driving force of the Caribbean. He will need the credibility of his long years of service to face the Colin Granderson force embedded with the discredited Haitian government and a corrupt sector of the Haitian elite bent on keeping Haiti in bondage forever.

February 7, 2011, a day of reckoning, will be like the birth of Christ in the world, the day that will force the dawn of a new beginning in Haiti. May the good people of the world align themselves with the people of Haiti to facilitate the birthing of this true era of democracy!

February 5, 2011

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The cholera epidemic in Haiti

By Jean Herve Charles



I was travelling at the beginning of the month of October, from Port au Prince to Cape Haitian by public transportation when one of the travelers exchanged a phone call giving the information in the bus that eleven persons had died from food poisoning from a restaurant in Mirebalais, a bustling town not too far from the Dominican border. I would learn later it was not a case of food poisoning but the beginning of a cholera epidemic with the epicenter located near the Nepalese UN contingent stationed in that city.

Mirebalais is close to the Artibonite River, the largest and the longest Haitian river. Investigative research initiated by the French Health Ministry and conducted by a French specialist, Professor Renaux Piarroux, along with the Dean of the School of Public Health at Harvard University, has concluded that massive dumping of human waste from the UN base had compromised the quality of the water for regular use.

Notable institutions, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, have hidden the origin of the disease with the lingo that ‘the source of the virus could not be determined with certainty”. The Swedish Ambassador Claes Hammar broke ranks with the wall of silence against Haiti that its own government has contributed to erect.

I have the information from reliable sources from the United States that the strain of cholera in Haiti is from the Nepal UN contingent in Haiti. It is up to the United Nations to reveal the whole truth about the genesis of the cholera.

The cholera germ could not find a hotter bed than Haiti to germinate with celerity and intensity. Public health as an institution and in practice does not exist in the entire country.

To facilitate the vein of corruption, the government has emasculated the power and the means of each local entity to clean its streets and the management of its waste, by creating an institution, the CNE, which is outside the purview of the legislative branch and of public scrutiny.

The CNE with massive equipment bought with the Caribe fund is using this material and its human resource with the prism of political priority not with the goal of providing the citizens of Haiti with a clean environment.

To add insult to injury the man in charge of that institution, Jude Celestin, is the dauphin groomed by the president of Haiti to become the next head of state of the Republic.

According to John Snow (1813- 1858), the father of the etymology of the disease, the cholera epidemic is, above all, a disease of contaminated water. You will find no city in Haiti, including the capital, equipped with a system for distributing potable drinking water. (The town of Petit Goave has just received a grant from Red Cross France to provide the city with drinking water.)

Close associates of the government are in the business of selling drinking water; as such the government should stay out of that business. DINEPA the new institution funded by the Spanish government to manage the water system in the country, does not have a policy of universal distribution of potable clean water.

The cholera disease has already caused the death of some 3,481 people with 80,000 in hospitalization. It is expected, according to the Pan American Health Organization to reach an effective 1 million people. The Cuban doctors, as well as Doctors Without Borders, have been in the frontline of the epidemic containment.

The term cholera, derived from the Greek word khole, is caused by a bacillus named vibrio cholera. It has its origin in the Indian continent near the squalor of the Ganges Delta. It spread from there through the silk trade to Russia in 1817, killing one million people. It went next to Germany, 1831, London and Paris in 1849 and returned to Russia in 1852. It is a dangerous infection that starts with a profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting of “a rice water with a fishy odor”. It can kill a person within hours, with circulatory collapse leading to a renal failure and certain death.

While the cholera disease is extremely dangerous, it can be treated easily with vaccine (85% effective), oral serum and, in the larger context, universal water purification, clean sewage and proper waste management system.

Haiti is postponing this radical operation to engage in the propaganda of cleaning hands and bottled water, while refuse and uncollected garbage is all over.

The earthquake of January 12, 2010, was an occasion for Haiti to rebuild itself. The cholera epidemic is another opportunity for Haiti to correct its deficient public health system. I have seen no clear signals that the Haitian government, along with the international community, is seizing the opportunity to create a new nation where cholera or any other disease or epidemic will have no quarter.

The Dominican Republic has registered already 139 cases of cholera. The epidemic respects no borders. A functioning and responsible leadership in Haiti is the best handicap against this modern scourge that enjoys squalor to spread its wings!

January 8, 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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