Haiti and the entrenched business of the NGOs

By Jean H Charles


“There are plenty of reasons why countries have made mistakes. Often their decisions are driven by a particular interest group or a coalition of them whose short-term gains stand at odds with the nation’s long-term interest. Some interest groups have captured countries and dragged them down, some have been resisted,” said: Alan Beattie in False Economy. Yet, history is not determined by fate or national culture, it is determined by people and by leadership.

The unhappy story of Haiti after its glorious outburst from a slave entity to a free nation is the story of one damned thing after another, as would say Arnold Toynbee. There was first the complete destruction of the very profitable sugar industry of the island to force the French colonists to leave and then there was the constant repositioning of the entrenched interests to stiffen the national economy to the point of completely killing indigenous capitalization.

The last group of entrenched interests compromising the future development of the country is the positioning of the NGOs as a passage oblige for the national recovery.

Haiti before and much more after the earthquake of January 12, 2010, has been invaded by an army of NGOs from all corners of the world, in addition to its own enterprising ones. The Haitian government does not know the actual numbers of non-governmental organizations working in the country. It is estimated at 8,000, more than any other country in the world except maybe India with a population of more than a billion people.

The tiny town of Leogane has more than 800 NGOs trying to find a mission. They have profited from the loose regulation and coordination from the governmental authorities to propagate and operate at will, sometimes in contradiction with each other and the long term vision of the needs of the nation.

Some countries have been impoverished by unbridled capitalism; other nations have seen their country’s productive force stagnated by Marxist policies. Haiti will prove to the rest of the world that resting on the NGOs to create wealth in the country has produced just the contrary.

The biggest culprit is the MINUSTHA of the United Nations, a mammoth operation designed not with the interest of the nation in mind but with its own needs as priority. There is something at odd with a standing army with all the military gear ready to fight against a nation that refuses to fight.

The blinded vehicles of the MINUSTHA, making their way in the crowded streets of Port au Prince at crucial peak traffic time, with their cannons pointed at the mothers with their children in hand, trying to navigate the cars and the crowd to reach the school doors, provides a spectacle comical and cynical.

There was first the very arrogant Edmond Mulet in charge of the operation, replaced now by the very humble and collegial Mariano Fernandez Amunategui, who will either run a charm operation for the MINUSTHA to remain longer in the country or facilitate its demilitarization to transmute into a facilitating force for infrastructure development in Haiti.

UNICEF for its part has bloated the previous Haitian administration with thousands of brand new vehicles that feed the greed, the corruption and the venality of the high executive echelon without proper safeguard that these assets will be used for the good of the nation.

CIRH (Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti) -- the Clinton instrument to facilitate the reconstruction of the country after the earthquake -- has disbursed in the last year the amount of $4 billion without minimal visible impact for the displaced population.

The myriad of NGOs circulating in rental vehicles enrich only the car rental companies, and those who can lease their villas, their warehouses and, according to the witty and whimsical Haitian people, their wives and their daughters.

The previous Haitian government has refused to create a strong NGO coordination under the umbrella of a sub-cabinet minister. Other countries such as Indonesia or even reclusive Burma have recovered faster from cataclysm by channeling the efforts of the NGOs through a guided governmental apparatus.

I met recently a discreet diplomatic delegation from Rwanda visiting Haiti to advise the new government on its policies with the NGOs. Rwanda before the genocide was run almost entirely by the NGOs. The new president, who received high accolade from the concert of nations in his handling of the national economy and the national reconciliation process, has taken effective measures to diminish the influence of the NGOs in the country.

Is it a signal that Haiti will finally take its fate in its own hands in creating the conditions to build a nation free of exclusion, enhanced with sane institutions and adequate infrastructure for the benefit of the population that will enrich itself and enrich the country free of the bloated NGO apparatus that represents an interest group as malignant and entrenched as the old government was for the Haitian reconstruction.

August 1, 2011

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Bahamas Blog International

Is Haiti in better shape than a generation ago with the advent of democracy?

Haiti's twenty-five-year flirtation with democracy: A failed experience!
By Jean H Charles


I remember where I was, twenty five years ago, on February 7, 1986. I was leading, along with community leader Wilson Desir, a parade in Brooklyn, New York, celebrating the departure of the dictatorship that had gripped Haiti for thirty five years under Duvalier pere and fils governance.

In the jubilation that engulfed the Haitian community, joy and good wishes were shared by the whole New York citizenry with the Haitian people.

A nurse from the Philippines wanted to see Marcos and his Jezebel wife Imelda thrown out of her country.

“The people power” born in Haiti would spread like wildfire in the Philippines to chase Marcos out of power in September 1986.

An old man from Poland, tears in his eyes, dreamed with me of a motherland without the militarism under Russian leadership. Lech Walesa would come some years later (1989) to deliver Poland from the grip of the Russian army.

As if on cue, twenty-five years later, another wave of people power, this time born in Tunisia, is shaking the entire Arab world. It is demanding the departure of Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt with an iron hand during the last thirty years. He was grooming his son to become the next chief of state, as the people say enough is enough!

Jordan, Syria, Yemen all have their political and social convulsions demanding the advent of a nation that shall become hospitable to all. In this age when the internet, Twitter, texting and other means of fast communication are becoming an effective tool of militancy, the era of dictatorship is fading away at great speed.

The Haitian Constitution promulgated one year after the departure of Jean Claude Duvalier, as well as the successive elections, did not safeguard the nation against the culture of illiberal governance.

Twenty-five year later, to the question whether Haiti is in better shape than a generation ago with the advent of democracy, the answer is a clear and unequivocal no.

There are improvements in the area of freedom of expression, yet there is a deep deceleration in the area of environmental, food, personal, and public health security in spite of massive foreign intervention.

The western style of democracy, with recurrent elections, has been in Haiti a bad vehicle for dispatching essential services and efficient institutions. The concept of nation-building has not been in the lexicon of governmental praxis.

Haiti is still the land of a wide schism between the vast majority (87%) of the population living in a fragile environment, in extreme poverty, without education and formation, versus a minority (13%) highly sophisticated in full control of the political, financial and social level of the society.

A brief vignette of the governments after the departure of Jean Claude Duvalier reveals a pattern of corruption, foreign interference with bad faith, inadequate leadership, and complete indifference to the fate of the population.

I rushed to Haiti after February 7, 1986, to help the military government establish a Haiti hospitable to all. In spite of my personal relationship with the military leader, I was not received as a friend because I came to reconcile Henry Namphy (the military leader) with Gerard Gourgue (the civilian leader) for the sake of the nation, instead of getting into the gossip of the day. Namphy led by a gang of venal military officers would be chased out of office a year later after the burning of a church packed with worshippers.

The transitional government of Ertha Trouillot introduced in Haiti the complete stronghold of the international community into the Haitian res publica, leading to the UN occupation, the advent of the mobster style government of Jean Bertrand Aristide, followed by his nemesis Rene Preval, who wears a velvet glove while presiding over a nation sliding at great speed into an abyss without end.

In contrast to Haiti over the past twenty-five years, the experience of Singapore, Malaysia, China, Vietnam and even next door Dominican Republic, based on the Renan doctrine, with no foreign intervention in following their own footprint has achieved within a generation the building of a nation with a growing middle class, delivering good services with essential infrastructure.

Haiti, at the dawn of a new generation in its experience of democracy, is engulfed profusely with a foreign intervention that seems to sustain the old culture of squalor for the majority and enlightenment for the minority.

Edmond Mulet, the chief UN resident with its machine of deterrence (MINUSTHA), has sided with Rene Preval, the decried president, to sustain a legislature bent on keeping Haiti in a failed democratic mode, postponing the advent of the emergence of true democracy in the nation.

The timing of the transition from one regime to another, the link that could break the chain of injustice, is once again hijacked by a foreign hand with a strong grip, this time with international glove.

At age 25, the Haitian democracy must take a new turn. It cannot be continued nor replicated beyond Haiti’s borders. The complete absence of governmental leadership, supplemented by the so called force of stabilization, has been a recipe for disaster.

Haiti democracy will grow in age gracefully when it takes charge of building its own army (replacing the MINUSTHA) that will protect its environment and its people; when it will root its population in their localities with ethical institutions and adequate infrastructure and when, last but not least, she will take the national determination to leave no one behind!

This is the formula for a successful democracy. So far, the western democracies, the international institutions have prevented these steps from taking root in the underdeveloped countries like Haiti, while they are the staple policy in Europe and in the United States.

The exceptional models of Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam that rely on their own culture, the strength of their people united as one to defend and to enhance the motherland, while treating each citizen as a potential jewel that should be polished for the glory of the nation will soon become the international canvas copied all over the world!

Thomas Friedman, in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, put it best: “Tharir Square (the site of the protest in Cairo Egypt) will be for now on the wave of the future.” The generation in waiting is fighting for a better standard of living, not for a cause but for Egypt or Haiti, starting with each one of them.

Once again, as two hundred years ago, the failure of the international institutions in the last twenty-five years to incubate on their watch, true democracy in Haiti is a lesson for all nations to learn from.

Note:
A test of the maturity of the Haitian democratic process: In the tradition of Justice John Marshall, the issue of removing or retaining the Haitian president, who remains in power after its mandate can and should be solved not by street demonstrations or a dicta by the UN resident Edmond Mulet but by the judiciary, the Haitian Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation) that will decide whether Rene Preval can remain into power beyond February 7.

February 12, 2011

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Bahamas Blog International

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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Bahamas Blog International

Respect or the lack thereof, the missing ingredient to propel the Haitian recovery

By Jean H Charles


I have been reflecting and pondering on why Haiti is not developing harmoniously while it has an optimum population -- 10 million people -- resilient, industrious, willing to work for almost nothing (a base revenue or a salary of $500 per month for each working Haitian would create a brand new middle class and provide an extraordinary boom to the Haitian economy!) I have found respect or the lack thereof is the missing ingredient that could propel the Haitian recovery.

This lack of respect is almost universal. The Haitian government, the international community, the NOGs implanted in the country and by ricochet the Haitian people toward each other are all culprits in this chain of disrespect that infect the seedling of a relationship that would produce a tree filled with welfare, generosity and good hospitality for all.

As the Haitian people and the rest of the world were commemorating last week the January 12 earthquake that devastated the capital and the surrounding cities, it is proper to recall how the Haitian government under the baton of the man who is now proposed to become the next chief of state of the country has collected the bodies and proceeded with their inhumation.

Pay attention to this wrenching story as recalled by my parish priest of St Louis King of France in Port au Prince. Armed with a leadership style that is not obvious in Haiti, the priest went to scout out the place where thousands of victims of the earthquake were placed in order to bring the whole congregation to a pilgrimage to pay respect to the dead ones.

His description brought tears in the eyes of the parishioners. He could not find the place except the frame of a small hill where the goats and the pigs were roaming freely. An eyewitness told him that 60 large trucks were in line to dump the bodies to a former site -- Ti tayen -- where the dictatorial regime of the Duvaliers used to kill its opponents.

There was a small riot by the surrounding populace at the infamous site, forcing the macabre convoy to be diverted further to St Christopher, where they unceremoniously dumped the bodies. Dirt was put on the dead by tractors, making a small hill. The site has been abandoned since, with no memory and memorial, visited only by the goats and the pigs.

In life as in death, the Haitian government treats its people in oblivion. The living do not fare better. The capital city is filled with garbage not collected for weeks or months sometimes. The public market is in condition so filthy that it should shock the conscience of any civilized person.

Cape Haitian the second city of the Republic, a museum style treasure that should be cherished not only by the citizens of Haiti but by the rest of the world as a world heritage site because each house is a museum relic of the colonial era. It reflects the decomposition of the profound disrespect of the Haitian government towards its own people.

Sewers have not been cleaned for decades. For a population of half a million people there is no public water distribution. The lack of leadership in service delivery is only equal to the limitless resilience of the Haitian people in accepting and living with the squalor imposed upon them by their own government.

The rest of the country is completely abandoned with no dedicated funding going directly to any of the cities or the rural villages. The First Lady in a recent interview to the Associated Press was offended at the national and international press for treating her husband president as derelict in leadership style. Using the lowest denominator on the evaluation scale, one cannot find a better characterization. As a scholar educated abroad, I know the First Lady know better!

The international community, in spite of the outpouring of generosity following the earthquake, has treated Haiti and the Haitian people with contempt. The Organization of American States (OAS), the main actor in framing the political transition, has not made any excuses, pardon or retribution to Haiti for contributing to the destruction of its economy through the enforced embargo against the country in October 1992 for reasons that had nothing to do with reason, logic, and good politics.

The president (Jean Bertrand Aristide), who was expelled from the country, was so divisive in tearing apart the very fabric of society that it has not being able to be woven again. Imposing an OAS-led embargo for his return was the high point of insanity, nay, stupidity!

Accurate reports by international organizations have found one thousand children dead of malnutrition every month during the two years embargo. The destruction of the environment was accelerated and maintained since the embargo. The Haitian economy has taken since a deep decline it has never recovered from.

The disrespect of the OAS/CARICOM organizations towards Haiti is so deep that you will not find one single Haitian professional in the policy making decision of either organization, in spite of the fact the population of Haiti and the immigration issues confronting the region and its relations in the context of public private international law necessitates a Haitian voice and insight in the policy deliberations.

The OAS resident in Haiti, Mr Ricardo Seitenfus, a scholar on Haiti in his own right, in a departing shot, has expressed with a phenomenal clarity the true picture of Haiti vis a vis the international community. “The international reconstruction commission to this day is searching for its real functions. (As such) 11 billion collected for Haiti never got to the country. Haiti needs a peace mission not a war mission. MINUSTHA has been an albatross out of place devoid of a true mission thrown into Haiti as a cottage industry for its own needs not to bring relief to the people; in the case of Haiti we need not a security council but a council for social and economic development. If people imagine that Haiti future can be made through MINUSTHA or through the NGOS we are deceiving the public opinion and we are deceiving the Haitian people.”

For these accurate comments Mr Seitenfus was fired by the OAS Secretary General at a critical time when his judgment is necessary to facilitate the smooth transition of the Haitian democratic process.

In the next weeks the lack of respect of the OAS/CARICOM team will be more evident. A scheme concocted last June between the Haitian government represented by one of its ministers, at the headquarters of the OAS in Washington DC, with Mr Colin Granderson and Mr Albert Ramdin to facilitate the Preval regime to maintain its power through a flawed and corrupt election will be either confirmed or tossed out of the basket by the vigilance of the Haitian people and/or the leadership of some friends of Haiti, including the Obama government.

The NGOs have descended en masse into Haiti after the earthquake. The emergency support was unprecedented, yet the haphazard mode of reconstruction is offensive to the nation. A giant ghetto -- Corail -- is being planned and executed with the funds donated by the people of the world while the rest of the country needs decent housing, convenient school and hospitals and incubation for business promotion. Massive amounts of money are channeled to truck water distribution when the purification could be done easily at the source.

Their intrusion into the country would be beneficial if they would agree amongst themselves to coordinate their work and pay a decent salary to their workers – a minimum of $500 per month to the unskilled. The NGOS represent also a safe harbor for the thousands of Americans, Europeans, Canadians and South Asians who cannot find a job at home. One of them told me the truth: “But for Haiti, I would still be unemployed with a 14% rate of unemployment in Florida.”

Finally but not least, the lack of respect of the Haitian people amongst themselves is contagious. The public officials in their tainted cars with all the privileges showered upon them by the government exhibit an arrogance that echoes the master-servant relationship. Haiti, the land where democracy and human rights took birth in the western hemisphere, is today a de facto apartheid state. The vicious circle of disrespect by and amongst the ordinary citizen is pervasive. It can be seen in the public transportation, in the delivery of the health system, in schools and the organization of the public markets.

The rebuilding of the country must start with the most elementary ingredient: respect for each citizen and respect for each other. The spirit of the hundreds of thousands who lost their lives in the January 12, earthquake demand no less! One year after the earthquake, faced with a complete disorganization of the international institutions, as well as the low level of the trickling down of the recovery resource, it has become clearer for each Haitian that salvation can only come from within, starting with respect for and to each other.

Note:
January 12 of each and every year should be dedicated as a Day of International Solidarity with the people and the Republic of Haiti to honor the 300,000 dead from the earthquake, spirit the 1.5 million internal refugees out of the fetid camps into self dependence and last but not least usher into economic self sustenance eight million (out of ten million) Haitian people who live now in abject and extreme poverty!

January 17, 2011

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Bahamas Blog International

With friends like the UN, OAS and CARICOM, the Republic of Haiti needs no enemies!

By Jean Herve Charles


The Republic of Haiti was present at the baptismal fountain at the creation of the United Nations in 1946. Its active and diligent diplomacy facilitated the emergence of several countries from colonialism or occupation to nationhood -- we can mention amongst others Libya, Ethiopia, Belgium and Israel as the direct beneficiaries of Haiti’s international leadership.

The Human Rights Charter was drafted by none other than the Haitian delegate Mr Emile St Lot, the Rapporteur of the 3rd Commission of the 94th Session.

Yet, in 1957, some ten years later, when the Duvalier dictatorship established its grip into the country, the UN did not come as a friend to help Haiti liberate itself from that repression, instead it spirited to Africa the best minds of the nation (those who could have forced a change of the status quo) for a nation building project in the Congo as that nation was emerging from its colonial status.

Those Haitian doctors, lawyers and teachers did such an efficient job in helping the Congolese to become nation builders that they were soon declared persona non grata by the same UN that cancelled their contracts. From there, the Haitian pioneers went to Quebec, Canada, where they helped the land of Cartier to become fully developed. They went also to the United States where they established themselves in Flatlands and Flatbush, New York, renovating and stabilizing the neighborhoods fled in haste by the Italians and the Jews.

In the meantime, in Haiti, successive governments, whether dictatorship, militarism or populism, have continued to engulf Haiti into an abyss where a return to the homeland could not be organized.

Against the good advice of learned veterans of the UN operation overseas, not to invite the UN into your country -- “the UN does not leave a country, once it has been invited in; nor the fate of that country will be improved” -- the government of Ertha Pascal Trouillot introduced the UN into Haiti to supervise the election.

The UN has managed since to remain in the country under different acronyms for the past twenty years. It is now under MINUSTHA -- a mammoth operation involving more than seventy countries.

With no concern for the environmental impact, MINUSTHA has flooded the Haitian capital with cars and other vehicles going and coming to and from no specific destination, with no specific purpose. The real concerns of the country in food and personal security, political stability and social integration have remained unattended. Yet the UN has stated as its purpose: “to be a critical factor in the consolidation of social peace stability and the rule of law in Haiti”.

Mr Edmond Mulet, the UN resident, has monitored against the advice of the Haitian civil society an election flawed in its conception and unacceptable in its final delivery. When the Haitian masses went on a rampage to manifest their anger at the outcome of the election that does not reflect the popular vote, the UN retreated to its barracks instead of protecting life and limb.

The lowest rank of the MINUSTHA professional draws a tax free salary of $81,508 per year while the senior staff commands a minimum of $166,475 annually.

To add insult to injuries, the French scientists have just proven that the UN Nepalese contingent was indeed the carrier of the cholera germ into Haiti, killing 3,000 people, sending 40.000 to hospitals and exposing the entire nation to the contagion.

The only compensation that Haiti may derive from the UN experience will be to benefit at the UN departure, of the war equipment, the cars and the trucks brought into Haiti, for the building of the country’s own army in the future. Haiti will need, though, a responsible and nationalist government to negotiate such an important and sensitive deal!

The UN stabilization force has not been a positive experience in the rest of the world either. After forty -- 40 -- years of regretful engagement in the Congo, the UN has been disinvited from that country.

President George W. Bush did try to reorganize the UN to make it more relevant to the pressing needs of the world poor, but Mr. Bush engulfed himself prematurely and regretfully in Iraq, compromising his credibility and aborting the American-led UN reorganization project. Le Monde, the French newspaper has recently described Haiti as the Waterloo of the UN Stabilization force!

May it rest in peace for the emergence of an effective UN nation-building force that will help poor nations of the world to educate their citizens, rebuild their infrastructure and create relevant institutions for their people!

The Haitian experience with the OAS and CARICOM has not been any better. Bundled together for the first time and only in Haiti, the joint operation was commissioned by the Preval government to supervise, monitor and tabulate the result of the election. The United States has offered a purse of 12 million dollars for the operation. The coffer was handed to a veteran of Haitian Affairs, Colin Granderson, who enforced the OAS imposed embargo that destroyed the flora and the Haitian economy some fifteen years ago.

He is now pushing the Haitian political crisis to another abyss. Mr Granderson, back in Haiti, embedded with the predatory Haitian government, is at the heart of the tabulation that provided the contested figures in the last election. He has been described as an opportunist chameleon who sought to sleep with the military when they were in favor, with the populist when the tables have been turned; he is now Preval’s best hope of legitimizing a criminal fraud. The delegation of a forensic international auditing firm will certainly shine light on the dirty hands who falsified the tabulation of the ballots.

Hopefully this time around, his stint in Haiti will be the last one!

The OAS has also taken on the responsibility of providing the Haitian people with electoral identification cards and the electoral lists. The operation has been conducted with such inefficiency, chaos and disregard for elementary safeguards that it seems it was pre-arranged to provide the snafu of the November 28 election day.

The combination UN, OAS, Caricom is instrumental in facilitating the negative Africanization process of Haiti where rival tribes have been killing each other for decades, while the spoils went to the former colonizer. With the vast majority of the Haitian people determined to bring about fundamental change in the country, the old guard loaded with the national and the international purse at its disposal will maintain the fight with all its might, even igniting and perpetuating a civil war in Haiti.

With friends like the UN the OAS and CARICOM, Haiti indeed needs no enemy!

Stay tuned for next week’s essay on “Deconstructing the latest Haitian political crisis”.

December 18, 2010

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Bahamas Blog International

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

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Haiti needs a democratic revolution not an election!

By Jean H Charles:


“After Rwanda and Yugoslavia, Haiti seems to be the next theater of a major mischief by some international institutions.”

I must state at the outset that I am not advocating nor promoting neither a violent nor an armed revolution. I am talking about a democratic revolution in the minds and the spirit of the people, a revamping of the institutions and a new covenant of the government to usher in a true process of democracy. Once this revolution is on the way, Haiti can then proceed with a free and fair election.

The country needs a hiatus of three to five years of reconstruction, free of politicking, to heal the nation and set the country on the road of reconciliation and nation building. The present regime can be compared to a piece of wood filled with termites in a piece of furniture. To repair the furniture one needs to cut and throw away the damaged wood before affixing a new piece. Otherwise the damage part will eventually infect the entire furniture, including the new piece.

It was Alexis de Tocqueville who coined the concept of democratic revolution, while speaking of the birth of the United States. Akin to South Africa before Mandela, Haiti must transform itself from a de facto apartheid country to a state where the sense of appurtenance is the rule. It needs now a democratic revolution not an election.

I have this week visited a rural community named Mazere on the road from Grand River to Bahon. I have in mind these pictures that depict the extent of the misery, the magnitude of the squalid conditions as well as the inequality that 85% of the population of Haiti is forced to live under.

The public school, the only state presence of the area is located across the river. There is no bridge for easy access. I asked the kids how they get to school, one of the mothers interjected to let me know they carry the younger ones across the river, which sometimes destroys everything in its way, including an irrigation dam recently built.

Inquiring further with the adults, I asked them what their most pressing needs are. They told me that the government used to protect the land with rock formation on the hills to prevent avalanches during the rainy season. This operation has not been done for the past decades. We have now huge amount of water sitting for months in the fields destroying our produce.

It has been decades that the Haitian government has been a predatory entity preying on its people instead of providing services and support to help its citizens to enjoy the pursuit of happiness.

As such the people of Haiti educated or otherwise are waiting for the Blanc (the white man) to bring about deliverance. On the political scene, the question is not what is the agenda of the candidates, it is rather who has the blessing of Barack Obama for the presidency of Haiti? The sense of civics patriotism and leadership has been dimished by the last sixty years of corrupt governance.

The entire population is a crowd in transit. The rural world with no services from the government is in transit towards the small cities. The small towns have become ghost entities with the citizens in transit towards the larger cities, their citizens are in transit towards the capital and there the dream is to find an American visa or take a leaky boat towards Florida or the Bahamas.

Building up the sense of nation has not been a governmental priority or a United Nations foreign intervention initiative. MINUSTHA (the UN force) is substituting itself as the Haitian army without assuming the defense of the country. Inequality and injustice is queen, extorting the notion of appurtenance from and for each other. The sense of noblesse oblige of the past that kept the poor ones afloat has been substituted by the doctrine of “rock in the water against rock in the sun” or class warfare by Aristide. The Preval regime has introduced the concept of “swim to the shores at your own risk” leaving everyone to fend for themselves... It has left no lifeline of security for the majority of the population which is going into a free fall abyss.

In an article this week in the Miami Herald, Jacqueline Charles depicted the fetid situation where the Haitian refugees are living under in the Corail camp. “What was supposed to be the model for a new Haiti looks like the old one, a menacing slum.” Jean Christophe Adrian the United Nations Human Settlements Program added “the international community has a tremendous responsibility for creating this monster.”

Haiti, after Rwanda and Yugoslavia, could be the scene of a major catastrophe orchestrated by a non sensitive government with the connivance of major international institutions. I was in Washington last June at the OAS mansion at a conference on Haiti organized by CARICOM. In a conversation with Mr Colin Granderson, the Haiti resident, I shared my intention of running in the next election. His answer: how much money do you have, instead of what is your vision for Haiti? Sounds like “how many regiments do you have at your disposal?”

The gang of three -- the UN, the OAS and CARICOM -- in its dealing with Haiti is using according to Emil Vlajky in the wretched of the modernity, the absolute rationality which is anti-human. The human rationality with its sense of ethics is not in favor. The poor, the wretched, the refugees of the catastrophe will continue to live with unkept promises. While the entire country is decrying the upcoming election as a masquerade with the president holding all the marbles, the General Secretary of OAS characterize the process as “credible”. The Haiti of the Duvalier’s, the Aristide’s and the Preval’s culture is a gangrene that must be extirpated to create a modern nation sensitive to the needs of its people.

Any policy short of this radical intervention is unfriendly to the gallant people of Haiti that deserve a break from a life of abject misery.

September 20, 2010

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Haiti a missed opportunity!

By Jean H Charles:




Haiti, the first and only successful slave revolt experience to become a nation, has been a failed opportunity to polish its raw material and remain the pearl of the islands. After the earthquake of January 12, 2010, Haiti has failed to embark into a mode of development to recuperate the two hundred years of failed opportunity.

Some will say it is too early to tell. Seven months into the process, is not enough for a prediction into the future! Yet it is enough time to indicate the direction of the wind, is it towards change or towards the status quo?

On the ground in Haiti, I am witnessing all the elements are in place for a complete disaster in the coming months as well as the harbinger of years of unrest in the future.

I have developed in this journal, for the past two weeks, the conceptual framework attributing the notion of the failed state business systematically replacing the slaving business. I have also advanced the hypothesis that Haiti was the first nationally and internationally organized failed state entity.

Alexander Petion and his successor Jean Pierre Boyer, in accepting to negotiate the price of French recognition, has set a mortgage so high on the back of the brand new nation, it was designed to fail. When later that mortgage has been renegotiated, it was not to pay the installments but to kill each other in clan politics. This tragedy or that drama lasted two hundred years.

In this modern day era where an event of biblical proportion happened to Haiti, one should expect a new national and international order; it is business as usual in Haiti. Alie Kabbar of the United African organization on CBS today complained that “the American Red Cross that collected 465 million dollars on behalf of the people of Haiti is spending the money on five figure salaries, hotels, car rentals, air-conditioned offices for its staff instead of (or in addition) to spend the money for real people with real needs on the ground.”

Lionel Trouillot, the celebrated Haitian essayist wrote in a piece signed as of today, there is a smell of putrefaction in the air in Haiti. It is the smell of lies, the smell of big salaries of the multinational NGOs mixed with the fetid smell of the camp right across the hotel on the main plaza of Port au Prince.

I would add there is also the smell of resignation, the smell of laissez faire. I was invaded by that smell, because as of yesterday, I could not get myself into writing this essay, I was telling myself, it does not matter to raise the world consciousness about Haiti; things will remain the same.

I have in mind this lady in the camp right across the main hotel of Port au Prince, the Plaza Hotel, who told me not to take her picture. She is tired of people taking her picture and promising to do something for her and for her baby. Nothing has happened.

The machine set by the Haitian government, the United Nations, the OAS and Caricom for a faked election where the three main political parties have been ostracized, with the result, selected by the president, is already in motion. The thousands of NGOs from all over the world faking development initiatives while building mainly latrines and paraphernalia of that sort is suffocating.

The mammoth UN agency MINUSTHA faking support to the people of Haiti with the entire material one can order all over the world used only for its own needs. The city of Port au Prince at night is a ghost town with only the UN complexes lighted as in a developed country.

I am constantly stimulated by the high and down of feeling of anger and bliss – anger, because of the arrogance and the lack of empathy of the UN people vis a vis the displaced Haitians and the populace in general as well as the feeling of bliss for living in a land so lush where the cost of living is so low and the opportunity so plentiful that maybe Haiti is the lost paradise!

Speaking with a an investor friend at the hotel, musing on why Haiti cannot take off, he told me that Haiti needs the creative strength of the United States. I retort that no country in the Caribbean has so many creative people as Haiti! His answer was illuminating:

“They may be creative in arts! They need to be creative in engineering, in machinery, in planting, in soil conservation, in husbandry. Any farmer from the United States can help the Haitian people with those skills you do not need any PhDs for that.

“That is the reason why I am here to show them how to build their own anti-earthquake home. How to recycle the plastic material with scrap wood to produce building blocks stronger and cheaper than the cement block in use in Haiti now.”

He has been looking for an audience with those in authority, so far with not much success. Containers of prefabricated homes have already been secured by those close to the power base!

Will Haiti recover from this devastating earthquake? Or will it surge from its failed state status to an enlightened one? I suspect it will take a critical mass of Haitian people to understand that they have the undeniable right to the pursuit of happiness and to justice in their own land.

The national and international apparatus in place now is ensuring that critical mass of understanding does not occur. I am not optimistic for or about Haiti!

The woman who spoke to me at the Camp right outside the Plaza hotel

August 28, 2010

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International