The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) may have made the wrong move in naming the brainy and attractive Canadian-Haitian Michaelle Jean, formerly the Governor General of Canada, as its representative in Haiti. She minced no words and wasted no time in letting the world know it is time to stop the successive failed experiments in Haiti.
During the year 2010, no country has benefited from so much publicity and marketing and goodwill as the Republic of Haiti. Yet the return for the Haitian people is so insignificant that proper research must be done to find out why a consortium of actors and actions keep contributing to bringing Haiti into an abyss so deep that light at the horizon cannot be seen.January 12, 2010, was a defining moment for Haiti to be reborn from its recent and past ashes. In less than one minute, a formidable earthquake shook the land under the capital Port au Prince and destroyed lives and limb in a random pattern affecting some 1.5 million people and killing more than 300,000.
A proud and resilient nation that instructed the world about the way to human rights two hundred years ago has been engulfed in a national and international intrigue that now lasted two centuries. The last sixty years have been one of the most painful for the nation. I am a living witness of a country seeking its destiny but halted by dictators, military misfits, and petty demagogues clothed with democratic vestments in bed with an international community too cynical to be naïve about the caustic mix of the relationship.
The Haitian intellectuals -- those who should have led the masses -- have short-circuited the long march forward. Like the Israelites in the Bible they have escaped into Egypt. That Egypt was Canada for Michaelle Jean; it was the United States for me and my family. It has been the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, France and Florida for others.
Luckily, a critical mass of Haitian intellectuals is returning home to lead the fight for a regime change that implies more than a masquerade election. It signifies the creation of a nation at the dimension of its initial aspiration; a country hospitable to all. The obstacles are many. In the past sixty years the ill governance of the Duvaliers, the Aristides and the Prevals has elevated mediocrity and stupidity as queen and squalor as king of Haiti.
During a cursory visit to Haiti, whether in the countryside or in the main cities, you will find the indices of no government, as well as a myriad of nongovernmental organizations like chicken heads seeking a proper mission. The main highway from Port au Prince to Cape Haitian is impracticable halfway from Gonaives. Desolation, misery lack of institutional support is the lot of the small towns. Bidonvilization, lack of electricity, no potable running water, and sporadic street cleaning is the expectations for the major cities. Port au Prince the capital is a ghost town at night and a hodgepodge of traffic jams and confusion during the day.
This canvas is framed with a mammoth United Nations occupation contingent, with the soldiers ready to shoot from a mounted vehicle or war tank. The only casualty for those soldiers is the wearing of the heavy helmet in 80-degree weather at the dawn of winter.
The international community, with the OAS as the lead agent, is pushing full speed for the futile exercise of election, pretending that democracy is the goal. With a population in abject poverty, uneducated and without hope, the present government is ready and able to buy each vote with a crisp 1,000 gourdes or the equivalent of US$25. For the millions who live under tents and in the hills of the countryside, this sum represents a winning lotto ticket.
This is democracy a la OAS and a la UN. Michaelle Jean, like her namesake St Michael, who chased Satan and the evil angels from heaven, might represent a Trojan horse thrown into the city ready to become a fierce advocate of true democracy in Haiti. From the international podium she may be needed on the national one as the CEO of CRHI, the Haiti Reconstruction Authority that has been dragging its feet on the speedy recovery process.
To apprehend the real problem of the country one has to superpose a triangle over the map of Haiti. The basis of the triangle is formed with a line that includes the 566 rural villages. The second layer represents the 142 small towns. The third layer constitutes the 10 major cities and the capital Port au Prince as the apex.
The rural villages constitute the structural basis of the triangle. They have not received funding for infrastructure and institutional buildings since the birth of the nation. Consequently, the internal migration to the cities has compromised the integrated development. Catastrophes, erosion, public health outbreak are constant companions that visit the nation regularly.
My organization – AIDNOH – has teamed up with Caritas to launch a project of (re)building in the north and the northeast part of Haiti. We have targeted six rural villages to bring about the rudiments of infrastructure and services such as school, health, economic development, youth leadership to root the citizens in their localities. There are 560 more rural villages to reach with the indices of good living! Starting Haiti on the right tract must go through that process.
Note:
A fund called the blue and red (the color of the Haitian flag) angel has been set up to that effect. It is seeking the tax exempt contribution of one thousand angels who will pledge $100 per month for the reconstruction of Haiti starting from the bottom up not the top down. We have already found one angel (Pat Schenck from upstate New York) as such we need 999 more. Would you subscribe to that worthy cause?
November 13, 2010
caribbeannewsnow
