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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Bahamas Blog International

Wyclef Jean Sees Martelly As Change Leader

From newsamericasnow:



AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Sat. May 15, 2011: Haitian-born, Grammy singer Wyclef Jean, has likened Michel Martelly to Barack Obama.

Jean’s comments came as Martelly, a Kompa singer known for mooning the crowds, was sworn in as the 56th President of the Republic of Haiti, replacing Rene Preval in the post.

Jean, who was among the many gathered for the swearing in on the lawns of the ruined National Palace earlier today, said Martelly’s dynamic promise of change has resonated with the people.

“It means a new start … the people want education not handouts. Now they have a leader who will mobilize then,” Jean told Reuters, comparing Martelly’s election victory with that of U.S. President Barack Obama in November 2008.

Ironically, during Martelly’s swearing in, in the country’s makeshift Parliament, the lights went out.

But the swearing in continues in the dark while Martelly went on to repeat his promises to transform Haiti from a development basket case into a new Caribbean destination for investment and tourism that will provide jobs and better lives for its 10 million people.

“Haiti has been sleeping,” Martelly, 50, said as dozens remained nearby in tent cities close to the former Palace. “Today she will wake up, stand up.”

He pledged to provide free education to the widely uneducated population and swore to bring to justice anyone who brings disorder to the country. Martelly also proposed restoring Haiti’s disbanded army to eventually replace the more than 12,000 U.N. peacekeepers in his country.

Several foreign dignitaries including former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Jamaica PM Bruce Golding and DR President Leonel Fernandez attended the swearing in. Though invited, neither former Presidents Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier or Jean Bertrand Aristide attended.


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Haitian presidential election: I am voting (again) for Michel Martelly!

I am voting (again) for Michel Martelly!
By Jean H Charles



I predicted in a previous column that the final round in the Haitian presidential election will be between the two Ms -- Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat (Caribbean News Now, November 27, 2010, “I am voting for Michel Martelly”).

I predicted also that the Haitian government, supported by and with the connivance of a sector of the international community, will try to disrupt the proceedings to manipulate the outcome. The acquisitions of the Haitian and of the universal democratic process are so strong that corrections have been made to rectify the results of the election to suit my prediction.

I am voting again for Michel Martelly in the final proceedings of Sunday, March 20, 2011.

Based on conversations with and observations of the electorate on the ground, I am predicting Michel Martelly will be the winner of the election. My conviction has been validated when, a week before the balloting, a poor young man living in Port au Prince told me he has been saving his meager salary to go back home to Cape Haitian where his electorate card was registered so he can vote for Michel Martelly.

I belong to the small intellectual elite of the Haitian Diaspora and/or homegrown, who should root for Mirlande Manigat. With a doctorate from or enough credits for one, from Sorbonne France, Mirlande Manigat belongs to the cosmopolitan Haitian pack who can teach in or are the students of the best universities of the Western world. She is proud of her knowledge of and experience about constitutional law. She called herself or she is being referred as a constitutionalist.

By contrast, Michel Martelly has no college degree; he completed his Baccalaureate in Haiti, attended courses in community colleges in the United States and has spent a life as a bad boy leading a very popular band throughout the Caribbean community, named Sweet Micky.

Yet I have chosen to cross the railroad yard and join the Haitian electorate in electing Michel Martelly as the next president of Haiti. The choice is visceral as well as cerebral. I am, as Michel Martelly, angry at the state of state of the Republic of Haiti. A country rich in cultural values, historical significance, abundant scenic vista, and a young, resilient and creative population, Haiti should shine in the Caribbean basin as it did during the three hundred years of the colonial era.

Instead it has lagged as a pariah amidst the squalor in the midst of its splendour because of the predatory nature of its successive governments, including the last one, as well as the connivance of a large sector of the international community.

Michel Martelly has an excellent grasp of the needs and of the solution for resolving the Haitian dilemma. He is aware of and plans to implement the Renan principles of nation building:

- Negotiate the incremental withdrawal of the United Nations forces to replace it with a national force of development that will protect the population against disaster, drug transshipment, as well as enhancing the environment.

- Uproot the internal refugees of the earthquake from the fetid camps as well as those who live in the favellas of the cities to root them in their original villages with the institutions and the infrastructure to enjoy and prosper in their beautiful setting.

- Michel Martelly will, last but not least, create a Haiti hospitable to all; free from the cultural traits of exclusion that have been the hallmark of the Haitian panorama for the last two centuries.

Mirlande Manigat has the intellectual capacity to apprehend this reality, yet she has expressed neither for me nor for the electorate the emotion as well the discipline of a rigorous analysis to indicate she has the vision and the strength to deliver?

Haiti, in spite of the saintly resilience and the male courage of its female population, has not been well served by its past pioneer female leaders.

They tend to give away the store too easily.

Ertha Pascal Trouillot, the first female president, opened (in spite of strong dissent within her policy advisory board) the vein for the close intrusion of the United Nations into the internal affairs of Haiti. The jury is still out whether the UN’s record for the past twenty years in Haiti has been a positive one so far!

Michelle Duvivier, the last Haitian female prime minister, has exhibited a loyalty firmer with the outside world than with her own government.

I am voting for Michel Martelly because, akin to the popular vote, I am taking a chance for a complete break with the past. Whether under the dictatorial, the military, the transition or the democratic regimes, the political class that surrounds Mirlande Manigat has found a way to remain the staple of the command chain that has led and continues to lead the destiny of Haiti so far into an abyss.

To the question whether morality has taken a back seat position in endorsing Michel Martelly, I have looked at the candidate in the eyes and asked him that very question? His answer resembles strangely to the question of Jesus to the Pharisees willing to stone the prostitute, while writing on the ground: May the one amongst you who is without sin send the first stone. John 8 verse 1.

“I will apologize when those who left my people without food and water, do so. I will apologize when those who left the detritus on the street for months without consideration for the health and the welfare of the population. I will apologize when those who left the majority of the people in extreme misery while they are running high with the national and international resources!” His anger went up one decibel higher as he was speaking!

A group of Christian ministers who endorsed his candidacy have produced several biblical arguments for doing so: Matthew 21, verse 42: “The stone rejected has become the cornerstone.” They went further to evoke in Corinthians 1 chapter 13, Saul who became Paul: “When I was a child, I acted as a child; now that I am an adult, I act as an adult.”

As in the first round of the electoral process the caesarian procedure towards the true delivery of democracy will be a difficult one. The new baby Haiti that will come out of the electoral operation will be a beautiful one that will grow in wisdom and in prosperity for the glory of the region and for the rest of the humanity.

Note:
I was one of the godparents, who were at the baptismal when the party “Reponses Peasants” (the umbrella under which Michel Martelly is conducting his campaign) was created. The party has adopted the vision of inclusion, hospitality and collegiality so often probed in my column. I will be there to ensure that this vision becomes the trend in the nation and in the region.

March 19, 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

Haiti's Election November 28, 2010: I am voting for Michel Martelly!

I am voting for Michel Martelly!
By Jean Hervé Charles



The election of November 28, 2010 represents a seminal transitional corner for Haiti in the Caribbean (it shares that auspicious Sunday with Ivory Coast in Africa). The island country will either go back to the squalor of the past under a new cover or it will leap forward into a renaissance that will bring not only Haiti but the whole Caribbean into a sustainable growth mode.

With its ten million creative and resilient (albeit uneducated citizens), its natural beauty of gigantic mountains surrounding the villages and the cities, Haiti under a proper government can become the Singapore of the Caribbean. The question is whether the retrograde culture of Duvalier, Aristide and Preval that has been the staple politics looming over Haiti during the past sixty years can be uprooted to plant a culture of solidarity and hospitality towards and amongst each other?

2010 can rightfully being described as an annum miserabilis for Haiti. The successive wave of misery started at the dawn of the New Year with an earthquake that shook the land under the capital and the surrounding cities, killing more than 300.000 people and sending 1.5 million citizens to live under tents in fetid condition.

The earthquake during the winter was followed by flooding during the spring, hurricane during the summer and an outbreak of cholera during the fall, causing more than one thousand deaths and sixteen thousand infected and in hospitalization. Under those circumstances, the Haitian people have remained calm, resilient and conducting business as usual as imposed by the obligation of daily survival.

Recently, the people of the northern part of the country, endowed with a culture of defiance inherited from Henry Christophe, the first Haitian king, have embarked into a fight to derail the election -- dubbed a selection -- and to demand the withdrawal of the UN forces – in particular the Nepalese contingent accused of bringing the cholera virus into Haiti and the Caribbean. The same contingent is also accused of the murder by hanging of a young lad who used to do errands for the army personnel.

In that environment, nineteen candidates are vying to become the next president of Haiti. The five front runners represent a canvas of the old guard reconfigured with new color plus two new kids on the block: M for Martelly and M for Manigat.

If the eyes of the world can suffice to protect the ballots against the manipulation of the government for its preferred candidate, I am predicting the last electoral fight will be between the two Ms: Martelly and Manigat.

Mrs Mirlande Manigat, the spouse of the former President Manigat, holds a PhD in political science from the Sorbonne in France; she is the vice dean of a private university, Quisqeya University. She was riding a wave of good will from the populace until a story from a Mexican newspaper indicated she has entered into a secret deal with the Preval government to share the political cake with her, holding the presidency while yielding the prime ministry to Preval.

Joseph Martelly has been the Haitian bad boy, the equivalent of Howard Stern in the Haitian media. As the leader of a musical band named Sweet Micky, he did not hesitate to confront the mores of the Haitian culture that refrain from vulgarity and plain language. Yet as a candidate, he pointed the right finger at the de facto apartheid condition existing in Haiti. On television, in the national debate he accused the other candidates of being part of the problem for presiding one way or the other in the policy making that led to the disastrous Haitian situation prevailing in the last twenty years.

I met Martelly recently as we were boarding the same plane traveling from Kennedy airport to Port au Prince, Haiti. I told him of my fascination for his vision of a Haiti hospitable to all. He should nevertheless send his mea culpa to the people and to the Church for the dirty language used as a non candidate. He was unrepentant. “The other candidates must first send their mea culpa for their disrespect and their callousness in their treatment of the Haitian people!”

I have listened to the young people. His voice reasoned amongst them. I have listened to the poor and the deserted; he has a following amongst them. I have followed those who are disgusted of the more things change, more they remain the same, Martelly represents for them a breath of fresh air!

As an advocate of change for Haiti, a change that starts at the bottom to engulf all the citizens, those who live in the abandoned countryside as well as those who live in the squalid cities, I am voting on Sunday for Michel Martelly. I am predicting he will be the wild card who will upset the status quo inside the country as well as the so called friends of Haiti to force the country to embark into the road of modernity as Singapore did in Asia some twenty years ago!

November 27, 2010

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