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