What's next for Haiti?

By Jean Herve Charles


The elections of November 28, 2010 represent a watershed for the nation of Haiti. The government has tried to disrupt the proceedings through violence, manipulation and plain inept practice. Yet the people have stood fast to vote en masse for fundamental change against a regime that was neither communist nor capitalist but disguised with the veil of democracy while wearing the gangster suit of misappropriation, indifference to misfeasance and just plain arrogance.

This charade was facilitated by the international community that could not be naïve about the true colors of the Executive and the Legislative that seem to function just for their own insatiable benefit to the detriment of the needs and the interest of the people of Haiti.

It has been as such for the past sixty years, to be exact, fifty four years, when the government of Paul Eugene Magloire was forced into exile in December 1956 while he tried to remain in power beyond his designated mandate. There were first the dictatorial regime of the Duvalier father and son that lasted thirty five years, than the military regime of Namphy, Avril and Cedras followed by the anarchic and demagogic regime of the Aristide and Preval, which is now twenty years old.

Throughout that ordeal, the Haitian people have suffered, repression, misery, exile, occupation, natural and consequential catastrophe, disease and major epidemic including this outbreak of cholera.

What’s next for Haiti?

This island nation that was once the pearl of the Caribbean for three centuries during the French occupation has known only hard times during its self governance, which is now two hundred years old. The only successful slave revolt to lead into a nation-building experience in the world, the Republic of Haiti was doomed to fail as it challenged the world order of black enslavement. From a de jure slave controlled entity it was transformed into a de facto failed nation where the majority of the people were subjected to the same humiliation and the same deprivation endured by their forefathers.

As in Africa, where black rulers contributed to the sale of their subjects for the perpetuation of the Atlantic Middle Passage, successive Haitian presidents have facilitated the degradation of the environment, the pauperization of the population and the brain drain of the best minds that could have build the nation and challenge the status quo.

Enter this era when Joseph Michel Martelly, a Haitian bad boy, iconoclast and true patriotic, stands ready to shake things up and bring about the Haitian Renaissance. He will need to call upon the vast reservoir of the Haitian Diaspora, dispersed as the Jewish population all over the world. He will need also to challenge the international community that used a wall of silence and accomplice to incubate a toxic transition at each window of opportunity from squalor to more squalor.

Haiti, well positioned as a pearl in the middle of the Caribbean chain, can become the catalyst for the true growth of the region. It has a natural physical beauty with a pastoral life reminiscent of Switzerland minus the snow but filled with sea sand, sun and surf. It has a large population -- ten million people -- that are creative, industrious and resilient.

They only need to be educated; a high school coupled with a technical component in each neighborhood shall be the staple for the basis of the country recovery. The first shift for instruction – 8.00 am to 12.pm -- shall be dedicated to the very young. The second shift -- 1.00 pm to 5.00 pm -- to the not so young, and the last shift -- 6.00 pm to 10.00 pm -- will be reserved for the adults.

Haiti was the product of its indigenous army; its very creation was laid down by its founder father the General Jean Jacques Dessalines as a gift that should be cherished with care and devotion. As such it cannot continue to exist without its essence. The new government shall invite the UN deployment force to leave the country so it can reconstruct its own army hopefully with the butin de guerre of all the war toys – tanks trucks and equipment -- brought into the country by MINUSTAH. This new army shall protect the environment, safeguard the population in case of disaster and facilitate the rebuilding of the country through technical assistance.

The successive callous governments have caused the population to become a nation in transit. From the deserted and abandoned rural villages the people have migrated to the small cities en route to the shantytowns of the larger ones, marching on to the capital causing environment disaster of biblical proportions. The audacious ones have embarked on leaky boats for illegal travel to The Bahamas, Florida and beyond in search of a hospitable sky.

The new Haitian government shall root its population with infrastructure and adequate institutions in their own locality. It shall have also an eye for leaving no one behind with an affirmative action program on behalf of those with no lineage pedigree.

Is Michel Martelly the black knight bent to avenge the nation and its people against the curse of misery, mistreatment and malediction? The next five years shall bring the ascent of a new and prosperous horizon for Haiti and for its neighborhood all over the remaining chain of the Caribbean islands. Haiti shall regain its tradition of enlightened leadership for the region and for the world!

December 4, 2010



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Bahamas Blog International

Haiti, a transition from squalor to squalor; or from squalor to splendor

By Jean H Charles:


The story of Haiti is tragically the story of a wrong turn at each transition. Strangely this wrong turn has been micromanaged by a long hand with foreign gloves with good or bad intentions for the people of Haiti.

It all started in 1800 when Toussaint Louverture was at his apogee as the founding father of a possible nation that could be a model for a world where slavery was the order of the day.

According to J Michael Dash in Culture and Customs of Haiti, Toussaint emerged in 1799 as “the absolute authority of the whole island of Espanola, where the violence and anarchy of earlier years ended and prosperity was restored.”

CLR James in the Black Jacobins completed the picture of Haiti at the beginning of the nineteenth century: “Personal industry, social morality, public education, religious toleration, free trade, civic pride, racial equality was the corner stone of the emerging nation. Success crowned his labors. Cultivation prospered and the new Santo/Domingo/ aka Haiti began to shape itself with astonishing quickness.”

One would have thought that this Haiti could have been left alone to grow into a flourishing nation for the benefit of the entire world. The long hand of Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Emperor, with the support of the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, had other plans. A fleet of the best European soldiers was dispatched to Haiti to stop the nation building process.

Toussaint was captured and send to jail in France, where he died of pneumonia, but the roots of liberty were already too strong to wither. Still quoting Dash, “By the end of 1803, Napoleon had abandoned his now catastrophic New World adventure, his general, Rochambeau, gave up this futile struggle, retreating to the Mole St Nicholas, the same point at which Columbus had landed 300 years earlier, inaugurating European domination of Hispaniola.”

The transition of Haiti into a free, independent and prosperous nation was to last only the span of a blooming rose. Charles X, king of France, exacted a massive indemnity of 150 million francs, the equivalent 23 billion in today’s money, to compensate the French planters after 300 years of free labor. It took Haiti more than a century to complete the payment, forestalling crucial investment in education, agriculture and infrastructure.

In addition, France’s intervention in Haiti’s national politics facilitated the division of the country into two governments, the kingdom of Henry Christophe in the north, well organized and prosperous, and the republic of the west, disorganized, dysfunctional and bankrupt, run by Alexander Petion. Haiti has adopted the Petion model of governance.

His successor, Jean Pierre Boyer, continued the culture of ill governance throughout the island. At the death of Henry Christophe, the massive treasure of the kingdom was put into a kitty outside of the national budget, starting the process of corruption in place now with the Preval government -- the Petro-Caribe account is outside of the purview of the Finance Minister.

According to Dash, “The seeds of national disaster were planted in this period as politics increasingly became a game of rivalry among urban elites and marked by insurrection, economic failures and parasitism.”

It did not take long for the Americans to intervene, as Haiti was descending into chronic disorder. It was occupied from 1915 to 1934 by the American government. In the end, using Dash’s language, “The United States simply exacerbated a phenomenon that had plagued the Haitian economy since 1843, the extraction of surplus from the peasantry by a non productive state. Perhaps the greatest single lasting effect of the occupation was the centralizing of state power in Port au Prince.”

Dash put it best: “The occupation left Haiti with very much the same destructive socioeconomic problems that it inherited from its colonial past. Beneath the veneer of political stability lay the same old problems of a militarized society; the ostracism of the peasantry and an elite divided by class and color rivalry.”

The decade of the 70s ushered in a wrong turn for Haiti after the rather peaceful governance of Paul Eugene Magloire. On his return from an adulated visit to the United States, where he was received by both branches of Congress, hubris or unfortunate advice settled in. He tried to remain in power beyond the constitutional mandate, throwing the country into a social, economic and political crisis that has now lasted fifty years.

The transition from Duvalier pere to Duvalier fils, causing thirty-five years of failed growth under the dictatorial regimes, was orchestrated by the very American Ambassador in Haiti. It took all the courage and the bravura of the Haitian people to root out the Duvalier government from the grip of power.

The populism concept of governance in place since the 90s has completed the final descent of Haiti into the abyss. Jean Bertrand Aristide was returned to power from exile under the principle of constitutional stability by a 20,000 American army troops under the leadership of Bill Clinton as commander in chief.

Rene Preval, who succeeded Aristide, was returned for a second term into power by the strategic maneuvers of Edmund Mulet, the United Nations chief representative in Haiti. After five years of poor, ineffective leadership, the same Mulet is orchestrating the concept of Preval after Preval. He has perfected, after the earthquake, the concept of disaster profiteering. Vast pieces of land that belong to the State of Haiti are being now subleased to well-connected affiliates of the government, to be resold at inflated price to the Reconstruction authority.

Will the people of Haiti succeed in stopping the political, economic, social and environmental abyss through this transition? Or will a sector of the international community continue to have the upper hand in preserving and incubating the status quo?

“Have no fear!” should be the mantra for those who forecast doom for Haiti without Preval!

The Haitian Constitution foresees that the Chief of the Supreme Court shall take command in case of presidential vacancy. To help him govern, Haiti has a range of qualified experts to facilitate the international community to come to the rescue of the refugees and rekindle the recovery.

They range from veterans in rural development expertise as Pierre D Sam, formerly a FAO expert with stints in Burundi, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Togo, Senegal, Lesotho, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Haiti. Or Haiti has young lions such as Dore Guichard or Jean Erich Rene, economists and agronomists, who drafted, with the support of luminaries from the Diaspora and the mainland, a twenty-five-year plan for Haiti’s recovery.

A select committee of the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the United States Senate has recently made a finding that “Haiti has made little progress in rebuilding in the five months since its earthquake because of an absence of leadership, disagreements among donors and general disorganization… the rebuilding has stalled since the January 12, disaster. President Rene Preval and his Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive have not done an effective job of communicating to Haiti that it is in charge and ready to lead the rebuilding effort.”

Vent viré! The wind is turning in the right direction!

Marc Bazin, a Haitian political leader who has tried for the last thirty years, to change the culture of nihilism from inside, is an indication that the assault against the status quo from outside must regain strength until the dismantling of the squalor politics to usher in the politics of splendor.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should have been in the Preval camp. His newlywed wife is like my little niece. Our family is entangled with strong bond spanning more than a century of close relationships. Her great-grandmother was the companion of my grandmother in business, social and family links, her late grandmother and my mother of ninety years old have continued these bonds, her mother is like an elder sister. Hopefully, the children will continue the tradition of friendship and support. as such this is not a personal vendetta.

Yet the cries and the anguish of 9 million people, including 1.5 refugees under tents at the eve of a pregnant hurricane season, demand a break from the past to usher in a government hospitable to the majority.

June 26, 2010

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Bahamas Blog International

A tall order for the next president of Haiti

By Jean Herve Charles:


The president of Haiti, Rene Preval, according to the Haitian Constitution in its articles, 134.3 and 149, cannot seek another mandate nor can he prolong his tenure beyond February 7, 2011. He has sent legislation to the Haitian Congress seeking a prolongation of his term until May 4, 2011. Such steps in the past have caused the demise of two Haitian presidents, Dumarsais Estime in 1950 and Paul Eugene Magloire in 1956.

The next president of Haiti will have a tall order on his or her shoulder; he will have to combine the vision of John Marshall and Winston Churchill after the Second War in shaping the reconstruction of Europe for the rebuilding of the country; the magnanimity of Abraham Lincoln in preserving the Union while going to war against the rebelling South; the gallantry of Nelson Mandela in embracing his white jailers after his decade of imprisonment and he will need also the bravura of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in redeeming the United States to make good on its promise of one nation under God.

He will have first to delve into the state of the state of Haiti, the reasons why it is in a situation where, when you apply even the minimum standard of welfare and modernity, Haiti fell short in hospitality to its citizens before the earthquake of January 12, 2010.

The brand name Haiti is forever associated with the concept of a nation that defies the world order to dismantle the practice of slavery as it was implemented all over the Western Hemisphere. The gallant Haiti of 1804 is also the infamous Haiti of 1806 that assassinated its liberator, Jean Jacques Dessalines, and eradicated its name from the national frontispiece for the next one hundred years.

Henry Christophe, the second in command, tried but failed to inculcate the concept of nation building into the entire country. Supported by the French secret diplomacy, Alexander Petion succeeded in taking away the full command of the entire territory from Christophe. He succeeded also in imprinting the Haitian cultural ethos that we have today, Papa Petion and his subsequent successors is alright as long as he has a legacy that counts a lyceum in Port au Prince, Lycee Petion, and a city named after him, Petionville.

The citizens of Haiti have come to the reality of expecting little from their government and their government has assumed the obligation of providing not even the minimum standard of services to its citizens. Imagine, out of the 565 rural hamlets in Haiti, not five, not three, not a single one is equipped with electricity, potable water, decent roads, affordable habitat, incubation of business and entrepreneurship.

This Haiti, ruled by mulattoes and few illiterate black presidents during the first one hundred fifty years of its life as a nation, has caused an occupation by the Americans in 1915 and underdevelopment in every aspect of the national life. The indices in health, education, infrastructure and welfare were below standard in the entire republic.

Around that time, Jean Price Mars, a towering figure, a Martin Luther King, a Nelson Mandela ahead of the time, came with a message and a promise of redemption. He failed, though, to create a school and a movement that would carry the concept that we are all Haitians, as such beautiful and proud, deserving respect from each other, and services from a government for the people and by the people. By contrast, Lorimer Denis, Francois Duvalier and Dumarsais Estime, his students, succeeded in prostituting the concept of black is also beautiful into a doctrine of noirisme. It is now time for blacks only to get into the seat of power and influence.

Paul Eugene Magloire, the ideological neutral president, failed to realize the extent of the abyss of the Haitian social structure between people of the same nation, to bring about much needed correction. As such, his successors, Duvalier, Aristide and Preval, with their strict application of the noirisme doctrine have sunk Haiti into an abyss so deep that the world was taken by surprise on January 12, 2010, when the lead was raised into the open on the state of squalor so widespread in the entire country. In fact, the black presidents of the last fifty years have been as delinquent in their governance of Haiti as the mulatto presidents have been in their one hundred fifty years of government.

To solve the puzzle, the next president will have to shift into another paradigm of conceptual thinking to move Haiti into a sustained development mode. If we expect each president only to build their own trophy city: Petionville, Magloireville, Estimeville, Augusteville, Prevalville, we may wait another one hundred years before Haiti is equipped with rudimentary structure of modernity.

To apprehend and solve the problem of Haiti, he must apply the Renan Doctrine of solidarity and welfare for all. Ernest Renan, albeit his racists remarks about blacks, has laid down the best known formula to create a nation that shall become harmonious and hospitable to all. His criteria called for the full control of one’s border with one’s own army to do so. He called for the love and the admiration of the founding fathers through civic education into the mores and the ethos of the nation; last but not least, the obligation to leave no one behind, alien or not, minorities as well as the majority to create a nation harmonious for all.

The next president of Haiti will have to go beyond the politics of slogan to institute true affirmative action programs in the form of incubating small business enterprises to fill the deep divide between the different social classes in the country.

He will need to call on investors – national and international -- to form a public- private partnership to build roads, airports, ports and power plants. He will have the task of decentralizing the institutions to make them hospitable to all citizens, while rooting out the virus of corruption. He will need also to effectuate a better coordination of the mission and the tasks of the many nonprofit organizations – ONG -- established in the country.

The new government will need to go back to the drawing board to stop the implementation of the tent cities. No nation ever developed under a tent city. The internal refugees shall be encouraged to return to their ancestral homes with funding, and institutional resources to root them in the new setting. The Republic of Haiti has 140 small towns, 565 rural hamlets and 10 major cities beyond the capital that would welcome the refugees with open arms with a minimum of national funding. In fact, the amount of money wasted in temporary tent cities would have already put Haiti onto the road of reconstruction if this ill advised policy had not been implemented.

Last but not least, he will need to build artist’s villages to rekindle the creativity of the critical mass of Haitian artists. The next president shall also try to make Haitian people smile and laugh again while they tell stories and jokes with the wit that is the hallmark of the Haitian ethos.

Haiti in 2011 will have to lead an epic battle, not with bullets but with ballots to recreate or perfect 1804. In 1807, it made a left turn from the founding fathers’ doctrine and dream of creating a Haiti and a world that would be full of opportunity for all, instead of a dog eat dog principle, with the crumbs going to the perceived meek and the lowly.

The United States, with the advocacy of Dr Martin Luther King and the leadership of Lyndon Johnson, has embarked on the road of a more perfect society. It is a work in progress; it has already produced the first black family in the White House, the Obama family.

Recently, some countries in Asia, Singapore and Malaysia, in particular, have understood the strength of the Renan doctrine. Their government has sought to apply the principle in their governance practice. Malay, Indians and other ethnic groups have learned to live and coexist with each other for the glory and the wealth of the nation.

In the Caribbean, Haiti occupies the last place in development with Guyana because of their governance discriminatory practice. The Indo Guyanese have their own political party, the PPP, and the black Guyanese have also their own, the PNP. The Indo-Guyanese, in the majority, that occupy the seat of power, pay a lip service to the black Guyanese, pauperizing the country for both.

There is a movement now in Trinidad to export that movement onto the political canvas with the Unity Party organized by the Indo-Trini citizens. I am predicting it will not succeed; Patrick Manning will win the May election on the strength of the tradition of multi cultural harmony in Trinidad between most of the ethnic groups.

The new Haitian government will have to engage the Diaspora and the true of friends of Haiti all over the world to create the space of hospitality for the majority of Haitians. We have seen not only on TV but with our own eyes how there was no respect for the living nor for the dead. Pretending, as some counterparts in the international community want us to accept the status quo as the guiding light to continue a legacy and shape the future of Haiti, can only lead into a Goudou-goudou or a Poseidon much stronger and much destructive than the one on January 12, 2010.

Haitians will have to deliver, albeit with their ballots, the blow the Haitian founding fathers delivered to the troops of Napoleon in November 1803 to create a country hospitable to all.

I have laid down the hospitable doctrine in several articles (the Haitian solution part II) in www.Haitinetnews.com. One should visit the site in the commentaries section.

To conclude, Haiti and its new government should reflect and ponder on this message:

I have been without sleep, and I have fought, sometimes alone
And if I have been fortunate enough to transmit into your hands
The sacred legacy that you have trusted with me
Remember it is now into your hands to cherish and maintain that
Sacred Nation.

Jean Jacques Dessalines
Message to the Nation
On January 1, 1804

May 8, 2010

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