Rene Preval, the Haitian president, an evaluation, five years later

By Jean H Charles



Five years ago, as President Rene Preval was being inaugurated for a second, non-consecutive term, my sister Maggie, who went to school with the president (albeit her junior) at the George Marc Institute, commented around the kitchen table that it will be a disaster for the country of Haiti in the next five years. I argued instead that she should wait at least for six months to pass such a judgment. Five years later, using the lowest standard of evaluation, Rene Preval is one of the most inept and callous heads of government that Haiti has ever had in the modern, post democracy era!

I will hasten to say that the positive side of this characterization is that I dare to write this column, having its publication in Haiti, the Caribbean and in the rest of the world without the fear of being persecuted or thrown into jail.

I will hasten to say also that his ineptness is shared by most if not all the members of his government. If the president is himself indecisive, no one is on the way of his minister of tourism of being an active minister instead of one with only a draft master plan still at the stage of a draft, five years later.

The prime minister, who doubles his portfolio with one of minister of planning, one year after the earthquake has not understood that a junior minister of coordination for the activities of the NGOs (his director at the ministry of planning would be an excellent choice) is crucial and fundamental for a minimum effectiveness in the delivery of services by the international organizations.

Rene Preval offered no plan in his campaign. He ran his government on an ad hoc basis, pulling a solution out of his sleeve, with no follow up and no evaluation. He had, though, his lion’s share of disaster that befell the country during his term: inundation and flood in Gonaives and in Mapou, earthquake in Port au Prince, Jacmel and Petit Goave and cholera epidemic brought into the Artibonite region by the United Nations.

He has also received an avalanche of support from all corners of the world. This support is completely wasted, bringing no impact or, rather, a negative impact to the people of Haiti because the president and his government did not use positive leadership to channel and synergize the assistance.

I have in a previous column shone a light into the leadership capacity or the lack thereof of the president. In addressing an evaluation de fin de régime, it is proper to revisit Rene Preval in his inner workings.

A student of the Belgium state university, President Preval is surrounded by classmates or friends of his time in Belgium: Paul Denis (his minister of Justice), Dr Alex Larsen (his minister of health and population), amongst others.

The Belgium cultural legacy in the former colonies is one of divisiveness. The colonial empire it amassed through the centuries, especially in Africa, has turned into a legacy of failed nations (Congo Brazzaville), filled with hatred and racism that produced genocide in Rwanda, famine and fragmentation in Burundi. The country of Belgium, albeit the seat of the European Community, is a land divided amongst itself, where the concept of nation is a hollow one.

Rene Preval has brought into Haiti from Belgium the culture of a political animal, where politics is used as an instrument or scientific tool to reward friends and remain in power on the front or on the backside as long as possible. Nihilism is elevated to the standard of excellence.

Rene Preval is also the embodiment of the Haitian ethos well encapsulated in the story of Bouqui and ti malice. Bouqui is the naïve brother who puts all his faith in the cunning and malicious ti malice. He uses all the artifices such as lies, deception, disguised affection to get the lion’s share of the family legacy, leaving his brother (Bouqui) in extreme misery.

The international community has found a fertile incubator in this government to create a land of make believe in Haiti. Amidst massive outpouring of assistance, the individual or the collective repercussion is minimal at best, negative at worst.

Item: the car rental business is one of the fastest growing enterprises in the country because of the need of each international worker to have his own car with his own driver. Uncontrolled drug money recycled into the rental car sector has killed the mom and pop storefront.

Reviewing all the sectors of the economy, Rene Preval has registered an F or a failure rate. An agronomist by training, the environment has not indicated any incremental stop in its degradation. With the exception of the north and the extreme south of Haiti, the remaining forest land (2 percent) is in an accelerated slide towards desertification.

In the area of agriculture and agro-business, the Dominican Republic has become the food basket of the Republic of Haiti. Eggs (1 million units per day), plantain, even coconut water are imported for resale in Haiti. One hundred large trailers filled with cement are brought into Haiti every day from the Dominican Republic.

The security segment has exhibited a significant improvement from its low point of poor morale, recurring kidnapping and lack of policing. Yet the large majority of the hinterland operates without a police presence. There is no discussion or timetable in terms of building Haiti’s own military force for the protection of its border, enhancing its environment and securing its population against disaster and drug contraband.

Creating a culture of the rule of law was Preval’s leitmotiv in assuming power. Five years later, he failed (allegedly for lack of time) in naming a chief of the Supreme Court. At election time, the government deployed with strength the power of the state, as a bandit use his arsenal of resources and munitions for his own candidates. To his credit, the president as a man and his government in general is unobtrusive. Social peace, although tenuous, is maintained, even favoured.

In health and public hygiene, a cholera epidemic brought into the country by a UN contingent has tested the strength of the health apparatus. The collection of garbage is still a subject of contention between the mayors of the large cities (including the capital), deprived of the means to do so, and a callous centralized government more inclined to do politics with the resources instead of caring for the welfare of its citizens.

The best characterization of Rene Preval and its governance is one of a Teflon president turning the country into a Teflon nation.

Item: to keep the men off his back, he promoted during the World Cup the soccer mania in the country. All day, Barcelona vs. Real Madrid and nonstop commentary about Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo is now the rule in Haiti. Industrial and administrative production is at a low point -- a soccer game between Real Madrid and Barcelona takes precedence over the business of the state.

Item: road building has been the government panacea. The result five years later is unfinished roads to nowhere and a woman pre-eminently promoted on the tractor as the way to the future. Yet the crowded streets of the Port au Prince need repairs that could unclog the daily giant traffic bottleneck, leaving adults and children under stress more customary in the western capitals.

Item: the Preval government has created a new class of well endowed citizens. They are the public employees at the policy level. They have at their disposal the national and the international resources, used with arrogance for their own benefit not for the benefit of the ordinary citizen.

The international community, in particular the MINUSTAH, with the resources of the whole world in their hands, taking its cue from the government, has perfected the Teflon culture to its limit. I am still awaiting one nation from the pack that would become a conscientious objector in helping the world shed a light into the big scam of the mission of stabilization. OXFAM, from my empirical observation one of the best NGOs in Haiti, is leaving this summer. Is it a signal that the Teflon culture and corruption is choking the best and the brightest?

On March 20, 2011, the people of Haiti will go back to the polls to elect a new president and a new government. Will it be a break from the past or will the Preval culture of squalor and ti malice over hospitality for all continue to haunt Haiti for another twenty years?

March 12, 2011

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Bahamas Blog International

One year since the earthquake in Haiti

Bill Van Auken


Today marks the first anniversary of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that devastated the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti, leaving a quarter of a million of its people dead, more than 300,000 injured, and approximately a million and a half homeless.

One year after this natural disaster, the horrors facing Haiti’s population have only deepened, with a cholera epidemic claiming thousands of lives and a million left stranded in squalid tent camps.

This festering crisis underscores the social and political sources of the suffering inflicted upon Haiti’s working class and oppressed masses. That such conditions prevail virtually on the doorstep of the United States, which concentrates the greatest share of the world’s wealth, constitutes a crime of world historic proportions and an indictment of the profit system.

Those familiar with the conditions on the ground in Haiti provide an appalling account of the indifference and neglect of American and world imperialism toward the country’s people.

“The mountains of rubble still exist; the plight of the victims without any sign of acceptable temporary shelter is worsening the conditions for the spread of cholera, and the threat of new epidemics becomes more frightening with each passing day,” said former Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, the Caribbean community’s special representative to Haiti. “In short, there has been no abatement of the trauma and misery which the Haitian populace has suffered.”

Roland Van Hauwermeiren, country director for the NGO Oxfam in Haiti, described 2010 as “a year of indecision” that had “put Haiti’s recovery on hold.” He added, “Nearly one million people are still living in tents or under tarpaulins and hundreds of thousands of others who are living in the city’s ruins still do not know when they will be able to return home.”

Of the approximately one million people living in makeshift tents or under tarps in the crowded camps of Port-au-Prince, more than half are children.

The Haitian capital remains buried in rubble. It is estimated that less than 5 percent of the debris has been cleared by Haitian workers attacking the mountains of fallen concrete and twisted metal with shovels and their bare hands. Heavy equipment has not been present in any significant amount since the withdrawal of the US military more than six months ago.

At its height, the US deployed some 22,000 soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen in Haiti, seizing unilateral control of the country’s main airport, port facilities and other strategic facilities. The US military’s priority was to secure the country against the threat of popular upheaval and to deploy a Coast Guard and naval force to prevent Haitian refugees from making their way to the US.

To those ends, in the critical first weeks after the earthquake when aid was most needed to prevent loss of life and limb for the hundreds of thousands of injured, the Pentagon repeatedly turned away planes carrying medial aid and personnel in order to keep runways free for US military assets.

Within just 11 days of the earthquake, the US-backed Haitian government of President Rene Preval declared the search and rescue operation over—with only 132 people having been pulled alive from the rubble. Had an adequate response been organized, many more could have been saved. Decisions were taken in Washington based not on humanitarian considerations, but rather on the cold calculus of national interests and profits. Undoubtedly, this included the calculation that rescuing injured Haitians would only create a further drain on resources.

In contrast, the spontaneous response of the people of the United States and the entire world was one of solidarity with the suffering Haitian masses. An unprecedented outpouring of support yielded $1.3 billion in contributions from the US alone, the vast majority of it coming from ordinary working people.

One year later, however, just 38 percent of those funds have actually been spent to aid in the recovery and rebuilding of Haiti, according to a survey by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. In Haiti, there are widespread suspicions that vast amounts of money have been diverted into the coffers of NGOs and aid organizations.

Even worse is the response of governments. At a donors’ conference convened in March of last year, more than $5.3 billion was pledged. Of that, only $824 million has been delivered. Worst of all is the response of Washington, which pledged $1.15 billion for 2010, only to subsequently announce that it was postponing payment of virtually the entire pledge until 2011.

Last July, former US President Bill Clinton, who serves as the Obama administration’s envoy to Haiti, the UN’s special envoy to the country and the co-chair together with Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), expressed frustration over the slow pace of the payments and promised to pressure donors to make good on their promises. Apparently he has had little success in this effort, including with his own wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. He has repeatedly made it clear that the only acceptable path to Haiti’s reconstruction lies through private investment and the assurance of profitable conditions—based largely on starvation wages--for US-based banks and transnationals.

On top of the earthquake’s devastation has come an epidemic of cholera, which has already claimed 3,600 lives and is expected to infect at least 400,000 people. Public health experts acknowledge that the spread of the disease has still not peaked, yet the terrible toll of this disease merits barely a mention in the US media.

The Obama administration’s indifference to Haitian life has been underscored by the decision to resume deportations to the country, with 350 Haitians slated to be sent back this month. With many of these people destined for incarceration in Haitian jails, which are rampant with cholera, the action amounts to a death sentence.

The epidemic is not a product of the earthquake, but rather, like the extraordinarily high death toll from the quake itself, the outcome of grinding poverty and backwardness resulting from the domination of Haiti by imperialism and, in particular, the role played by the US government and American banks and corporations over the past century.

Haiti is by far the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Even before the earthquake, less than half of the urban population and less than a fifth of those in rural areas had access to sanitation, leaving the country vulnerable to cholera. Prior to the quake, nearly three quarters of the Haitian populace was living on less than $2 a day, while barely 20 percent had jobs in the formal economy and 86 percent of urban dwellers were housed in slums.

These conditions are inextricably bound up with an oppressive political and social order that was forged through the US military occupation from 1915 to 1934, the savage 30-year dictatorship of the US-backed Duvalier dynasty, and the subsequent enforcement of so-called "liberal free market" policies by Washington and the International Monetary Fund.

The growing frustration and anger of the Haitian people over the criminal policies of Washington and the country’s narrow and corrupt financial elite have erupted repeatedly in mass resistance in recent months, first against the United Nations troops over the spread of cholera and then in response to the fraudulent November 28 election.

This popular resistance deserves the full support of working people in the US and internationally. The demand must be raised for immediate and massive aid to Haiti.

But aiding the people of Haiti and rebuilding the country on the basis of human needs rather than the interests of the native elite and the foreign banks and corporations can be achieved only by uniting the working class in Haiti, the US and throughout the hemisphere in a common fight for the socialist transformation of society.

12 January 2011

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Bahamas Blog International

Honouring our commitment to Haiti

By Senator Kirsten Gillibrand


Families across New York will be reflecting this week on the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake that ravaged Haiti. The tragic loss of life and hardship from this disaster has anguished the people of Haiti and their families here at home.

While we mourn the more than 300,000 people who died during this tragedy, we must also not forget the over one million displaced Haitians who are still living in crowded camps and many others still without basic services.

Now that the cameras have gone, we cannot leave Haiti behind.

In the aftermath of the earthquake there was an outpouring of support from governments, ordinary Americans and people across the globe. And while we have made some progress, a number of events from deadly storms, to a cholera outbreak, and contested local elections have further complicated long term reconstruction efforts.

We must not let up on our pledge to help rebuild Haiti.

The way forward requires commitment and vision. I saw the challenges firsthand when I spent time in Port au Prince last year, and I believe there are opportunities to tackle the country’s serious needs.

First, the Haitian people deserve free, fair and inclusive elections and a stable, working government that responds to their needs. Election fraud must be addressed and corrected. Only then can the Haitian people have confidence that their government will effectively use international and Haitian resources to help move the displaced out of camps and into permanent homes, strengthen schools, and create new economic opportunities. I am closely following the Organization of American States (OAS) review of the election results and will work to ensure a fair election process.

Second, we must do a better job of partnering and working with the Haitian people and the Diaspora community. I have consistently raised this issue with the Administration and will continue to urge the USAID Director to ensure that we stay true to our government’s commitment to engaging with all the stakeholders in supporting a Haitian-led recovery.

Third, I will continue to call on the United States to make a high quality, public school system a top priority in our relief efforts. It was inspiring to see eager schoolchildren in backpacks on their first day of school during my visit. If Haiti is ever going to rebuild, and if these children are ever going to succeed, Haiti needs a strong publicly funded school system serving as community cornerstones, offering health clinics, immunizations, literacy education, job training and nutrition for children and families.

While we seek to rebuild Haiti, we must protect Haitian nationals residing in our borders. In the hours after the earthquake, I called on President Obama to grant temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians living in America. I am grateful the Administration took swift action, allowing Haitians in the US to continue to live here without fear of returning to a country ravaged by devastation.

With TPS set to expire in July of this year, I am urging the president to once again extend temporary protected status for an additional year through 2012.

I am also renewing my push to help 35,000 Haitians who have US government-approved family immigrant petitions reunite with their families in the US.

Due to visa backlogs, some Haitian spouses and minor children of US permanent residents or adult children of US citizens could wait for years to come to America. This month I will re-introduce legislation in the Senate to allow such individuals to leave Haiti and work in the US.

Haiti faces a series of enormous challenges and there is more work to do. We must do more to ensure that the problems of Haiti do not become a forgotten cause. The survivors of the tragedy remind us of the strength, resilience, and hope that emerged from the rubble. We must stand in unity with the Haitian people and remain steadfast in our mission to see Haiti overcome, recover, and succeed.

January 10, 2011

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Haiti a nation beset by catastrophe inflicted by man, God and nature!

By Jean Herve Charles



It is November, the hurricane season should be on its death bed, yet Tomas, the latest hurricane, strong as a young lad, has just created havoc in St Lucia, Barbados and St Vincent and the Grenadines. It is on its way to Haiti where, month after month, a new catastrophe raises its inflicting and destructive head, causing death and material destruction all over the country.

On January 12, 2010, on a sunny afternoon, a major earthquake took place around the capital; it was baptized goudougoudou by the locals as they try to mimic the sound of the hurricane as the destruction took place. It caused 300,000 deaths and 1.5 million internal refugees are still under tents or makeshift tenements, where the natural elements -- rain, wind and flood -- visit them without an invitation.

Last October an outbreak of cholera in three of the ten states of the island nation has caused the death of some 500 people and the hospitalization of 7,000 Haitian residents. The scientific analysis by the CDC (Centers for Disease control) in Atlanta has concluded that the origin of the virus can be attributed to the strain found in South Asia.

The people of Haiti blame the Nepal contingent of the UN force dispatched in the region of Mirebalais, where the epicenter of the disease has been established. The Haitian government as well as the UN management for political and diplomatic reason refused to point the finger at the root cause of the public health outbreak.

Paul Farmer, the expert in epidemiology, reminded the authorities that “good public health dictates that knowing the point source of the disease is good for everyone and good for public health”. John Mekalanos the chairman of the School of Public Health at Harvard University clarified that the virulent strain of cholera found in Haiti is unknown in the Western Hemisphere. The evidence points the finger at the Nepalese soldiers who arrived to Haiti this October.

After my essay on the gift of education by the Royal Caribbean cruise line to Haiti, it was my intention to dwell on the splendor of the nation instead of the squalor of the country. The successive wave as well as the most recent catastrophe inflicted by men, God and nature has upset my original plan.

On the splendor side, I still have in mind the full display of culture in the town of Grand River as the people were celebrating the Day of the Dead on November 1. Eat your heart out New York, Roseau or Osaka, the dancing in the cemetery as well as the grand ball with the Tropicana orchestra has excited all the senses of my American travel companion, P. Scott Drahos, who promised to become the ambassador for the next year event bringing lot of visitors to the city.

Traveling from Cape Haitian (my outpost for the winter) to Port au Prince, I have contemplated the lush vegetation on the northern side of Haiti, where the grapefruit and the oranges trees filled with succulent oranges and grapefruits provide a backdrop for the giant poinsettia trees with their red flowers in full display and on time for the Christmas season celebration.

The capital city is cleaner; the government wants its candidate to continue its policy of ill governance with the forthcoming election as such, a best effort has being made to clean up the city so as to avoid the ire of the electorate.

With Tomas on its way, the cholera disease not dampened, the destructive remnants of the earthquake still visible, one would thought that a full scale election should be the least of the expectations. In fact, the majority of the Haitian people are neutral at best or at worst inimical to the exercise that has not and will not change their condition of life one iota.

The political tragedy that adds to the recurrent natural disasters has been in the Haitian national theater for a long time. For the first 150 years of the life of the nation, Mulatto rule brought little benefit to the people. In the last 50 years, the dark skin rule has been as – if not more – repugnant. They have instituted the clan politics that kills all sentiment of civics, solidarity and patriotism, including the sense of noblesse oblige, one of the staples of the Haitian safety net.

Adding insult to injury, the international community has been a steady and loyal patron of the tenets of the clan politic doctrine. Duvalier, Aristide and Preval have cultivated a following in the United States, Europe and Asia (Taiwan).

The international institutions are also in bed with the principals of the clan politics. The United Nations, under different acronyms, have occupied the Haitian space during the last twenty years with no significant impact – in disaster preparedness, security, good governance or economic growth.

Colin Granderson, the CARICOM representative, was recently at the extraordinary meeting of the OAS pushing for the masquerade election, knowing full well that the country and the people are not ready for the exercise. Some fifteen years ago, the same Colin Granderson was the proconsul in Haiti, demanding that the embargo that destroyed the Haitian flora and economy should not only be maintained but extended.

Indeed, man, God and nature have not been friendly to Haiti. As Job of the Bible, the people of Haiti have remained faithful to their God, who is urging them to stand up against the forces that suppress and kill their civic pride. Will hurricane Tomas be the last straw that will galvanize the resilient Haitian people to stand up and take charge of their beautiful country against the forces that pretend to lead their destiny for the best while in the end bring only disaster after disaster, with only the promise of redemption?

November 6, 2010

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