Commentary: The state of the state of Haiti on the eve of its election year
|
| Published on Saturday, October 31, 2009 | Email To Friend Print Version
|
By Jean H Charles
Next November (2010) the people of Haiti will go to the poll to elect a brand new leader. Coming January 1, the whole country will position itself into a frenzy of maneuvering and posturing to pull up or pull down each one of the candidates. If the United States is all business, Haiti is all politics. The government and all those who know how to pull the rope on their side have been able to keep the Haitian people in hostage. They are holding all the marbles, distributing some crumbs on the very day of the election; as such stealing the votes of the legitimate winner maintaining the status quo for another five years.
 |
| Jean H Charles MSW, JD is Executive Director of AINDOH Inc a non profit organization dedicated to building a kinder and gentle Caribbean zone for all. He can be reached at: jeanhcharles@aol. |
It has often been said in this column that Haiti is living under a de facto apartheid system maintained by and sustained with the connivance of the government and the support of the international community. Indeed how do you explain the state of extreme poverty, which is the lot of the majority of the Haitian people, including now the graduates of the State and the many private universities? The only dream of a critical mass of excellent young professionals is to obtain a permanent visa to the United States or to Canada. Hope has been destroyed for a long time in Haiti.
The natural human instinct of morality and decency has been washed away with the branding of the concept that getting away with as much state or international funding earmarked for the poor and the underserved is a legitimate governmental or charitable enterprise.
It is this canvas that the old and the new guard must script upon to design the fate of the Haitian people for the next five years. These are some statistics to illustrate the picture.
- the mortality rate of birthing mothers is amongst the highest in the world (5 per thousand)
- malnutrition affects 50 percent of children below five years old
- more than half of the population (55 percent) does not know how to read and write
- the majority of the rural population (82 percent) is living in poverty; 77 percent of that group is facing extreme poverty. Yet it is not because the people in the rural world are landless; 82 percent of them live in their own occupied land. Their lack of income is due to the scarcity of capital and the appropriate tools to cultivate the land.
To reverse this negative picture, there are three types of candidates holding court on the political scene. There are first “the president boy or boys” who are crowned by the actual government, They have on hand the state apparatus and its resources to use a campaign, distributing a scooter here, a prepaid phone there. They were ministers or political advisers during several regimes. Under their watch the state has been plunging deeper and deeper into decadence. Yet they want to be seen as the hope for the future.
At this eleventh hour, the government has discovered the power and the strength of the rural sector, which represents 89 percent of the electorate. They met recently with the leaders of the rural counties, cajoling some, promising to others fertilizer, phone cards and other goods.
It is truly the case to use the warning of Tacitus to Calgacus: “ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant”: they have created a disaster to which they have given the name of civilization and progress.
The second group is made of the eternal candidates. In the last twenty years they have occupied the political scene as ministers and prime ministers, debating and giving their opinions on all political, social and economic matters. Most of them have been able to obtain a piece of the governmental pie through the placement of their associates in key money making opportunities. Yet they are also the eternal opponents, laying down their bed on both sides of the fence, preparing their after-power while they are in power. The Haitian electorate has called those spoilers: mange gate – spoiled food, susceptible to give them diarrhea as the untreated water of the country. Their fate is already sealed.
The last group is made of the new kids on the block. Amongst them there is a son who did well for his village. He built a hospital yet with no road to get into the health facility causing several deaths before treatment. It is rumored he has the benediction of the Clinton family with whom he is in good personal relationship. The sad note to this story is the United States of America has entered lately into a paradigm shift in its foreign policy. It will support only those candidates that have gathered substantial support amongst their people.
Last but not least in that category there is a candidate who is building his electorate on the 92 percent disfranchised sector of the population. The goal is to create a new Haiti, with solidarity towards each and every one, with affirmative action and funding towards the neglected ones.
Haiti has a tradition of missing the boat at each turning point. That unfortunate karma started in 1800 when John Adams lost the election to Thomas Jefferson. Toussaint Louverture enjoyed the support of John Adams. Thomas Jefferson, his successor, entered into a secret pact with Napoleon to re-establish slavery in Haiti. Luckily the Haitian leaders were ready to fight until death. They surprised the world by winning on the battle field on January 1, 1804.
That victory was short and dramatic; the hero Jean Jacques Dessalines was assassinated two years later on October 17, 1806 by his own comrades in arms, who established the Haiti that we know today, divided and inhospitable to its own people.
All those who tried to inject the concept of nation building into the country have been eclipsed: Antenor Firmin, Rosalvo Bobo and Paul Magloire, a debonair president who brought the only recent golden age of Haiti. He failed to support either of the best candidates, Clement Jumelle, a dark skinned man, or Louis Dejoie, a mulattoe, who could have put Haiti on the rail of solidarity, growth and peace. The list also included Thomas Desulme, a true nationalist who came back from Jamaica after he had created an empire in his adopted land while in exile.
It has been fifty years since the country has been going into a convulsion. Will the trauma comes to an end in 2011. Will the slogan “hands in hands to create a nation hospitable to all be the winner” or will the slogan “let them eat cake” of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France at the eve of the Revolution, commenting on the masses demanding bread to ease their hunger be the staple of life of the Haitian people for the next five years? | | | | Reads : 605 | | | |
|
|
