In recent days, the U.S. mainstream
press, spoon fed by White
House handlers, has berated the
Haitian government for foot dragging
on setting up new sites to relocate
the 1.2 million people living
in about 460 “spontaneous” camps
in Port-au-Prince, Gressier and Léogane.
The battle here is for control
Haiti’s reconstruction, which could
net quasi-offi cial Pentagon-linked
contractors like Halliburton, Dyncorp,
and Brown & Root billions of
dollars. When Haitian offi cials say
they want to guide Haiti’s reconstruction,
they are getting in the
way. They don’t know what’s good
for them.
But, again, this is the Obama
age. So there is plenty of dissimulating
going on.
Let’s take Mulet for instance.
He and others have noted how
weak the Préval government is. But
Haitian offi cials have pointed out
that Washington and the UN have
sabotaged the Haitian state for decades,
and, again according to the
AP, “the top U.N. offi cial in Haiti
said the country’s leaders are right:
For half a century, the international
community has kept Haiti’s
government weak and unable to
deal with disaster by ignoring offi
cials and working with outside
organizations.”We complain because
the government is not able
to (lead), but we are partly responsible
for that,” said [...] Mulet.
Worse, the patchwork of roughly
900 foreign and thousands more
Haiti-based NGOs do not coordinate,
take on too many roles and
swarm well-known neighborhoods
while leaving others untouched
— doing what Mulet called ‘little
things with little impact.’”
But really the prize for dissimulation
has to go to the pioneer of
the modern political double-speak,
Bill Clinton. As the AP again notes,
Clinton “publicly apologized this
month for championing policies
that destroyed Haiti’s rice production.
Clinton in the mid-1990s encouraged
the impoverished country
to dramatically cut tariffs on
imported U.S. rice. ‘It may have
been good for some of my farmers
in Arkansas, but it has not worked.
It was a mistake,’ Clinton told the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
on March 10. ‘I had to live everyday
with the consequences of the loss of
capacity to produce a rice crop in
Haiti to feed those people because
of what I did; nobody else.’”
Despite this soul-baring, Clinton
is still peddling factories, not
fi elds. Playing a role similar to that
of Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, the
radical French commissioner sent to
oversee the rebellious French colony
of St. Domingue, Clinton has been
very careful to posture as a servant
of Haitian authorities rather than a
proconsul.
So, during his Mar. 22 visit to
Haiti with former President George
W. Bush, Clinton payed lip-service to
“revitalizing Haitian agriculture,”
but the centerpiece of his Haitian recovery
strategy is the HOPE II legislation,
that will make it easier for US
companies to assemble and export
products from Haiti tax free. Clinton
claimed the HOPE II will generate
100,000 new jobs in the medium
term future. This was the same
promise made and strategy used 30
years ago when Jean-Claude “Baby
Doc” Duvalier was Haiti’s President
for Life.
“Many of us believe that immigration
reduces the number of
jobs available for U.S. citizens,
while the same people often swallow
the idea that building new industrial
parks in Port-au-Prince
will magically create jobs for Haitians,”
explained long-time activist
journalist David L. Wilson in an article
in the Monthly Review’s March
edition debunking the “sweatshop
path to development” myth. “The
reality is exactly the opposite. If
Haitian immigrants were stitching
garments in New York or Los Angeles
at jobs with standard wage
rates, they and their dependents
would be able to pay for decent
housing and staples like food and
clothing. This would stimulate job
creation, and the new jobs would
make up for the jobs the immigrants
had taken -- as in fact
happened in the past when the
United States produced its own
apparel in union shops. But if the
same Haitians work in assembly
plants in Port-au-Prince or in the
FTZ near the Dominican border in
Ouanaminthe, they have to accept
wages at about one-twentieth the
rate they would get in the United
States. These workers are barely
able to scrape by; their spending
can do little to stimulate job creation
either in Haiti or in the region
as a whole.”
In short, Préval’s new-found
courage and squeaks of protest are
unlikely to develop into any signifi -
cant resistance. However, he may
pay consequences if he doesn’t
match his words with actions. This
past week the National Network of
Multiplying Organs of the Lavalas
Family (RONMFL) issued a statement
calling for Préval and Bellerive
to step down and be replaced by a
provisional state council representing
all national sectors. The group
also called for a new provisional
electoral council.
Thus Préval is feeling heat
from both above and below. The
weeks ahead will tell with which
camp he will seek refuge: Washington
or the Haitian people. |