a748: Pierre Jean follows up on Pina's posts (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Pierre Jean <pierrejean01@yahoo.com>

It is good for Pina (and other list members) to post
information about crooked deals before 1990. After
all, the death of the Haitian rice industry starts
partly with Marc Bazin's stint as de facto Prime
Minister and the Rice Corporation deal, as Pina points
out.

However, Pina has not replied to any of the arguments
I put forth in my reply to him concerning the behavior
of parliamentarians that should be modernizing our
laws instead of getting tangled in retail staple
sales. Nor has Pina explained where was the government
when the RCH deal was going on and the company was
allowed to operate after the return of the
constitutional order.

After all, there IS a precedent for stopping a company
from operating when it was found to have been granted
its license "illegally" during the coup years. That
precedent is called Rectel. The original shareholders
had to sell the majority of their shares to the
government in a brokered deal. (Now, that's another
weird deal that we won't talk about.)

So why wasn't RCH stopped in 1991 or in 1995? RCH by
the way is dead as a doornail because of the feud
between the Rice Corporation of the US and the Rice
Corporation of Haiti. As a result, RCH has all but
disappeared from the market. Hence, the ability of
people like Victor Saliba and Sonson Elysee, among
others, to get into the door. Also, don't forget the
impact of contraband rice that came through the ports
of Miragoane, Gonaives and Saint-Marc. The market is
not dominated by one giant company anymore, as Pina
implies.

Finally, Pina's response focuses quite heavily on the
Rice Corporation and Comet's activities in the US and
poses valid question about their roles in that
country. But that's not what we are concerned about
here, is it?

Pierre Jean

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