12891: Just a few more words on this corruption issue (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Hyppolite Pierre <hpierre@irsp.org>


I do not wish to keep hitting on the drumbeat. But I feel like I must write
these few words, just to perhaps further explain my position on this
corruption debate.

Based on some private emails that I have received, a few good people on this
list seem to think that I am circling around to justify corruption in
Haiti's government. Again, I must repeat that I am not. If some of you don't
think that corruption is not such a negative force on Haiti's economy, I
will try to give you these two last examples. After that, I am out.

Recently, there was a cooperative scandal in Haiti. The Haitian government
right from the beginning tried to convince people to invest in cooperatives
because it makes good economic sense. What happened thereafter proved how
the corruption machine works in Haiti, and also the State's deficiency in
preventing and uprooting this evil.

First of all, no Haitian economist that I know of, in the private or public
sector, had warned people that in no way could their investment be yielding
consistently a monthly 12 percent return on their investment. It was clearly
as we all realized later, a pyramid scheme which means in very clear terms,
corruption.

Secondly, we have that problem of which comes first: the chicken or the egg.
If government believed so strongly in such an economic program, why didn't
they first lay out the rules of the games through sensible laws and
regulations? Why did they have to wait until the end, to have then departing
External Cooperation Minister Bazin present a new law in Parliament? By
then, it was already too late and who now is paying the price for such a
mistake? The Haitian tax payers because, government has pulled out of the
public treasury, millions of gourdes to appease the rightfully enraged
investors who in many instances lost their life savings.

The second and last issue on this matter of corruption, again, to show how
deep a problem it is, is that of the negotiations themselves.

The negotiations between the Convergence and the Haitian Government have
become an industry. It is now an industry that only benefit the already rich
by Haitian standards, and the not-so-rich. People from modest means, the
middle class, and the poor are on the side lines, watching that spectacle
evolve into a theater of absurdity.

The Haitian Government use tax payers money to pay lobbyists in the
international community to argue their case. So who pays? The poor Haitian
tax payers.

The Convergence on the other hand, receive according to many credible press
reports, millions of dollars from the United States and rich European
countries. Again, who pays? In most cases, the tax payers from both Europe
and the United States.

Now, if the Haitian Government has very little choice but to use money from
the public treasury to argue its case in the international community, the
Convergence doesn't have to worry because they know that they will continue
on receiving "funding" from the international.

What happens to those monies, or part of them? You now have an industry of
mostly foreign lobbyists who have especially in the Convergence camp, some
definite reasons to keep the negotiations going, and going, and going. After
all, they make money that way.

This is why recently, when the OAS seemed to have finally decided on this
issue and suggest that they would look for other more reasonable ways at
this stage to resolve once and for all this crisis, you started hearing
loudly the voices of congressmen pressuring the OAS not to end these
negotiations. Surely, the Convergence lobbyists don't want these so-called
negotiations to end yet because, that would probably mean they would no
longer be on the payroll of this opposition group, funded by international
donors. So a simple phone call to a foe of Lavalas and Aristide in Congress
will be effective to stall the negotiating process.

Meanwhile, the Haitian people (rich and poor), are still waiting for that
complex web to unfold, and for that drama to end. This nasty game as I see
it, is a different kind of corruption.

I am not sure why more than a few people on the list are unhappy with the
way I characterize Haitian society as a place where corruption still rules,
and needs to be lloked at in its entirety so we can once and for all if not
resolve, at least curtail that problem. I really don't know why.

Hyppolite Pierre
IRSP
http://www.irsp.org