19675: Pierre Jean: On Lavalas, Accountability and Transparency (Was Re: 18666: Kaminsky: Re: 18650:

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Pierre Jean <pierrejean2004@yahoo.com>

To shore up democracy, Kaminsky suggests that all
economic assistance should be released. Fine! I am all
for it.

But how about accountability? How can we be certain
that the funds that we will be lent to Haiti, which
will ultimately have to repaid by Haitian taxpayers,
will be used correctly and not diverted for political
reasons or used to shore up individuals' bank
accounts?

Can Kaminsky now talk about the progress of
transparency issues in Haiti? Have we made progress on
that front since 1991?

Transparency, if you remember, was supposed to be one
of the pillars of Lavalas, along with Justice and
Participation. These were the ideals that at least 70%
of the Haitian population supported when we elected
Jean-Bertrand Aristide president on December 16, 1990.
His presidency was to mark a break from our horrific
past, in which the aspirations of the vast majority of
Haitians were never fulfilled, whether through the
machinations of an economic elite, the occupation of
our country by a foreign power or the outright
oppression of a military establishment at the
beck-and-call of a dictator. On February 7, 1991, we
hoped that the Presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide
would usher an era of openness where our government
would be accountable to the people and would be
responsive to its needs. We hoped that corruption
would diminish - to ask for its complete eradication
would be unrealistic - and we prayed that access to
decent health care and quality education would
eventually become available to the vast majority of
Haitians, as opposed to being the luxuries that they
were and still are.

So perhaps it is fitting to review the record of
Lavalas after 10 years of direct rule. I will ignore
the three years of the coup for obvious reasons. Has
Lavalas delivered on Transparency?

Has Lavalas ever published, either in the government
newspaper L'Union or in any other newspaper or medium
for that matter, a periodic accounting of governmental
expenses incurred during a set fiscal year?

Has Lavalas ever explained to the Haitian population
the fluctuations in its foreign exchange reserves, and
the implications for our economy?

Has Lavalas ever been forthright with the Haitian
people about its lobbying expenses? Why does the
Haitian people have to wait for the US Department of
Justice to release its quarterly report on registered
lobbyists of foreign governments to find out how much
Ira Kurzban and Company get paid? Why can't the
Haitian government simply divulge those details as a
matter of routine transparency procedures?

Has Lavalas ever explained to the Haitian people how
it spent the funds that were at its disposal while it
was in exile (blocked Teleco funds and such)?

Has Lavalas ever explained to the Haitian people how
it run up huge deficits in the past two fiscal years
and how these deficits were financed? Why do we have
to rely on "unofficial" information to know that the
deficit for the first quarter of this fiscal year
alone has already reached close to 2 billion gourdes?
Why can't the government come clean so as to suppress
rumors that roil the financial markets and create more
problems for the Central Bank? Fiscal transparency is
a prerequisite for an orderly economy.

Has Lavalas ever explained to the Haitian people
exactly how the taxes they pay are spent or why they
do not receive the services that they should come to
expect?

Has Lavalas ever published the revenues and
expenditures of such institutions as TELECO, ONA,
OFATMA, AAN, OFNAC, APN, etc.?

Has Lavalas ever explained to the victims of this
giant-scale Ponzi scheme called "cooperatives" why the
Government never bothered to really defend their
interests?

Has Lavalas ever tried to go after the "cooperative"
managers and get them to cough up the billions of
gourdes they stole from mostly poor and hard-working
Haitians who did not trust banks and ended up putting
their money in even shakier institutions?

Has the Conseil National des Coopératives ever
explained why it failed in its mission to regulate
these cooperatives?

Has any report ever been published by the Government
on the cooperative debacle given the magnitude of the
financial disaster that it represented?

Has Lavalas ever divulged how much money is actually
being paid to the American security company called
Steele Foundation for the protection of Jean-Bertrand
Aristide? Was a cost-benefit analysis run to compare
that option as opposed to training qualified Haitian
police officers to fulfill that role? (And yes, I am
back on that again!)

Can Prime Minister Yvon Neptune explain to the Haitian
people why he instructed Minister of Finance Gustave
Faubert to be more careful about safeguarding the
financial documents of the government, following the
release to the public of the details of the $14
million budget for the Bicentennial celebrations? Is
such a budget a state secret? Doesn't the Haitian
people have the right to know how much money was spent
on these celebrations? Isn't it their taxes plus that
10-million rand gift from South Africa that were used
for these expenses? Why did it take a leak from the
Ministry of Finance for those figures to be revealed?
And why can't the public obtain these informations
from the Ministry of Finance when they want it (for a
fee, of course)?

I could go on, but I will stop listing my transparency
questions here.  And now pray tell, who are you going
to blame, Mr. Kaminsky, for the failure of Lavalas to
live up to its ideal of Transparency? The American
government? The anti-democratic forces?

Just to pick one, the publication of government actual
expenditures is a function that is controlled
exclusively by the Haitian government. In fact, all
that is required for Lavalas to publish its finances
is for the Minister of Finance to obtain consolidated
figures from his own "Direction du Budget" that shows
the variance between budget and actual figures, which
could then be printed in a newspaper. This is what is
done in your country, Mr. Kaminsky, on a routine
basis. Why hasn't Lavalas ever done it? Do you believe
that this absence of transparency conforms to the
original ideals that we voted for on December 16,
1990?




--- Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu> wrote:
>
>
> From: Len Kaminsky <nylensky@yahoo.com>
> ----------------------------------------
>
> I think there are a couple of bad assumptions here.
>
> First, when did U.S. foreign policy ever follow any
> rhyme or reason.
>
> Next, historically the U.S. has always opposed
> Aristide...from the day he
> first
> declared to run and robbed the U.S. of their plans
> to install a puppet
> that
> would carry out every plan of privatization and
> economic obediance to the
> World
> Bank and IMF.
>
> Let us not kid ourselves, or be surprised to learn
> of the U.S. involvement
> and
> funding of anti-Aristide agitation and the
> destruction of another
> democratically elected leader that does not agree
> with the American line.
>
> It does not matter if you are for, neutral or
> against Aristide...to
> support
> democracy in Haiti the world community should shore
> up the government,
> release
> economic assistance and stop supporting all of the
> anti-democratic forces.
>
>


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