=?x-unknown?q?29367=3A_Lucas=3A_=28news=29___A_Miami_Herald?==?x-unknown?q?_interview_with_Haitian_President_Ren=E9_Pr=E9v?==?x-unknown?q?al=2C_conducted_on_Oct=2E_18_=28fwd=29?=

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Stanley Lucas <maloukwi@yahoo.com>

A Miami Herald interview with Haitian President René Préval, conducted on Oct. 
18
  http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/15824444.htm
  BY JACQUELINE CHARLES jcharles@MiamiHerald.com  • Q: Your government and U.N. 
peacekeepers known as MINUSTAH recently launched a program to disarm armed 
gangs and reinsert their members into civilian life, known as DDR. How is that 
working?
  • A: We have spoken to the gang leaders and they have turned in guns. And 
today, they not only have turned in guns, but they have sent people into the 
DDR ... There are 110 people in the program.
  • Q: There is definitely a stepped up police presence in Port-au-Prince.
  • A: The police recently entered (the long-violent slum of) Cité Soleil and 
the population was happy. This was done with an accord of the gang leaders and 
the population. It was not done in confrontation, but in dialogue. You will see 
in the metropolitan zone there are a lot of policemen in the streets. But we 
have to give them more materials to do their jobs; that means more cars, 
motorcycles and more radios. There are 500 new police recruits preparing to 
graduate. There is already a significant diminishing of insecurity. The police 
are giving people an increased sense of security.
  • Q: You've said strengthening the police and justice systems are top 
priorities. What are your plans?
  A:We are going to do a reform of the police with vetting, with the changing 
of certain commanders and giving them more means to do their jobs ... We need 
to improve the conditions in which they eat, improve their health insurance and 
in the future, increase their salary. A police officer now receives $200 a 
month, which means he can just barely pay his house. This salary makes it easy 
for police to be corrupted.
  -0-
  Q:What about judicial reforms?
  A:You have to strengthen the justice system. The prosecutor is working with 
the police to make sure when the police makes an arrest, it is done so 
correctly. He's working with the police in building their cases. We have to 
make an effort to put kidnappers and thieves before the law.''
  -0-
  Q: What about corruption?
  A: This is a government pushing transparency. For example, each month we will 
publish on the Internet all of the money that comes into the government, and 
all of the money spent by the government. Even the (presidential) palace will 
have to say how much the president's trips cost.
  -0-
  Q: In addition to the various commissions investigating corruption 
complaints, what else is the government doing to address this?
  A: We have a law we are going to introduce, where the president, ministers, 
everybody who has authorization to sign government checks, will have to declare 
every year their assets. Do you have a car, a house, jewelry, bank account, 
investments? All of your assets, you will have to declare. It's one of the 
weapons against corruption.
  -0-
  Q: What about the state-owned telephone company, Teleco?
  A: Today Teleco is losing money ...We are going to have Teleco ... become a 
mixed company, government/private-owned. When you are doing telecommunications 
you want someone who knows what they are doing and who has money to invest in 
it ... No deputies, senators, ministers, are going to put their people in there 
because the private sector won't accept it.
  -0-
  Q: Teleco and others government workers who were fired during the previous 
transition government continue to demand their jobs back.
  A: The people who were fired during the transition, we won't leave them 
behind. We will talk to them. Those who are inside Teleco right now, we are 
going to make a lot of them leave as well. So we arrive at the necessary amount 
of people at Teleco ... We are not going to do demagogy or partisan politics, 
to put people in so they can shout Long Live Préval!''
  -0-
  Q: Haiti has been called one of the most corrupt places in the world. Do you 
believe you can change this?
  A: We are underdeveloped in everything, and we are underdeveloped in 
corruption too. If they are looking for a country that has corruption, I don't 
believe Haiti is the model of corruption. I believe Haiti has a weakness in 
fighting corruption but it's petty corruption; it's not big corruption ... If 
you put it proportion to the problems of the country, it resembles big 
corruption. But if you look at other countries, we are not yet strong in 
corruption.
  -0-
  Q: Why do you believe it's so hard to get foreigners to invest in Haiti?
  A: It's not insecurity that makes people not come and invest in Haiti. There 
is an inordinate amount of kidnappings, if not more, in other countries whose 
names I won't mention. The problem in Haiti is a lack of political security ... 
Once you can guarantee that there is political stability, that another 
government is not going to come and change the game, there will be 
investments... It's a problem of the image of Haiti. Once we change it, people 
will return to invest.
  -0-
  Q: During your U.S. visit earlier this year, you lobbied on behalf of the 
stalled HOPE trade bill that could bring thousands of apparel assembly jobs to 
Haiti. Do you believe the U.S. Congress will approve it?
  A: It's one of the things that can help to create job and stabilize the 
political situation, by removing the economic pressure. I am confident the U.S. 
congressmen and the administration will understand the importance HOPE has for 
Haiti..I've done all the lobbying I can.''
  -0-
  Q: Critics charge that the shift of about $3 million in the government's 
budget to study the creation of a better-armed ''policing'' group may be an 
attempt to re-create the army, which was abolished in 1995.
  A: For me, the public (security) force that we need is a (defense force) to 
survey boats, the frontier and intervene in natural disasters. Protection of 
the airport, the ports, that's not the work of the police.
  -0-
  Q: Sixty-five percent of the $1.6 billion budget Haiti recently adopted 
relies on foreign aid. What are you doing to ensure that promised foreign aid 
actually arrives?
  A: Money has been promised, but a lot of that money is going into the 
non-governmental organizations. That is the first problem. That is why we 
insist right now they give us budget support. Even if they they say the money 
is earmarked for specific projects, it's the Haitian government that will 
decide how to divvy up the money ... Because the government was weak it had no 
choice but to go through the NGOs. But eventually the government needs to take 
control of the NGOs without (alienating) them ... They have to do things in 
conjunction with the government, otherwise it won't be effective.
  -0-
  Q: Some peasant organizations are demanding land reform. Do you have any 
plans to address this?
  A: The problem in Haiti is, if you take the titles to property and put them 
next to each other, you would find that Haiti is five times bigger than it is 
in reality. And all of those documents are valid. They are official. They are 
good. But that leads to fights. You have to resolve the question of property in 
the rural zones. Who really owns the land? If a person doesn't have assurances 
that the property really is theirs, they are not going to invest in it .... You 
see all of the houses in the (slums), there are no titles for them. It's dead 
capital because the person cannot sell it, they cannot take a loan out on it at 
the bank ... We are going to work on this.
  -0-
  Q:You definitely have better relations with MINUSTAH than the interim 
government. What happened?
  A:What has changed is Haiti right now has a legitimate government and this 
legitimate government has a will to take the country by the hand. That's why at 
the donors conference, we were the ones who did the documents. We didn't say 
give us what you have or what you want, we put together the documents and said 
'here are our needs.' And with MINUSTAH we said here is what we would like for 
you to do; they meanwhile did what they were able to within the limits of their 
mandates. I believe they are really happy to find a government that says what 
it wants.
  -0-
  Q: The government has been criticized for giving each of the 129 members of 
parliament a $15,000 stipend toward the purchase of a car.
  A: The deputy is someone who comes from the province .... Just like the 
president has a car, same as the ministers have a car, he needs a car so that 
he can go home, go to work and return to the province .... He doesn't have any 
money. Now we have two choices. Buy a car for every deputy, a car that costs 
$40,000 ... We gave them $15,000, toward the $40,000 to buy a new car. The 
government has already saved $25,000.
  -0-


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