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29811: Du Tuyau, Re: Investment in the DR (fwd)
From: viandemoulue@aol.com
Investment in the DR?
I can’t think of an issue that has so haunted me personally. I've been
following it for quite a while now, getting increasingly dismayed by it. The
last straw was the Haiti En Marche article last week on that very issue. I
simply wish I could just remain silent, let it go (as most of us have), and
move on. I promise that I will; but before that time, there's a larger issue
involved here, to me at least. Once I get it off my chest, I'll go into at the
very least a very prolonged silence.
This is why the center-right doesn’t even exist in Haiti. And this is also
how one feeds populism. Any Haitian politician who stays on the sidelines,
watches closely as this thing goes on, and then waits for the next elections
can skillfully uses this argument with strong and pointed emotional outbursts,
against our class of entrepreneurs back home. Would or could that person win?
Of course... not because such candidate would present a rational agenda for
curbing this sort of trend but instead, simply because what is going on looks
bad, as so it is.
It looks as though some in our business community simply do not care about any
of the negative things that happen to Haitians across the border. Things like
systematic killing of Haitians; refusal (against their own laws) to give
Dominican citizenship to children born of Haitian parents in the Dominican
Republic; massive periodic deportations of Haitans who live and have lived in
the DR for years, etc, do not seem to phase them either way.
It is not being "nationalist" to say that a country and its citizens,
especially those in position of economic and political power, have the
responsibility to defend the physical and even moral integrity of their
country. When the political and economic leadership fail, so does the nation.
This is not an anti-market argument either. After all, if only as a potent
example, a nation as pro-market as the US for instance refuses to engage
economically with very small Cuba, mostly for political reasons.
Well, if at least Haiti politicians could have decided to once and for all
formalize, arguably one of the largest sectors of the Haitian economy: the
so-called informal sector of ti machann and madam sara; if our politicans could
have economic analysts at the Ministry of Finance study the economic impact of
the informal sector on the economy so it could be better structured; if
incentives could be given to make sure that such a sector (the informal sector)
can grow rationally and become even more potent than it actually is, perhaps
one wouldn't even have to worry about the choices of our traditional business
class.
I suspect that: so long as the Diaspora is considered as the equivalent of a
vast welfare organization for the poor in Haiti, rather than as potential
investors with still undetermined financial resources; so long as the State
itself continues to look at the poor street vendors as people who can never
strike-it-rich, and become a large source of employment in a much more
rationalized and integrated economy, we will continue to complain, frustrated
with the current status quo of our business community.
Well again, if that sounds far-fetched, one needs to remember that in late 19th
and even mid 20th century, many who are today wealthy business people in Haiti
started out as street vendors. They were part of that so-called "informal
sector" of Haiti's economy.
In a reasonable country where things are done rationally, they could have been
a point of reference, with or/AND without their help, to help advance the
larger economy.
But Haiti is not there yet and thus the frustration. It can be, though, and
thus we wouldn't have to worry anymore about members of our business class
investing in a country that has decisively and consistently taken anti-Haitian
policies.
Good-Bye, and good luck,
Jean du Tuyau
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