[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

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
________________________________________________________________________
Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more.