Monthly Archives: February 2011

Feb 26 2011

MARTELLY: HERE IS YOUR VICTORY TICKET

Mirlande Manigat’s “fanm kore fanm” (English: women support women) political statement has a sexist undertone. For someone who has never missed the opportunity to make of her political education and experience a line in the sand, that statement of hers has proven her political amateurism.

That is not a simple slip of the tongue type of misstep; that is her campaign political slogan. Political slogans are not crafted lightly, meaning the words are meticulously chosen. What I am getting from that slogan is that, if becomes elected, she is someone who could be discriminating against ALL men.

We need to avoid being divisive as much as we can. We have been on that route before with Aristide -who had positioned himself as the president of his partisans, excluding those were not. Therefore, we already know what the results will be.    

The Manigat campaign has been making the morality argument for some time now to torpedo Martelly. Her revealed sexism, “women support women,” should be a campaign stopper. Martelly must drive this argument home. He needs to use it against her to raise doubts about her being a fair president. She cannot deny having used it in many instances, for it is her own campaign slogan.

Martelly has been put on the defensive for too long. He needs to reverse that trend. The morality argument, though proven ineffective, must not be taken for granted. It could start picking up steam as the days towards the end of the campaign are approaching. So he needs to go on the offense and force her to use the few weeks left in the campaign to explain herself. He could use a 30-second negative political ads or something to make the sexism argument against her. He must not wait too long to make that happen. Though he is leading in the polls, he must not be too comfortable. He needs to fight her as though he is on the losing side of the spectrum. In politics, you don’t win until you are declared a winner. So he needs to go after her hard.

The most effective way to fight political opponents is to use their own words and acts against them. Remember what the Jerry Brown campaign did to Meg Whitman in California during the gubernatorial race in that state? They destroyed her in one week using this political ads. Mind you, she was running neck and neck with Brown in the polls. In some polls, she was even leading. Don’t take my word for it; see it for yourself .

In politics, if you can raise doubts about your opponents, you are in good standing. As you can see, the purpose of the ads was to link her to the failed economic policies of Governor Schwarzenegger. Doing so had made the case for Jerry Brown that Meg Whitman, if elected governor, will be another Schwarzenegger in terms of policies. Therefore, it would be insane using the same failed policies and expecting different results. Before she knows it, her campaign was over. That was a brilliant ads.

 

Martelly, I just handed you your ticket to victory. Don’t you ever say I have never given you anything. When you are in the White House in Haiti, I don’t need anything from you, except that to take care of the people’s business with highest honors and highest regards.

Feb 24 2011

WHAT THE RDNP PARTY MUST DO NEXT

Mirlande Manigat -leader of RDNP

All RDNPists and supporters of Mirlande Manigat, do not say I am not being fair for having given tips to Martelly on how to beat your leader in the next election and not given you anything. This time is yours to be served. This piece is going to give you tips on what to do next going forward.

Let me begin by saying this: if after more than 25 years in the existence of RDNP Mirlande Manigat is the best you guys have to offer, something is not going right inside the party. After this election, the party itself needs to do a soul-searching exercise to fix what needs to be fixed and change the entire Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

I think Patrice Dumont, had he represented the party in the election, assuming he has a clean record, could have made a better showing than Manigat. Generation wise, he and Martelly fit in the same bracket. He’s a media personality, Martelly is a stage personality. He seems to have a strong education background, which, in my opinion, could have been a major mismatch for Martelly.

With him in the race, the battle could have probably not been waged on the leadership front as it is now with Manigat; but, rather, on who has the best vision for the country.

To be fair, though, Manigat’s plan does sound great ON PAPER. It is so great that I think Martelly is going to have to steal some parts of it. But, if elected, does she have the leadership spine and the iron fist to implement it? The answer is a fat and loud NOOOOOO. She is weak and symbolizes failure. That’s why she is going to lose this race which should have been hers to lose.

After this election, the RDNP party must take some time to redefine and reintroduce itself. You must fire Mirlande Manigat and entrust the leadership of the party with a new generation of leaders with a clear agenda to win control of the presidency and have a strong congressional presence in Congress and mayoral presence all around the country in the next five years. You never know what may happen; I may become a registered RDNPist -with a complete reshuffling and a new leadership, of course.

I bet you are not going to do that; she is going to be kept in her place until she dies or decides to retire. Why should she be asked to relinquish her position? After all, the party is her private property; it will disappear or cease to exist with her death. That’s basically the life expectancy of most political parties in Haiti. They disappear with the death of the founder.

Well, you don’t need to listen to my advice. What do I know? I am a nobody.

Feb 22 2011

IF I COULD VOTE IN HAITI, I WOULD VOTE FOR…

A friend of mine on Facebook put me on the spot to state the candidate I would vote for in this election about to take place in Haiti if I were able to vote. This is the first time someone has ever done this to me –pou m afiche m je klè, kidonk san voye wòch kache men. Without making a formal and official endorsement, I answer her like this:

 

Despite my disagreement with Martelly’s economic plan, which I think is socialistic to some extent and is going to stall competition on the market, if I were to choose between him and Manigat, the two options we have now left on the table to choose from, for what the country needs at this juncture, he would get my vote. Why him?

 

He may not be as intellectual as Manigat, but I see in him someone who could bring our already torn and divided country together -regardless of creed, religion, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, ethnicity, age, gender, etc… -and motivate and inspire us to do what needs to get done.

 

I also see in him someone who does not play; he means business. He is not someone to mess with, for he will go after you, embarrass you publicly, and bring you to justice.

 

He also seems to be a person of discipline, attention to detail and meticulousness. You give him a task to work on, he will assemble a team of experts or problem solvers to get it done in a timely manner. On top of all that, he seems to be a person of consistency, which means a whole lot to me.

 

Lastly, he seems to be a people person, someone -if you go down in the mud by accident -to take his jacket and tie off and fold up the legs of his pants and the sleeves of his shirt to go down and get you out of there. In other words, he is a person of very few complexes; he is not uppity and presumptuous.

 

Those are the attributes I notice in his personality which would definitely make me cast my vote for him. He seems to have what our beloved Haiti needs to reverse the state of freefall she has been in for 25 years. He will not be able to do anything if we  (ALL of us Haitians) don’t stand with and by him. He is only the leader to show us the way. But we still need to follow his leadership, get down and do what needs to get done.  So Martelly would definitely get my vote.

Feb 20 2011

THE LEADERSHIP ARGUMENT AGAINST MANIGAT

Because I had made and presented the case against Manigat on a generational front, some had accused me of discriminating against her on the basis of her age. Well, the generational front is not the only one I am going to fight her on. She has a leadership problem.

As I said many times, Haiti is at a juncture where intellectualism alone is not going to reverse things around for her. She is in desperate need of a leader with iron spine and fist to lead the surgical intervention she needs to keep her alive.

I had made the leadership argument many times in the past but never really taken the time to explain what leadership really entails. This time I am going to do my best to hit it right in the head.

Leadership is the ability to motivate people to do things they would not otherwise want to do. It takes leadership to get people to believe in a better tomorrow. It takes leadership to get people to change, especially when they are so accustomed to doing the same things over and over.

The job of any leader, if I may, is to prepare your people for the challenges ahead. So in terms of leadership attributes Manigat does not have any. She is the symbol of leadership failure.

From 1986 to present, as leaders of RDNP, Lesly and Mirlande Manigat, failed to prepare a new generation of RDNPists for the challenges of tomorrow. So she is a failure as evidenced by the fact that after 25 years being active inside the party, not one young person is prepared and ready to lead.

Barack Obama is today the president of the United States mainly because the Democratic Party in Illinois had prepared and given him a chance to surface. In fact, they had brought him from the Illionois state senate to the national stage in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention held in Boston to give the keynote address, which had put and kept the spotlight on him. Today, 7 years later, he, not Bill Clinton, is the leader of the national Democratic Party.

In the Obama era, you have now an array of new, fresh and young Democrats such as Rahm Emanuel and Herald Ford, surfacing. In fact, these two guys had served in Congress and been in many leadership positions.

So that is what a political party is for –to prepare leaders to emerge and lead. The fact that Mirlande Manigat at 71 years old is still the leader of RDNP shows that she and her husband have failed to prepare a new generation of RDNPists for the challenges of tomorrow. Why they did not prepare a new generation of leaders to lead the party to victory is beyond my pay grade. However, one thing I can tell you is that it does tell a lot about them.

They, Mirlande Manigat and her husband, are two selfish individuals who initially brought this political party to life to serve their selfish and short-sided political interests, not those of the Haitian people. If Mirlande Manigat, as the leader of the party, could fail in her mission to prepare the party for tomorrow, chances are, if becomes president, she will fail the future of the nation, the Haitian youths, just as bad. Therefore, she does not have the leadership attributes Haiti needs at this juncture in her existence as a nation. She is a danger to the survivability of the Haitian nation. As a young Haitian, I love my country too much to let that happen. That is why I vow to do whatever in my human power to stop her from getting elected.

Feb 19 2011

EGYPT WILL NOT BE ANOTHER HAITI

Hosni Mubarak, the dictator of Egypt for 30 years, has fallen flat on his head Thursday, February 10, 2011; a new chapter has begun for the Egyptian people. In his stubbornness, like Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier of Haiti, he thought he could have resisted the resiliency and resistance of the people or talked them out of their decision to put an end to his outdated, obsolete, dysfunctional and impracticable regime. Fortunately for the people of Egypt, he got it all miscalculated. In this piece, the parallel between the Egyptian revolution and that of the Haitian people in 1986 will be drawn and some degree of light will be shed on why Egypt will not be another Haiti.

After the fall of the dictatorship regime of the Duvaliers on February 07, 1986 in Haiti, a National Council of Government (French: Conseil National de Gouvernement) was formed or instituted to lead the nation through the transition to democratic elections. According to Wikipedia, “The council consisted of a President, Lieutenant General Henri Namphy, and five Members, three from the military and two civilians. The military Members were Colonels Williams Régala, Max Valles, and Prosper Avril, while the civilian members were Gérard Gourgue and Alix Cinéas.” In other words, the military took control of the country; they were in charge.

The Haitian population, in its fury, under the watch of the military, went on a rampage to roast or “Pèlebren” the “Tonton Macoutes,” members of the Duvalier militia, ransack or “dechouke” properties of the Duvalier loyalists, and destroy almost everything they could think of. It was a scene of total chaos and confusion. The military –whose mission was to defend and protect the country, its citizens and properties -did not do anything to secure the country and prevent such ridiculousness from happening. The land, unfortunately, fell in a deep state of insecurity and lawlessness -under the watch of the military.

In Egypt, it was a different scenery. The military did what was necessary for the country by coercing or lobbying Mubarak into leaving power. It is said to be in charge, you see or feel they are, indeed, in charge. They gave the people ample time to express their frenzy in order and discipline until the country was back to being functional again. So far we have not witnessed one Mubarak loyalist being Pèlebrened or burnt to death, one piece of property belonging to his loyalists being ransacked, or one public facility being destroyed.

And in less than a week after its inauguration, the military leadership, in charge now of the country, dissolved the parliament and suspended the Constitution. They just put together “an apolitical and independent constitutional committee” to propose constitutional reforms within 10 days, according to Wael Ghonim, the activist who spearheaded the toppling of the Hosni Mubarak regime. After two months, a referendum would be held on the measures to get the country back on the road, said Ghonim in a statement on the social media website Facebook.

Some people are making the foolish argument that the Egyptians have made a terrible mistake by forcing Mubarak out of power and that they will fall in the same chaotic predicament as the Haitians for having dragged out of power their dictator of 30 years in the same sociopolitical conjuncture as the Haitians in 1986, when they broke or cut the “ke makak” or monkey tail of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who, together with his father, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, ruled the Haitian nation under a brutal dictatorship regime for 30 years. Such argument is called foolish thinking because Geopolitically speaking, the realities of the two countries are different.

In Haiti, after the end of the Cold War, the US did not need anymore the service of the dictatorship regime of the Duvaliers -whose sole purpose was to fight communism and prevent Haiti from falling in the hands of the communists. The US did not want a repeat of the Castro experience in the region. So they had to keep the Duvaliers -an ally of the United States in its fight against communism -in power for the time being. And once their service was no longer needed, it was time for them to be let go.

A politically stable Egypt will serve best the interests of the US, who cannot afford an unstable Egypt, a longtime and loyal ally, to stage in the region. So America must and will do whatever in its power to prevent Egypt from falling into chaos, a condition which will serve best the interests of the Muslim extremists -who may wish to see that country become a training ground for “terrorists,” which will endanger the security of Israel in the region and that of the interests of the US in the Arab World.

The notion that the Egyptians just made a big mistake for ousting Mubarak because of the possibility that their country may fall into the trap Haiti has fallen after the uprising against Duvalier is preposterous. The US will never let Egypt fall into chaos and will never let anyone not Israel friendly become the leader of that country. So please don’t compare Egypt to Haiti. Though the political landscapes -dictatorship, the military, the people, the US, etc… –are quite similar, geopolitically speaking, they are totally different.

The Haitians need to rip that page from the Egyptians’ “playbook” and use the exact tactic to end the occupation of their homeland by the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (French: Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti, also known as MINUSTAH, an acronym of the French translation) -the Brazilian-led United Nations stabilization force dispatched to Haiti on June 01, 2004 after the coup against former President Jean Bertrand Aristide with the mandate to “concentrate the use of its resources, including civilian police, on increasing security and protection during the electoral period and to assist with the restoration and maintenance of the rule of law, public safety and public order in Haiti.”

If anything, the Haitians have a whole lot of learning to do from the Egyptian revolution. They need to study in-depth all its aspects.  For 18 days, these Egyptians have demonstrated to the entire world how an unstructured and unorganized movement can utilize modern technologies (Facebook, Twitter, IM, etc…) to coordinate and mount one of the best and most peaceful political revolts in the history of mankind.

1. Retrieved on 02/13/11 from

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Council_of_Government?wasRedirected=true

2. Retrieved on 02/13/11 from

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki?search=MInustah&x=0&y=0

Feb 5 2011

MARTELLY: THE WAY TO BEAT MANIGAT

Michel Martelly, presidential candidate

Manigat is the easiest candidate to beat, and Martelly should be happy to have to face her in the runoff presidential election. He can beat her if he uses the right strategy. He needs to run a two-front war (generational and psychological) against her. He needs to associate her with the old politics that has put us in the quagmire we are in today. He needs to be presented as the epitome of a new class of politicians that has emerged to send to retirement the old politics that has never failed to bring the country down, which Mrs. Manigat is the face of.

Intellectually speaking, he cannot match Manigat. So he needs not fight her war. He needs to prevent her from framing the debate and making this a race on intellectualism. How can he do that? He can achieve that by doing four things:

  1. He needs to use that weakness of his (his intellectual mismatch) as his best weapon and thereby put her on the defensive.
  2. He needs to keep looking presidential. So far his staff has been doing a tremendous job reintroducing and redefining him to the electorate. 
  3. When he is on the campaign trail stumping, he needs to stay on message at all times and articulate the stark differences between him and his opponent.
  4. He needs to speak to the people in these terms:

If you are looking for an intellectual person to be speaking fancy phrases to impress your ears and offer you no results at the end, Mrs. Manigat is your candidate. In fact, I don’t think many in this country can claim being more intellectual than she is. But keep in mind that these intellectuals, these fancy talkers, these no-doers, the ones who see in her their candidate are those causing us most of our troubles and tribulations.

But if you are looking for someone who could get down with you in the mud with the legs of his pants and sleeves of his shirt folded so together we can fix what needs to be fixed, I am your man. My opponent cannot tell you what I just told you because she is not the type to do that. In fact, you only see her out there addressing you when she is running for president because she needs your votes. Once elected, she will forget about you, and your situation will never get any better.

She will come to you and tell you that as an entertainer I used to do this and I used to do that. I will not defend my past because, like everyone else, I have stains on the white sheet of my life.  I am not running to be your moral leader because I am not perfect. In fact, no one is. But what she fails to realize is that my past, though she is trying to use it to bring me down, is exactly what gets me to better understand your situation.

Mirlande Manigat, presidential candidate

If you are looking for a people person who could better understand the socioeconomic reality of the peasants, I am your man. In fact, it is for no reason I partner with the peasantry to bring its agenda to the forefront. The peasants are the backbone of our economy, yet they are the most neglected.

If you are looking for someone with the guts to reestablish the authority of the state, strengthen our institutions, reclaim our sovereignty by ending the occupation of the country by MINUSTAH and replacing it with a professional Haitian military, if you are looking for someone with the political spine and will to secure the country and thereby attract investors to invest in our economy to create jobs for the 75% of the unemployed, I am the one for you.  

If you are looking for a leader to inspire the Haitian people –young and old, dark-skinned and light-skinned, men and women, Christians and Vodou practitioners, rich and poor –to come together as one nation to achieve greatness  in spite of our differences, I am the one for you.

If you are looking for someone to go out there to lobby the countries that have pledged billions of dollars to rebuild our nation, which will mean to take you out of these makeshift tents and move you to better housing complexes; I am your man. It does not make any sense for after a year of the earthquake nothing has been done to move you out of this mess.

If you are looking for someone who could assemble a team of problem solvers to put this country back to work and encourage the Haitians on the mainland and in the Diaspora to come invest in the development of their economy, I am your man.

This is our last chance to save this nation; we must not miss this opportunity. Therefore, you have two options to choose from: a) You can choose to go back to doing the same old and archaic things and playing the same old politics of the past that has gotten us where we are today or b) Like the Americans, we can choose a new kind of politics embodied in a new generation of leadership with fresh ideas to move this country forward. I have no doubt in your intelligence and ability to make the right and best choice; I have no doubt you will not choose to move this country backward by choosing Mrs. Manigat, the face of the old politics of obsolescence. She is not good for the country because she is not new and fresh.

Feb 2 2011

EGYPT: HOSNI MUBARAK’S DAYS ARE NUMBERED

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak

The Egyptians are setting the tone in terms of what a 21st century political revolution looks like. The world is now experiencing an unprecedented course of event taking shape in the largest Arab country in the world.

These people have been engaging in an internet-driven revolution –something totally new for Mubarak to strategize again. He is being caught by surprise and does not really know how to counterattack it.  But, being the stubborn he is known to be, he is trying so hard to hang on, despite the fact that the political forces inside and outside Egypt are strongly going against him.

Last night in the United States, while the streets of Cairo, the capital city of Egypt, were burning hot by the revolutionary heat coming out of the bodies of 2 million protesters (the number of protesters as estimated by Al Jazeera) gathered in Tahrir Square to ask President Mubarak to leave, president Obama had a 30-minute phone conversation with Mubarak to pinpoint his administration’s position on the situation in Egypt.

Minutes after Mubarak announced in a televised address that he will not seek reelection in the September presidential election and that he will stay in power for the remaining of his term, President Obama came before the camera to deliver a clear, concise and unambiguous message to the Egyptian dictator. He said: “It is not the role of any country to determine Egypt’s leaders; only the Egyptian people can do that. What is clear, and what I indicated tonight to President Mubarak is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful; it must be peaceful; and it must begin NOW.” I hope Mubarak gets it this time. The US has officially turned its back on him.

The protesters on the streets of Cairo are not putting their militancy to rest. 30 seconds after Mubarak’s televised address has ended, they were chanting “Leave! Leave! Leave!”

Basically, the 83-year-old ruler of Egypt is trapped. He lost the backing of the US, his longtime supporter; the majority of the Egyptian people are not with him; and the political equation cannot be balanced with him clinging to power. So his days are definitely numbered.

In such a volatile and unpredictable political conjuncture, anything can happen. My political sense is telling me that if everything stays the way they are now on the international stage and on the ground in Egypt, Mubarak will not see another week. If he refuses to capitulate on his own, he will be toppled by the Army; a coalition government will replace him to organize the scheduled September presidential election.

You are now living political revolution 2.0 as it must be conducted in the 21st century. Keep in mind that this is a leaderless movement, meaning had it been better organized and structured, it could have been even more effective. Everything is being coordinated, planned and debated on Facebook and  Twitter. This is a model of political revolution we Haitians may adopt to fight recalcitrant politicians like Rene Preval in Haiti.

Feb 1 2011

THE POLITICAL FATE OF THE HAITIAN BOURGEOISIE

Will the traditional Haitian bourgeoisie ever win the presidency in Haiti? Not in my lifetime they will. Why is that,

Dr. Reginald Boulos

 especially when they have the financial hegemony to put together and finance winnable presidential campaigns?

Commonly, whoever controls the economy controls and dominates the politics inside that domain. Well, In Haiti, it seems as though money does not tilt nor sway presidential politics. What you need to win the presidency is not money, which only matters when corruption and fraud are added to the equation. In Haiti, what you really need to win elections is simple -you need to win the trusts and hearts of the people, which the bourgeoisie can never get to do.

The people distrust the bourgeoisie because its interests conflict with theirs. They have never been in synchrony with the people. They are the reason why guys like Aristide and Preval happen to surface as political figures and become relevant. These guys (Aristide and Preval) have been dominating the political landscape for the past two decades. Let’s not forget they both got elected twice. The only two elected presidents we have ever had in the past 20 years are Aristide and Preval. Where has the bourgeoisie been all this time? Keep reading; you will find out.

Aristide, a priest with no political platform, no political experience, no real budget, and no time to campaign won the presidency hands down over Bazin and Dejoie -who had been present actively on the ground way before the fall of the Duvalier regime in 1986.

Dejoie was the face of the little click; he was not even a close second in the 1990 presidential election that catapulted Aristide to the highest office of the land.  

Rene Preval, an amateur politician and a symbol of failure, won the two elections he participated in with a landslide over many faces of the bourgeoisie.

Wyclef, a rapper who had never been actively involved in the country’s everyday politics, if allowed to run in the November 28 presidential election, would have won the presidency with an avalanche over Baker, the chouchou of the bourgeoisie, who has been on the ground for years.

The bourgeoisie has a major problem, and it seems as though none of its so-called leaders has ever bothered to find out what it is and what needs to get done to fix it. The reason is that they are too busy sabotaging governments the people put in place to take care of the nation’s affairs.

Who are the leaders of that click again -Baker, Apaid and Boulos? If so, can someone please tell these guys that they have work to do? They have a brand problem.  They need to work towards the refurbishment of the image of their little click. They are businessmen; therefore, I figure they should know when a business needs a revamp, a reinvention or a makeover. That’s basic marketing. They don’t need an Emann Joasil to tell them that.