From left to right: Youri Latortue and Laurent Lamothe

Youri LATORTUE, who is playing Mr. Clean politics in the Haiti Senate, is not clean himself. In fact, I don’t know one “clean” Haitian politician in existence. They are all crooks. Haitian politics is not for pious folks; the system itself breeds corruption.

Now he is claiming having talked to Eberwein –before he committed suicide on Tuesday, July 11 in a South Dade motel –who shared with him important yet mind-boggling revelations. Since the dead man cannot be around to attest to such claim, it is now up to you and me in the court of public opinion to believe such idiocy.

Let us not forget that the Artibonite senator aka Mr. Clean Wannabe was a top advisor in the Martelly National Palace during the entire President Martelly’s five-year term, meaning if corruption there was, he must have known about it, he must have been a part of it. He was not an outsider like you and me. If anything, he should be investigated. 

All this noise he is making with the commission’s so-called corruption findings is political in nature. He is preparing the public opinion for an eventual decision by his ethics committee in the Senate to deny former Prime Minister Lamothe his administrative clearance papers, which he will need should he decide to run for president in 2021. 

It is not a secret that Youri LATORTUE, the leader of Ayiti An Aksyon, will be running for president in 2021. He knows Lamothe is a VERY potential player on the ground who could be for him a fierce competitor to beat. So he has got to stop him from entering the race. And the only best way for him to do so is to use this bogus ethics committee in the Senate as his political weapon –to deny him his administrative clearance. 

Now, one mistake LATORTUE, the President of the Senate, is on the verge of making is that he is not factoring in the people in his political calculus. What will be the reaction of the people vis-à-vis the political slaughtering of PM Lamothe is of paramount importance. The people are watching… they understand what is going on. They will react. This is simply a fair warning. 

If I were Youri LATORTUE, instead of indulging in this show of demagoguery politics, I would focus more on solving the issues facing the people in my Artibonite District –where there is a 3-year-old brand new and fully equipped hospital, Providence Hospital, the only state-of-the-art hospital in the district, built by the Canadian government –in a state of “irreversible degradation.” The operation of the hospital is stalled by corruption, yet LATORTUE is playing Mr. Clean politics in the Senate. Isn’t that something? He needs to do his job; he needs to focus on what really matters.