Both the Ugandan president, Mr. Yoweri Museveni, and Mr. David Bahati, a Ugandan lawmaker, are members of “The Family,” an American faith-based and anti-gay organization.
In March of 2009, after several members of the organization had traveled to Uganda for what they called the “Seminar on Exposing the Homosexuals,” containing claims that gays pose major “dangers” to society, and that a “gay agenda” was in the making to “defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity,” Mr. Bahati introduced an anti-gay legislation calling for the death penalty against gays in certain cases of same-sex intimacy.
Not only does that inhuman, cruel, insane and ridiculous legislation call for the death penalty for gay men repeatedly having sex with other men, and for HIV-positive men having sexual relations, it also calls for tough penalties for anyone who fails to report gays to the authorities.
This is what would happen to any human society where the practice of religion is not closely monitored and controlled to prevent it from interfering with the running of the state’s affairs.
This is another case of religious insanity, which we find almost everywhere around the world, particularly in the third world countries. This guy David Bahati needs to be ashamed of himself. I cannot believe he would allow these foreigners to travel thousands of miles to come order him (like a master would order his slave) to introduce a legislation calling for the death penalty for his own citizens.
Wait a minute! Let’s put things in perspective here. Don’t we have gays in the United States? How come these American evangelicals don’t push for their crazy and nonsensical agenda in their own country? They cannot be acting out of love for the Ugandan people. There is no way they could possibly love the Ugandans more than their own.
These Christian foreigners need to get out of Uganda’s socio-political life. They take it upon themselves to travel to other countries, with the complicity of their local slaves in the government, to act in ways they could have not possibly acted in their own country -the United States.
This insanity could have taken place in my own country, for these American evangelicals travel to Haiti every year to hold their “evangelical crusades” in an attempt to soil the soul of the people.
There is a good reason why you see them in countries such as Uganda and Haiti. And the reason is POVERTY -the best fertilizer for the seed of religion to grow. Wherever there is poverty, you can expect religion to mushroom.
The poverty in my country makes my people very vulnerable to the paws of these evangelicals to prey on. So we need to keep eyes on them so that, with the complicity of their political cronies in the government, they don’t turn Haiti into another Uganda, where politicians want to send gays to death row.
I am glad I spent time to carefully listen to this clip of Mr. Martelly. At the very end of it, he unveils his plan to reform our agricultural practices or means of production. His plan is pure socialistic, which we don’t need for Haiti.
I am for the state to subvention or give incentives to the farmers to help them to cultivate the lands -just like we do here in the United States. I wholeheartedly disagree with him, however, when he wants the state to run agro-credit institutions to lend the farmers money to cultivate their lands. We don’t need that. Keep the state out of the credit market. Let the private sector compete for better rates to the farmers. When it is like that, you create a competitive marketplace where the farmers can go around and shop for the institution that could give them the best deal.
I also disagree with him in that he wants the state to buy the farmers’ harvests from them in an attempt to control prices on the national market. So if he does that, how could he expect the farmers to compete for better quality products and better prices for those products then? You cannot have players competing against each other in the sector of government. Basically he wants to do (to us) the same thing we allowed the American farmers to do to us. I say let the competition in the market dictate how prices should be fixed and controlled. In other words, let the market control itself. We don’t need the state to be like a godfather controlling the market.
Also, he talks about creating jobs in the peasantry sector, which I disagree with. Government is not in the business of creating jobs. The job of government is, rather, to enact economic policies that would encourage job creation by the private sector.
As I said many times before, in Haiti, the biggest competitor is the state, causing a problem for the private sector to compete for greater performance and returns on their investments. The market tends to be stalled when the state gets to compete against the private sector. If anything, we need to encourage a competitive market environment, not discouraging it. That’s what capitalism teaches us. We don’t need a socialist economy in the likes of Mr. Martelly’s proposal. It is not good for business, and certainly not good for the economy.
The presidential election in Haiti is only days away, yet JUDE CELESTIN still matters. Something was not done right. I can tell you this much –it is because you guys (MANIGAT, MARTELLY, BAKER and LAGUERRE) did not play right. I would beat up all four of you for your complacencies. You failed to link him to the failed policies of the PREVAL administration.
The man in the White House, RENE PREVAL, said that CELESTIN is his man, what better evidence do you need to destroy or make him insignificant in the race? That’s exactly what you should have been wanting from him, and he delivered it to you “UPS delivery” at your doorsteps. How could you not use that to run an effective character assassination campaign against the man?
We democrats did it here in the US. How you think we literally annihilated McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign and gave Obama the election on a silver platter? We played three smart cards against him.
1. We linked him to the failed policies of the Bush administration –the baseless Iraq War, the recessive economy, the handling of Katrina in New Orleans, big tax cuts for big corporations and the top 2% Americans while neglecting the middle class, etc…
2. We proved to the American electorate that he was out of touch with reality. On Monday, September 15, 2008, he hand-delivered to us the gift we had long been waiting for. On the campaign trail in Jacksonville, Florida, he declared: “the fundamentals of our economy are strong [despite] tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street.” Mind you, he made such statement right in the middle of the recession, at a time when the economy was bleeding jobs.
3. We transformed Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, his pick for vice president, into a laughing stock, a joke, someone not worthy to be taken seriously. By doing so, the McCain candidacy was viewed as a big joke. Her interview with CBS’s own Katie Couric did it for us.
We played the three cards so well strategically that before you know it, Senator McCain was already confined in history book. He was a done deal. We slashed him in the polls. So no one can tell me about the effectiveness of a character assassination campaign strategy, for I have seen it used many times in every single election (local and national) here in the United States.
I do not work for your campaigns, nor am I one of your cheerleaders. However, I want to place my country, Haiti, first. In this election, I do not have a fighting dog, which by now you should know. I do not know whom I am for. I do know, however, whom I am against. I am against PREVAL and his protégé JUDE CELESTIN.
Quit all the “kole mouda” with CELESTIN. The clock is ticking. You do not have that much time in front of you. It is time to proceed with PLAN B –CHARACTER ASSASSINATION. You guys need to run ASAP campaign ads on the radio and on TV telling the people that a vote for CELESTIN is a vote for the continuation of the PREVAL administration embodied in the policies that gave us -MINUSTAH, CHOLERA, LACK OF OVERSIGHT, CORRUPTION, MY PALACE COLLAPSED, etc…” Take my check to the bank and cash it. Trust me, it will not bounce.
This is a public policy matter, and I do expect many to disagree with me. Public education in Haiti needs a total reshuffling; it must be incorporated in a comprehensive plan to reform our economy. We cannot be talking about reforming the economy if we do not address the problems with our education.
We need a new system of education to prepare our kids to compete for the jobs of tomorrow at home and abroad.
Public education is a total failure in Haiti, and things will not get better if we do not change course. We need to take government out of the business of educating our kids and let the private sector take over.
Is Haiti a socialist or a capitalist state? Maybe we need to be clear on the type of economic system we have and the type we really need for Haiti. I am a big proponent of capitalism, for it does make sense to me. Maybe that’s what we need for Haiti. Right now, whether you want to agree with me or not, we have a socialist state; government controls almost everything.
Before we get further in this, let’s take a moment to explain what the job of government should be in a capitalistic economy.
The role of government in a capitalistic economy is NOT to create jobs and compete against the private sector. It is, rather, to enact policies that would encourage private sector jobs. It should work to strengthen the private sector, and the two must work hand in hand to get things to work for the betterment of our society. So needless to say, we need a strong private sector.
In Haiti, government is the biggest competitor we have in the market, preventing the economy from expanding because it stalls competition. It should not be this way. Government is not to compete against the private sector. It is to set the path for the private sector to walk on.
I propose the elimination of all the public schools or state-funded institutions of learning and let the private sector take over them. As we have them right now, they are ineffective and represent a symbol of failure because of a lack of competition within the sector of government. We need to get rid of that.
Government should not be in the business of opening schools. It needs to allow the economically disfavored students to attend private schools or the school of their choosing by making grants and scholarships available to them. Doing so will create a market of schools for them to choose from. Giving them the ability to choose the school of their liking will empower them, and that will fuel the competition needed to get the system to work.
If competition is the engine that gets the economy to move, choice is the ignition that gets it to crank up. When government gets in the game, competition is stalled; the economy automatically stops expanding. On the other hand, when you have the players in the private sector competing against one another, it is good for competition in that it results in quality production or quality education for the students. In such a competitive climate, only the best schools will stand. The subpar or mediocre ones will have to close their doors because they won’t be able to sustain the competitive wave. That’s the phenomenon of the “invisible hand” Adam Smith, the Father of Capitalism, talked about in his masterpiece entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
In conclusion, we need to revamp the system of education in Haiti by allowing the private sector to assume its total control. The government should not be in the business of opening and managing schools. It should be there to subvention the economically disadvantaged students by providing them with grants and scholarships to attend the school of their choosing. Such a strategy will automatically fuel competition within the system, which, in turn, will produce the best educated kids to contribute in the economic and social development of their society.
Politics and courtship are basically the same –winning the approval of an electorate or the heart of a woman. You have got to have a message. Do not embarrass yourself standing before an audience and not having a message to deliver. It is all about articulating that message in such a way to make your constituents or her fall for you. It may sound easy, but it is not. It requires skills –charisma, articulation or delivery style, humor, etiquette or protocol, etc… Those are the types of skills you acquire as you go, and you develop them.
In politics as in courtship, the goal is to win the heart, nothing less and nothing more. GO FOR THE HEART!!
First, you need to know or have a good grasp of the issues she is interested in so that you can make your case that you are the best candidate to make her dreams come true. It is all about telling her what she wants to hear in a futuristic perspective. If you do not know the life issues (her goals, her aspirations, her likes and dislikes, etc…) she is interested in, how can you articulate a winning message? Otherwise, you are setting yourself for failure. You have got to do your homework if you really want to win her vote or her heart.
Just like the American electorate, when it comes to courtship, women don’t think with their brains; they think with their hearts. That’s why you often hear the sayings “love is blind” and “the insanity of love.”
Gore lost the presidency in America to Bush not because the latter was the best and brightest, not because he had the best plan to move the country forward, but rather because he was “likable.” If the people were using their minds as opposed to their hearts, Gore would have been president; the country would have been in a much better shape than it is today.
In politics as in courtship, it is all about the message. But you can have the best message in the book, if you lack the charisma and the delivery style, you will not be as effective of a winner as you should.
Charisma is the skill that enables you to galvanize your audience, to make their jaws drop, to make them go gaga. It is the “too good to be true” phenomenon. You have to figure out how to do that, how to get her attention. That’s where the skill of charisma comes into play. You cannot win this type of emotional battle if you cannot win the heart.
Also, always fight the good battles –the ones that are winnable and worth fighting for. In other words, if you are willing to die for it, fight for it. By the same token, not all battles are worth fighting for. The same goes for women. Not all women are worth going after. Don’t waste your time. Go after the women with the baggage.
Now, I just used a very subjective terminology, and I am not going to define baggage for you. It is a very subjective terminology in that what I consider to be baggage may not be so to you. The best way to put it is to tell you to go after the women that represent your interests and value the things that you value. If education and a great career are the things that you value and she is the embodiment of those elements, go for it.
Well, I am going to end this by saying one thing: put your everything where your passion is. If you are passionate about that woman, that’s your motivation right there. And motivation is the drive that will get you to excel beyond your expectations. Remember, everything starts with having a winning message, which must reflect the woman’s interests and be articulated in a charismatic way. Do not waste your ammunitions and energy chasing worthless birds. Save them for the toughest and most challenging ones. I am out…
Being a nation with no previous democratic experience in our two centuries of existence, in terms of technicality, we Haitians are not doing too bad in our handling of our democracy. We have a lot of work to do, but we are on the right path.
Democracy is an ongoing process. Therefore, we must never stop growing, and we certainly must never stop strengthening our institutions if we want to enjoy the beauty of a strong democracy in Haiti.
The institution of democracy is not really a component of Haiti’s problems, since most Haitians favor a democratic Haiti embedded in these two basic principles: freedom of expression and freedom of choice. What we really need to do going forward is to civically educate the people on how to play the game of democracy with a winning state of mind. And the way you achieve that is by teaching them the rules of the game and how to apply them in their daily lives.
I am convinced that our problems are both political and economical. So fixing them requires of us all to be bold in our approaches.
By now, regardless our ideological differences, we all can agree on the fact that we have a vacuum of leadership in our country. In fact, you do not need to take my word for it. Just take a look at the way the aftermath of the earthquake has been managed. The so-called recovery plan they crafted along with the international community is an embarrassment.
Leadership and mediocrity/incompetence are mutually exclusive. It is impossible to get commonsense and proactive leadership out of dumbfoundedness, a trait which only incompetence and mediocrity nurture.
The solution to that aspect of the country’s problems is in the hands of the Haitian people, not those of the international community. We, the people of Haiti, need to break ties with mediocrity; it has proven time and time again to be the opposite force preventing us from progressing forward.
Solving the leadership problem will not happen overnight; it will take time. But we must keep in mind that we cannot be having the same failed politicians on the wheel leading the nation and expecting different results. Their failure has contributed to what Haiti has become today. So we need a new generation of leaders to emerge from the rubble of the disaster to send these “rat do kale” politicians occupying the country’s political landscape for over a quarter of a century to retirement. We need to retire their old, archaic and obsolete ways and replace them with the freshness of ideas emanating from a new class of leaders. We have no control over time, but we do have control over who we are going to choose to represent us and speak on our behalf.
On the economic front, in terms of economic wellbeing, Haiti was, prior to January the 12th, already a “failed” state. The earthquake did nothing but worsening the situation.
The country was the way it was mainly because of the financial or monetary conditions imposed upon it by the major international financial institutions -World Bank, IMF, etc. -dominated for the most part by the United States. If the US really cares and wants to help us to rebuild our nation, they need to start with addressing the evil manners the country has been dealt with by these international financial organizations. Otherwise, any effort to rebuild the country will be vainly undertaken.
In conclusion, we must not believe in the fallacy that the international community has our best interests. It would be foolish to have that in mind. They have their own agenda, which always conflicts with ours. The destiny of our nation lies in our hands. If the international community is really serious about building a strong partnership to help us rebuild our country, they need to be honest about it and stop playing games. In whatever capacity they want to help us, the approach must be systematic and comprehensive, meaning it must not be limited to the infrastructural aspect of the problem. It needs to go beyond that -it needs to touch on the way the country has been treated by the international financial organizations. Until they do that, any reconstruction effort will be a waste of time, money and resources.
If you drive through any suburb of New Jersey, you could barely see a liquor store, a fast food restaurant or a church on your way. Yet, in the economically disfavored cities (i.e., East Orange, Orange, Irvington, Newark, etc…), all you see on every block are liquor stores, fast food restaurants (McDonald, Burger King, Wendy’s, Checkers, Popeyes, Chinese, etc…) and churches. And I truly believe it is like that in most, if not all, of the cities across the country. Trust me, there is a reason for that.
When in nursing school I was studying Community Health Nursing at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, I was extremely disturbed by this observation. As part of our final grade, we were to team up with a partner to work on a community health research. My partner and I were assigned to conduct a windshield survey in the city of East Orange to depict the socio-economic realities the citizens in that city were facing and how they (those realities) were impacting lives.
Windshield surveys are a form of information gathering mechanism, involving making direct visual observations of a neighborhood or community while driving. These types of surveys are quite an inexpensive, time-efficient approach to assess the social environment of a community. They can even be conducted on foot in the event that a vehicle is not available or practicable.
The purpose of the windshield survey my partner and I conducted was to gain a better understanding of the city of East Orange’s social environment in terms of its boundaries, housing conditions, use of open spaces, shopping areas, schools, religious facilities, human services (such as hospitals and physician offices), modes of transportation, protective services (such as fire and police stations), and the overall neighborhood life.
We were working closely with the health officials at the East Orange Public Health Department to retrieve and analyze health-related policies, prevalent diseases and statistical data. It was a very insightful research study, which was worth conducted.
Many may be asking why you only find the McDonalds, the Burger Kings, etc… in these economically challenged neighborhoods. Well, first of all, you cannot blame the city officials; they do not have control over that. It is pure economics –supply and demand. Why supplying a good or service to a population that does not have the financial or purchasing leverage to afford it? In other words, what is the sense for a fancy restaurant owner selling healthy food to come open a branch in a neighborhood where the people cannot afford to buy the exquisite meals? That would be really stupid, especially when we all know that business people are in business not for sympathy but for the purpose of making money.
What explanation do I have for the presence of the liquor stores and the churches in those neighborhoods? It is so because there is a demand for them. Otherwise, they would have not been there. Most of the people that live in poverty cling to their drugs to help them forget about the stressful lives they are living and their religion to give them a sense of hope. Do the people in the suburbs consume alcohol and honor their religion? Yes, they do, but demand is everything.
Could the city officials implement policies to discourage these businesses from opening shop in their neighborhoods? Well, that would be economically stupid on their parts, especially when we know the level of education of their constituents only equip them for these kinds of jobs. If they (these jobs) were to be pushed away, then what would happen to employment opportunities and tax revenues which the city governments desperately need to run their operations? So it is a vicious circle, which can only be broken and reversed (on a long-term basis) through a drastic agenda of social reforms with emphasis on investing in the people’s education to increase their socio-economic worth.
Successful politicians do not only know how well to articulate their plans to their constituents, but also how best to assassinate the character of their opponents. How do you assassinate someone’s character? You assassinate someone’s character by using their vulnerabilities to convince the electorate to believe that the person is UNFIT for the position. You don’t know about your opponents’ character flaws by looking and smiling at them. You have to dig and unearth the stinky corpses.
Here in the United States, we see nothing but that. Character assassination is the essence of American politics. Do not take my words for it. All you have to do is to take a few minutes of your time to watch a few political ads. A very slim portion of them is dedicated to introducing and positioning the candidates. For the most part, they are attack ads, and their sole purpose is to assassinate the character of the challenger.
In the Haitian political landscape, the politicians do not create or raise controversies, which is probably the reason why I have found it to be overtly boring. I barely see a political advertisement introducing a candidate, let alone an attack one. The ones I have come in contact with only tell the electorate what the candidate’s identification number is and where to make the check mark to vote him/her.
These Haitian politicians do not even talk about themselves in the ads; they worry more about putting the illiterate and hungry masses in the streets playing RARA POLITICS. I have seen a few candidates doing this crap, which I think is embarrassing, disparaging, condescending, demeaning, low and outdated.
Anyhow, let’s go back to the topic. As I was saying, character assassination is the best way to fight political battles. You do not win these kinds of battles simply by presenting and positioning yourself; you do by assassinating the character of your opponents.
Have you ever asked yourself what had stopped Marc Bazin, the leader of the MIDH, from winning the 1990 presidential election in Haiti? That man was unstoppable. He had the persona, the savviness and the money to finance and run a well-structured campaign. But what he failed to realize was that money alone does not win elections. You need to be presenting yourself and your agenda and attacking your opponents. The strategy for his defeat was perfectly crafted that he was politically dead before the news even got to him.
How did his character get assassinated? The Haitian left painted him as an emissary of Washington. That’s exactly what they did, and before you know it, he was powerless with all the money he had.
The framing of the leader of the MIDH as Washington’s emissary worked perfectly because the public sentiment at the time was VERY antagonistic towards Washington. And the left did not spend a dime in presenting their candidate, Jean Bertand Aristide, who had just been relieved of his priesthood duty by Vatican for his revolutionary and leftist ideology of liberation theology. Aristide, as popular and powerful as he was, did not need any introduction to the political scene. With only a few months of campaigning, he could topple Bazin’s chance to win the presidency.
Other politicians got eliminated from the scene simply by being labeled the M word –MAKOUT. Coming from the brutal dictatorship regime of the Duvalier, the people were highly repulsive of anyone having ties or acquaintances with the regime. So if you are a candidate, once you are framed as a TONTON MAKOUT, the ceremony for your political funeral is inevitable.
In conclusion, character assassination is a great strategy of battle which politicians use to annihilate their challenger. It works wonders. Politics is not supposed to be fair. How could you be fair in playing a game which must be won psychologically? Before you win in the polls, you must win in the minds of the people. So politicians should not be spending money in just presenting themselves and their agendas to the electorate; they should also work just as hard to assassinate the character of their opponents. It is despicable to see in this 21st century these Haitian politicians using the same archaic RARA POLITICS as political tool to get the attention of the electorate. Character assassination is not a punishable offense, so use it.
In some Western circles and books written by Western writers, for the most part, you would find Dessalines not being given the proper respect he deserves. When/if they do talk about him, he would be portrayed or presented as a demon. Today, I am writing this piece to join the ranks of many who have been fighting to refurbish the tarnished image of this great son of Africa.
Dessalines, one of the people of Haiti’s many heroes, was not a demon. How could he be called a demon and George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte are excluded from the league? See, I want you all to pay close attention as to who those people are -the ones who have been calling him these types of condescending and demeaning names. It’s the people whose interests he was against. Today, sadly and ironically, we even have countless brainwashed Haitians in that league. These Haitians are nothing but emissaries of a status quo that stands for nothing that we Haitians stand for. We will always have them around. That’s understandable. They were around in 1804, they are still alive today. They are not going anywhere. We just have got to deal with them.
For the information of all, Dessalines was not a demon. He was what he was for his people, a freedom-fighter. He was a great, brilliant and valiant leader. He did something which surpasses human comprehension –commanding the indigenous army of Haiti, an army of slaves and former slaves, to victory against the Napoleon Army, the then greatest army in the world. If that is not heroic, I don’t know what is.
To the military experts out there still trying to figure out how could such insolence happen, I have to say that warfare is not won solely with the sharpness of your weapons, but also with the sharpness of your strategy. Dessalines was an astute war strategist. It is that simple.
If he was alive today fighting our independence war against the French colonial system, I would have not been surprised hearing him being called a terrorist. He would have been a terrorist because he was not shy at all to respond to terror with terror. If he, who was using terror to suppress the terrorist acts of the French, could have been called a terrorist, would it have not been fair to demand that the French brutal system and those who were working to keep it alive too be called so? The French, who were terrorizing the Black Africans, would have not been any less of a bunch of terrorists than Dessalines would have been.
Dessalines took three words as vague as liberty, equality and fraternity –which were nothing but slogans for the slaves in the colony of Saint Domingue –and showed the metropolitan French society how to materialize them. Like my good friend MrProdg would say, the man “stood for something and fought/died for it.”
What I am trying to convey to you reading this piece is to not let yourself caught in the game of words being played today. As long as there are freedom-fighters, there will always be demons, monsters, and terrorists, for, as I have said to you earlier, one man’s terrorist, demon and monster is another man’s freedom-fighter.
Dessalines, of course, was a demon and a monster for the people whose interests he was not defending and protecting. But we Haitians know that he was our freedom-fighter, and that is what should matter. We must not and will not allow anybody to come tell us otherwise. We already know what the deal is. The fact of the matter is, had he not done what he did to earn and secure our independence, the outcome would have been beneficial to the French, not to us Haitians. We would have still been today in physical and psychological bondage. If today some Haitians are still in psychological bondage, it is because of a choice they had made, not because they were forced to be.
So Dessalines was neither a demon nor a monster. He was a great, honorable and well-respected freedom-fighter. Anyone (non-Haitians and brainwashed Haitians) trying to demonize him by calling him all types of names can just go to hell. If I could deify him, I would. He was a “gason vanyan, neg ki pa konn rete ak moun.” May his soul rest in peace!
First, let me thank you, sir, for having left this video interview on my page on Facebook. At least, it gives me an idea as to where you stand on some of the key issues. You make sense in most of the things you said, but you left me a little perplexed for having not said a word with respect to the integration of the Diaspora in the development of the country and the reform of our system of justice. I understand the time allocated for this video interview may have not been a lot, but I think you missed a golden opportunity. How could you not be addressing these issues?
You talked about a program of job creation, and I think that is great. But how can you possibly think of any developmental plan without reaching out to the Diaspora, especially when we contribute over $2 Billion dollars a year to the country’s economy? We in the Diaspora have our own issues too, sir. We are tired of being economic contributors with no representation. We need to have a say in the internal politics of the country and have our own representation in Congress. And for all that to happen, the Haitian citizenship must be granted to us Haitians who happened to acquire the citizenship of our host countries.
In terms of the military, you are speaking my language -the return of the HAITIAN military to replace the MINUSTAH. I think that’s a must. You score some heavy points with that agenda item. To restore confidence in the foreign investors and the Haitian investors living in the DIASPORA, you have got to put the wave of insecurity under control. And so far, the UN troops currently occupying the country are not doing so. That was great to see you speaking in those terms.
You talked about a specialized intelligence agency to fight the corruptive practices in the public administration. I disagree wholeheartedly with you on that, sir. We don’t need another bureaucracy to fight corruption. We just have to enforce the law. By the way, don’t we have a Court Superieure des Comptes? It should be and it is the responsibility of that institution -to audit and investigate fraudulent practices in the public administration. Here in the US, we have an Inspector General (IG) inside almost every institution serving as watchdog to make sure things are being conducted according to the established internal rules, regulations and policies. So you don’t need another bureaucracy. We already have one. Let me tell you what we need. We need CAPITAL PUNISHMENT for these people. We need to be killing them. Once you prosecute and KILL five of them publicly, you will see if things will not be under control in a matter of weeks. I think you are a little too soft on this issue. I am for tough measures to fight corruption, especially in HAITI where it has become a CANCER. Well, again, I cannot blame you for your softness, for you are a politician running for office, meaning you have got to always be politically correct in your statements.
Well, though I disagree with your approach, unlike your rival Wilson Jeudy, at least you have a plan. That man plans on building a prison on the island of La gonave to jail the senators and other high government employees who are found guilty of stealing the people’s money. And the rationale behind that is that if the prison is destroyed and the prisoners are trying to escape, they will have the sharks in the sea waiting for them. That’s his plan to fight corruption. lol lol lol 😀 Excuse me, sir, if you see me laughing out so loud. This is the most ludicrous stuff I have ever heard in my life. lol lol lol lol lol 😀 I am sure you are now laughing too.
On the issue of taxation, I commend you for planning on working with our international friends to modernize our system at the General Bureau of Taxation (DGI) and train the staff there to make them more effective in their efforts to bring tax revenues into the country’s treasury. But I think it should be made a CRIME to not pay taxes in Haiti. Once we have the modernized system in place, we need to come up with laws to criminalize tax evasion. Then again, you cannot enforce something when you don’t have the system to do that. That would be foolish, would it not?
I see that you dodged the question on how to restore the authority of the state. You said: “Il faut moderniser l’etat” as though that is going to restore its authority. Yes, the computerization and modernization of our system is important, but I am not sure if it will restore the authority of the state.
I do agree with you on the necessity to strengthen the municipalities. The mayor in a city is the administrator, the president, the head of that city. If everything someone in the cities needs, it must be handled by somebody in Port-au-Prince, then what is the sense of having the local governments? Just have one central administration in Port-au-Prince and have everyone travel there for everything they want. Wait a minute!! Isn’t it the way it is now? What am I talking about? lol
Overall, it was a great interview. Many things you said I disagree with, but I do agree with you for the most part. Good luck, sir! You have a winning message. Just get out there and market it to see if the buyers will be interested in buying it.
P.S. Here are some issues –education, healthcare and agriculture -you slightly touched on but did not really get into details:
On the issue of public education, you only stated that 40% of our school age kids are not going to school. I would love to know what your plan is to remedy to this gruesome reality.
Health care is a serious situation in Haiti. You mentioned that many pregnant women in labor in Haiti are being transported on the back of a horse to get to the nearest health care center, which, in many instances, is located tens of miles away. I am wondering what you have in your social agenda to fix this health care disparity issue.
I did not hear you say anything about agriculture, a key component in our economy. Just let me know how important that is in your economic agenda. I hope it is somewhere to be found in your plan to reform our economy.
Both the Ugandan president, Mr. Yoweri Museveni, and Mr. David Bahati, a Ugandan lawmaker, are members of “The Family,” an American faith-based and anti-gay organization.
Ekspoze! -The final word 