Tag Archives: Haiti

Jan 6 2012

MOISE JEAN-CHARLES: SHOW US THE FACTS

Senator Moise Jean-Charles

A couple of months ago, for everyone who wanted to shake their tail, Moise Jean-Charles, the senator from the country’s northern district, was beating the “Pink Militia” drum to accuse President Martelly of constituting clandestinely his own illegal armed militia. After being challenged on many occasions by responsible members of the civil society, he backed off and trashed his baseless and ridiculous claim.

Just when everyone thought he was muzzled up and forced by his constituents in the North to do the job he was elected to the Senate to do, he is out again making noise. All this week, he has been touring almost all the media outlets in Port-au-Prince to market another one of his foolish and baseless diatribes. This time, he claims having conducted an “investigation” and the conclusion shows that President Martelly is a foreign citizen. I have a question for the senator, though: Senator, as someone who is elected by the Northern people to represent them in the country’s Senate, why don’t you do them a favor to officially publish the findings of your “investigation” to show all the FACTS you say you have in your possession to corroborate your claim?

I am dying to see these FACTS he claims having in his possession to prove President Martelly’s foreign citizenship. That is what I need to see, and that is when I will be convinced that, indeed, he is doing his job. All he has been doing since got to the people’s Senate is to engage in extrapolative work just to capture the spotlight and turn himself into the “superstar” of the chamber.

In my opinion, President Martelly must not give in; he must not cooperate with any investigation geared towards confirming his Haitian nationality; the Gaillot Dorsainvil Provisory Electoral Council had long taken care of that. They cannot say that the PEC knew of the president’s foreign citizenship and still gave him a free pass. That will not stick, not when we know all the machinations and trickeries these guys in the PEC and the Preval administration had gone through and how they had tried their hardest to torpedo his chances to win the election.

President Martelly must consider taking legal actions to force Senator Moise Jean-Charles to officially publish the findings of his “investigation.” In the event that he fails to do so, he must be prosecuted for libel or defamation of character. This is unacceptable. By his actions, he is doing the country a great disservice. He must stop engaging his office in doing extrapolative work, which endangers the stability and national security of the nation.

Dec 10 2011

HAITI MUST NOT BECOME A CRIME STATE

The only way for our laws to be respected is by forcing the prospective violators to respect them against their will. The question is, how can you do that? You do that by instilling in them fear of violating them. Again, how can you instill such a fear in the violators? Simple. You achieve that by punishing them SEVERELY when they do violate these laws. In other words, you make an example out of anyone who is brave enough to violate them.

Lawlessness and impunity are prescriptions for chaos and disaster. How can you possibly build a society of humans where people can do whatever they want, however and whenever? How can you possibly build a society in this 21st century where life holds no value? I don’t see how that can be possible. Well, those of you believing otherwise, maybe you know something I don’t know; I would love know it, too.

We cannot let these terrorists in Haiti have their way. Yes, criminals do have rights that must be respected and protected; however, so do the law-abiding citizens they are kidnapping, raping and murdering. Yes, these terrorists do have rights, except that the right to kidnap, rape and murder innocent citizens is not one of them.

How can you inspire safety and security in the investors (foreign and national) to come to invest in your economy when there is a high possibility for their kids and even them to be kidnapped, raped and even killed? Let’s not be dreaming; it will not happen. Business people are like migratory birds. They build their nets and lay their eggs wherever they can find their peace of mind. So if you want to attract them, you create the environment suitable for that.

Poverty is not an excuse to commit crimes. You don’t be going out there raping our women, kidnapping and murdering our innocent citizens to take away from them what they have worked so hard to accumulate over the years because you are poor. Haiti should not become a crime state. Therefore, all this nonsense going on over there MUST stop.

We cannot and must not be playing games with these terrorists terrorizing the population. When we do capture them, we have to make sure they get a fair trial because everybody, at the very least, deserves that. In the event that they are found guilty of the crime they are accused of, they must pay for it with their lives. We need to take them to a public place reserved just for that and set them ablaze or set their bodies on fire in broad daylight. Now we have a choice to make.

What impact is that going to have on the next person contemplating ways to rape another one of our women, kidnap and murder another one of our decent citizens? It is going to have a tremendous psychological impact: it is going to instill in the rest of the terrorists fear of carrying the next deviant and criminal act because they will forever know that the probability for them to get caught and receive the same treatment is highly likely.

Dec 8 2011

THE PLEA FOR A MONOLINGUAL HAITI

Culturally speaking, the French are losing ground in Haiti; the Americans are killing them. The Haitian society is at a stage of cultural reengineering. How long it is going to take for that to settle in is beyond my pay grade.

50 years from today, I think English could become a national language, which to me would be ridiculous. It would be really revolting. That’s why I have been advocating for a monolingual Haiti -a nation of one national language.

Language is the gateway to the world. The more language our kids can effectively speak, the better off they are. Therefore, while Creole should be the sole language officially recognized by our Constitution, since the world is becoming more and more inclusive and integrated, we also must prepare our future generations to compete globally.

We must strongly enforce the teaching of these three foreign languages -French, English and Spanish -in our schools as early as possible to the very last level of the student’s academic journey.

Such measure will be in Haiti’s best interest because, with that, we will no longer have the language-based divided society as we have it today, making most of us Haitians a bunch of foreigners in our own country.

Let’s say 50 years from now English becomes a national language just like French is one today and 200 years from now Spanish becomes overtly influential in Haiti, are we going to keep amending our Constitution to make languages national depending on which one is up and which one is down? That to me would be preposterous. That’s why it makes sense to have a monolingual nation to spare us all this ridiculousness.

Only when we all speak the same language and everything that we do as a nation is executed in that language will we begin to talk of a united Haiti, and only then will we see that all of us Haitians able to come together as one to do what we must do to better our country. Until then, keep dreaming.

Nov 3 2011

WAY FOR MARTELLY TO DEFUSE THE BOMB

Haitian President Michel J. Martelly

When President Martelly returns to the country from his week-long trip in the United States, he will have to address the nation to state his administration’s position on the contention between the executive and the legislative –generated by the arrest on Thursday afternoon of Deputy Arnel Belizaire at the Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince as he was entering the country from his trip in France.

This speech will be the most important and delicate one he will ever have to deliver since he got in the National Palace six months ago, for it will have the potential to make or break his presidency.

The situation in Haiti as we speak is like a bomb that is ticking and needs to be defused as soon as possible. That means time is of the essence; there is absolutely no time to waste. As he is going to try his best to defuse it, he will have to be extremely careful to not let the unexpected worst occur.

My advice to him is to not try to pass the blame on anyone. The only best way for him to appease the situation and send everyone home with a happy face is to take personal responsibility for what happened and admit it was a technical faux pas in the way the prosecutor, Mr. Felix Leger, went about to carry out the order that was explicitly given to him.

Not only does he need to give the reasons as to why what he intended doing did not work out as expected, he also needs to include the nature of the miscalculation. Otherwise, he will have a hard time to get himself out of it and put the situation behind him.

There is nothing more humble when a leader is strong enough to be honest with his people to admit his missteps; the people love that. This will make him come out as a strong man, a man of character willing to go down so his lieutenants could be safe from enemy fire. That is, indeed, what responsible and resolute leaders do when the though gets going.

All responsible leaders mess up at some point in time during their tenure in command. And when they do, they always take personal responsibility because the bulk always stops with them. Only the coward ones pass the blame on their subordinates. President Kennedy, for instance, took full personal responsibility in the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster.

Less than three months after President Kennedy took office, in April of 1961, as the United States wakening from the embarrassing disaster at the Bay of Pigs, when CIA-backed Cuban exiles hit the beaches of their home country only to face defeat in their attempts to overthrow the Fidel Castro government in Cuba, Kennedy took full personal responsibility for the disaster. He did not try to blame it on anybody but himself. In his address to the nation, he eloquently said: “I am the responsible officer of the government.” The strategy paid off. He then got his highest approval rating of his presidency -83% in the Gallup Poll.

President Kennedy, then a newly elected president, per most historians’ accounts, made many mistakes in his handling of the Bay of Pigs invasion. But he learned very quickly from them to better himself for the job he was elected to do for the country.

Politics is a learning profession, meaning politicians learn how to respond to issues and adapt as they go.  There is no one silver bullet or blueprint as to how to avoid and solve all problems. Each issue is unique in its own genre.

So this is President Martelly’s crisis to deal with just like the Bay of Pigs disaster was President Kennedy’s embarrassment to deal with. Like President Kennedy, President Martelly has a lot of learning do. The way he will respond to this issue will tell a lot of his character. I can only hope he does the right thing, what all responsible leaders would do in his situation –taking personal responsibility and not trying to pass the blame on anyone. That is how trust and confidence that leadership will be better in the future is instilled.

Sep 16 2011

MY POSITION ON THE CHOICE OF GARY CONILLE

It really irks me to witness the level of enthusiasm with which some of my fellow Haitians are arguing that the choice of Dr. Gary Conille for the Prime Minister position is that of the “blan,” decrying the interference of the international community in the internal affairs of the country. Oh please!!! Spare me your lame nationalist verbosity. You praise the blan’s actions only when they go in your favor and denigrate them when they don’t.

Tell me… not that I am condoning the meddling of the international community in the country’s domestic affairs, but when do things happen in Haiti for the international community not to have a say in it? You could not even organize an election –the simplest thing; they had to step in to force you to get it right and respect the people’s will, yet you want to be left alone so you could further embarrass the nation. Please get off the nationalist high horse you are riding on before you fall off and break your spine.

The people of Haiti did not send troops to come to get President Aristide, the country’s constitutionally elected, and send him into exile in South Africa for seven long and depressing years. When that happened, all you today’s so-called nationalists who were against Aristide were acclaiming the United States for “liberating” the country from the paws of the former president. The interference was great and liberating for you then, wasn’t it? And now you are against it? Give me a break.

Now that President Martelly chooses Dr. Conille, a United Nations functionary, you are making all types of ridiculous allegations arguing that he is the choice of the “blan” and does not respond to the residency requirement as stated in the article 157 of the 1987 Constitution. So what he is the choice of the international community!!! If or when you are acting like a bunch of fools who don’t know how to act, your neighbors, whom you share the neighborhood with, must come together to force you to act a certain way that could guarantee their safety and security. Start acting grown, no one will have the need to get in your business and treat you like a bunch of insane kids on an elementary schoolyard.

From a global relations perspective, political instability in one country directly or indirectly tends to endanger the stability of other countries. Do you really think the international community is going to sit with its hands and legs crossed watching you, with the level of instability in your country, putting in jeopardy the security and stability of the other countries in the region? If you think that is going to happen, think again.

If the international community must step in to prevent the country from falling deeper into the abyss you fools have plunged it, I say go for it. They will stop getting in our business when we learn how to handle our business as grownups, not as a bunch of insane little kids. So needless to say, I welcome with open arms the choice of Dr. Gary Conille for Prime Minister. The country is psychologically tired and cannot afford to go through another round of ratification process of another Prime Minister. I join my voice with those of many concerned citizens and grassroots organizations inside the country and in the Diaspora to demand that Dr. Conille be ratified urgently so we can start moving forward with the materialization of President Martelly’s vision for the country.

Aug 25 2011

BELLERIVE: POLITICAL SUICIDE FOR MARTELLY

Jean Max Bellerive, Haitian Prime Minister

The political landscape in the Haitian legislature, in terms of power distribution and concentration, is looking dull on President Martelly’s side of the spectrum. With no political weight in the Parliament to begin with, it appears very impossible for him to get his choice for Prime Minister ratified -unless he accepts to compromise to pull a majority in the Parliament.

So like President Obama did after he lost the House of Representatives to the Republicans last November, President Martelly must compromise. That’s the political reality of the moment. Now that we know he must compromise, the issue is how he should compromise.

It has been noise in many political circles on the ground in Haiti that President Martelly may be opting for Bellerive to stay as Prime Minister. I strongly oppose to such idea. I hope it is nothing but a rumor, for it will not play well politically for the president.

Keeping Bellerive in his function as Prime Minister is political suicide for Martelly. The president should remember that he campaigned and got elected on the promise to break ties with the corruptive and failed Preval-Bellerive administration.

There is a reason why the people did not elect Preval’s protégé –Jude Celestin. The reason is simple: they did not want a continuity of the failure of the Preval-Bellerive administration. Let us not fool ourselves! Bellerive and Preval are the two sides of the same coin.

The people have already rejected Bellerive and his acolytes, why recycling them? Imagine what would have happened to Obama if the US had the same system of government as Haiti and he had decided to choose Dick Cheney as his Prime Minister. It would have been political suicide for him, would it have not?

President Martelly, as politically weak as he is now, needs to be very careful to not lose his political base –his only political strength. His political base is all that he has to live and die for. Losing that will render him very vulnerable to sustain the political storms he will have to endure during his term in office. So I am urging him to be very careful.

We are experiencing Bellerive fatigue; therefore, President Martelly should look the other way.

It is good for the sake of political psychology to have a fresh face in the Prime Minister position, explaining the reason why the Bellerive option has got to be off the table. Such will play in the president’s political best interest in terms of bragging points.

Recycling Bellerive would be like a political capitulation for the president, who had made it clear many times that Bellerive is a bad card -the continuity of the failure of the previous administration. For him to turn around and recycle Bellerive, that will be very bad for him politically speaking. So he must not go with that “bouyon rechofe.”

If I were to advise him, I would honestly convince him to go with Jean Henry Ceant, the former presidential candidate, for the Prime Minister position -just for the sake of compromise.

The question you may be asking is, why Jean Henry Ceant?

Politically speaking, Ceant, whom many see as a disguised Lavalas sympathizer, seems to be a guy who could inspire confidence and trust on both sides of the political fence. He is what you would call a political centrist with a high degree of political commonsense and cleverness. Do you sense what that means? It means that his choice could appeal to a strong majority in the Parliament, which is eminently necessary for him to be ratified.

Furthermore, since he was a presidential candidate in the last contest, I do not think there could be issues with his record -proof of nationality, proof of residency, criminal background, tax document, etc… as required by the Constitution. Those should have already been cleared by the officers of the Provisory Electoral Council (PEC).

I would definitely urge the president to push the Ceant card hard to pass the congressional gridlock. Ceant seems to be a consensus builder. If/when ratified, he will have the mandate to join head with the president to build a hybrid government to represent all the sectors of the nation’s political life in an effort to implement the president’s vision for the country.

This hybrid government will have a clear agenda to execute in a realistic time frame. It will have to:

1. work along with the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (ICRH) to take care of the housing projects for the victims of the earthquake;

2. bring the rampant insecurity under control;

3. revamp our economy by encouraging and/or attracting private investments, developing our sector of tourism, promoting our national production, reforming our agriculture, etc…

Finally, the political conjuncture in Haiti is called for compromise to solve the political stalemate (between the executive and the legislative) the country has been in since the inauguration of President Martelly, who does not have any political leverage do get anything done in the Parliament. President Martelly must compromise, but not compromise at any cost, making the idea of recycling Bellerive unacceptable and unpalatable. So the choice of a centrist in the caliber of former presidential candidate Jean Henry Ceant for the Prime Minister job -to build a consensus and inspire trust and confidence on both sides of the political spectrum -makes plenty of political sense. In all earnest, we are Bellerive fatigued. NO MORE BELLERIVE!!!

Aug 11 2011

JOBS: PR SPECIALIST NEEDED IN NU-LOOK!!!

Nu-Look, Haitian Konpa band

Nu-Look, Haitian Konpa band

NU-LOOK is not a rookie band. After so many years in the business, one does expect better and more from them. Some public relations missteps or rookie PR mistakes coming from their ranks are unacceptable. For such a high profile band, their PR sucks, meaning mediocre and subpar. And that is very sad.

First, it was the verbal exchange at that NU-LOOK party in Florida that involved a certain ROMEO STARK, whom Kompamagazine identifies as a journalist, and MAESTRO ARLY that made the press; then came the saga between MAESTRO ARLY and ALIX NOZILE, the band’s congas player. All in one night. See interview: http://bit.ly/piNsqj and http://bit.ly/rrzBTG

I cannot remember when was the last time I stumbled on a press release from NU-LOOK. In the midst of all this bad press the band has been getting as a result of these two incidents in one night, one would expect the band’s PR staffer, if there is one that is, to be on top of his/her game and issue an official press release to zero on the issues, explain exactly what went down that night and put the matters to rest. No, that would be too formal and professional for them.

Almost two weeks after the incidents, not one official press release from the band has made its way into the media. All we have got thus far is a bunch of conflicting statements from members of the band -RORO, PIPO and ALIX NOZILE -and this guy ROMEO STARK. Meanwhile the band is being slammed left and right in the press by people who have been waiting for it to make a blunder to run with it.

A new issue has currently made the surface of the ocean: ALIX NOZILE and his immigration status. There is a cloud of uncertainty and confusion surrounding this guy’s immigration papers, it is not even funny. For years, that man has not been able to travel overseas with the band because of his “undocumented alien” status. Not too long ago, he came out publicly on Kompamagazine with the news that he had obtained his green card, which everybody was happy to hear. Wouldn’t anyone expect his overseas traveling to be a done deal?

So will he be traveling to Haiti with the band or not? That’s the mystery of it all. Not even RORO IRENE, the band’s gongist, who has been with NU-LOOK since the early days of its inception, could answer that question. When Kompamagazine asked him to answer the question, in a dumbfounded twist, he put it like this: “I will know the answer to that on August 4th just like everybody else.” http://bit.ly/pQJ1Cp So even he does not have a clue as to whether ALIX NOZILE has his legal residency papers or not to travel overseas.

If management, in coordination with the PR staffer, was doing its job, why should the veracity of the news about ALIX NOZILE’s immigration papers coming to terms be questioned and challenged in the press, thereby making him (Nozile) look like a ridiculous joke? Shouldn’t management have physically seen his papers, made photocopy of and kept them in his file? Once confirmed, shouldn’t management have issued a press release to inform the press of this new development? I guess that would have been too much on Dolf Chancy, the manager of the band.

NU-LOOK’s PR glitch is life threatening. Enough with the PR indiscipline! Enough with the rookie mistakes! So They need someone on board badly with the required skills to take care of their PR and institute PR discipline in the band. This is as urgent as a heart attack. If they do not move quickly and proceed intelligently with a sense of urgency on that to correct the deficiencies, I could foresee disaster in their ranks. The ball is now in their court to do whatever they see fit. At the end of the day, it will be their business that will be effected, not mine.

Aug 4 2011

THE ERA OF LAVALAS IS OVER

Only in Haiti could a guy like MOISE JEAN-CHARLES, the Senator from the Northern District of the country, someone who can barely read and write his name, find himself in a position where he could humiliate a highly educated and qualified man (with a doctorate degree in law and years of leadership experience) in the caliber of BERNARD H. GOUSSE, who was chosen by PRESIDENT MARTELLY to lead the country’s government. Unfortunately, he got voted down in the Senate by the 16 LAVALAS senators.

Thanks to ARISTIDE and PREVAL, the fathers of the LAVALAS philosophy, such a character could be in the Senate -the respectable chamber of the wises -to legislate in a country as ill and desperate as Haiti, where values such as integrity, honesty, professionalism and savoir-faire should be praised and honored. That’s what “change” as envisioned and promoted by LAVALAS means.

We Haitians would be really dumb and stupid to bring these LAVALAS guys back in power again, seriously. In all earnest, we should be having billboards all over the country that read in bold and capital letters “THE ERA OF LAVALAS IS OVER!”

After 25 years, no one can keep blaming DUVALIER for the quagmire LAVALAS -with Aristide and Preval -has plunged the country in. We had voted these guys in power with hopes they would come and do better than DUVALIER; unfortunately, they failed the country miserably. They brought us institutionalized corruption, organized crimes (chimères, kidnapping, rape, etc…) and lawlessness. That was, indeed, an avalanche the country had experienced; it left behind a chaotic state, and it will take us decades to bring it back to its state of normalcy.

Obviously, after the collapse of the DUVALIER regime, we, as a people, have proven our incapacity to do better. That’s why for the past 20 years, we had 4 terms of LAVALAS. In other words, we had voted in power nothing but these guys to literally emulate the system of corruption and organized and systematic violence they had been criticizing the Duvalierists for. I guess we could not do any better.

LAVALAS -the political movement said embedded in the philosophy of Justice, Transparency and Participation, which most of us stood for and strongly supported in 1990 (the year that witnessed the emergence of ARISTIDE to power in Haiti), sadly, had been substituted with ignorance, stupidity and mediocrity.

This time, my fellow Haitians, let us challenge ourselves by showing to the international community watching us that we can do better by yelling loud and clear at the top of our lungs “THE ERA OF LAVALAS IS OVER!”

We will not and must not forget. So for the record, here are the names of the 16 LAVALAS senators who rejected in the Senate the choice of BERNARD H. GOUSSE for prime minister:

01- Exius Piierre francky (South)
02- Sainvil Francois Lucas (Northwest)
03- Privert Jocelerme (Nippes)
04- Lebon Fritz Carlos (South)
05- Lambert Joseph (Southeast)
06- Lambert Wenceslass (Southeast)
07- John Joseph Joel (West)
08- Bastien Kelly C (North)
09- Cassy Nenel (Nippes)
10- Pierre Louis Derex Lucien (Northeast)
11- Bien Aime Jean Baptiste (Northeast)
12- Moise Jean Charles (North)
13- Wesner Polycarpe (North)
14- Buissereth Yvon (South)
15- Desras Simon Dieuseul (Central)
16- Beauplan Evalliere (Northwest)

For the record, the following is the integral text of GOUSSE’s reaction after he lost the bet of becoming the country’s Prime Minister:

PROMESSES D’AVENIR

Haïti: Chers Amis Compatriotes,

Le Sénat a pris une décision qui met malheureusement fin au cheminement qui devait me permettre de me mettre au service de mon pays. Malheureusement … mais momentanément.

Ma désignation a soulevé un débat public salutaire où les forces saines de la population se sont exprimées en faveur du bien, de la vie, de l’éducation, contre le mal absolu incarné dans une barbarie s’étant abattue éhontément sur les bébés, les femmes âgées, les petites marchandes et les ouvriers.

Je remercie Monsieur le Président de la République, Michel J. Martelly, d’avoir désiré m’associer à l’oeuvre de son mandat populaire.

Je remercie les parents et amis qui n’ont jamais fléchi dans leur support. Je remercie surtout les anonymes rencontrés dans les rues, sur les places, qui, discrètement mais chaleureusement, m’ont encouragé dans un combat qui était devenu le leur.

Je remercie aussi mes compatriotes sénateurs du groupe des 16 pour la publicité faite autour de mon nom avec un zèle quotidien dont n’aurait pu faire preuve la meilleure agence de publicité. J’ai pu grâce à eux me prouver à moi-même et démontrer à mes compatriotes mon endurance à garder le font haut et la tête altière, le regard porté vers un destin collectif de grandeur, indifférent aux crachats et aux vulgaires piaillements. Je ne manquerai donc pas de leur faire parvenir leurs honoraires s’ils me soumettent une facture pour un travail décidément bien fait.

Le débat parlementaire du 2 août 2011 a permis que des sénateurs désintéressés défendissent le droit et les valeurs morales avec une opiniâtreté, un panache et une éloquence pour lesquels je les félicite. Ils n’ont pas été vaincus et ont, j’espère, suscité des vocations de parlementaires valeureux, nourris de courage et de science. La défaite fut celle, éphémère, du droit, et celle, peut-être définitive, de l’honneur du Sénat, alors que languissent sous les tentes et dans les masures, dans les écoles comme dans les conseils d’administration, dans une patience de plus en plus ténue, les espoirs déçus d’une Haïti studieuse, travailleuse et reconstruite.

Le combat dans lequel je suis engagé dépasse désormais ma personne ; je ne peux l’abandonner. L’horizon de ce combat ne s’arrête pas à la question de premier ministre. Le temps est venu pour que la dignité, le travail honnête et l’éducation soient les valeurs proposées en exemple et récompensées, pour que soient vaincues l’immoralité, la corruption, les richesses spontanées et l’arrogante ignorance.

La vie publique bien conçue, en dépit de ses vicissitudes, mérite que l’on s’y consacre quand la guident l’accès généralisé aux services sociaux de base, la modernisation de l’Etat, la libération des énergies créatrices et surtout le regain de la dignité nationale.

Je resterai donc parmi vous
Au revoir

GPR, Gousse Pi Rèd.

Jul 16 2011

PRESIDENT MARTELLY IS RAISING THE HEAT, EVALLIERE BEAUPLAN IS SCARED

PRESIDENT MARTELLY should have done this long ago -raising the heat by a) campaigning across the country selling his choice for Prime Minister to the people and b) exposing the tactics of the GPR-INITE parliamentarians wanting to literally torpedo his administration. Now EVALLIERE BEAUPLAN, one of the 16 senators hostile to GOUSSE, the president’s pick for Prime Minister, is feeling the heat, according to this article on Radiokiskeya.com. http://bit.ly/pyvik1

BEAUPLAN is so scared now that he is making false threats to PRESIDENT MARTELLY. He made it clear that if the president dissolves the legislature, his presidency will not last 24 hours; Martelly did not say a word about dissolving the Congress. This is proof that BEAUPLAN is feeling the heat. That’s a good sign.

This is a battle the president should fight and win by using a clear battle strategy -keep making the case for GOUSSE and exposing the strategy of the GPR-INITE guys as you are multiplying the talks and consultations. As I said before, you don’t “negotiate” from a position of weakness.

PRESIDENT MARTELLY must keep dragging his feet. Time is his best weapon right about now. He needs to keep slowing the process of sending GOUSSE before the Parliament; the longer the process lasts, the more the heat will mount on the GPR-INITE lawmakers. And he must not stop blaming them for the worsening of the people’s situation.

While the pressure is mounting on the GPR-INITE bloc, he needs to intensify the talks and consultations so that the people and the international community could see that he is trying his very best to “negotiate” with the legislature to pass the congressional gridlock and start solving the people’s problems.

In the logic of keeping the talks and consultations going, he needs to have a meeting with PREVAL and the leadership of the GPR-INITE group to attempt to find a solution to the crisis. PREVAL owns these slaves; therefore, he must have a talk with the master.

Time is on the president’s side of the spectrum. The longer this lasts, the better it is for him politically. He must not capitulate and be quick to raise the white flag. I foresee he will win this fight and come out of it politically stronger than ever before.

This is a psychological warfare; therefore, it must be fought and won psychologically. As long as he keeps selling his guy to the people across the country, denouncing the strategy of the GPR-INITE group and multiplying the consultations, he will be alright.

Jul 12 2011

MARTELLY NEEDS TO PUT ON SOME WEIGHT

Politics is a weight game; if you are politically weak, do not get on the field trying to play it. Otherwise, you are going to get badly and shamefully injured.

As it stands now, President Martelly is politically weak and frail; his political base is totally unstructured and unorganized. He needs to work on putting on some political weight (in parallel) as he is tackling many things at once.

If I were to advise him, I would tell him to put in place a committee of political strategists and experts to work on the formation of a structured political party to solidify and strengthen his political base. That party should be heavily active and represented in the country and in the Diaspora.

If you take a glance at the makeup of the Parliament, you will quickly realize that President Martelly has no real political weight in there. So that is bad business for him. He needs to work on changing the makeup of that body as soon as possible.

The only democratic way the makeup of our legislature can be changed is through democratic elections. And the only way he can have people sharing his philosophy of change in that body is if and only if he has a solid political party that could get them elected in the next elections.

President Martelly ran a campaign on the promise to change our politics, develop our economy and revolutionize our society. All these things he promised could be just empty rhetoric if he does not have a political structure in place.

Revolutions (political, economic and social) take time to mature. In other words, you do not see the results of a revolutionary movement in five years -the presidential term of service in Haiti. This is something that could take a quarter of a century before you start seeing results.

So President Martelly needs to have that structure in place that could carry the spirit and philosophy of that vision of change beyond his term in office. That is what you call durable and sustainable change.

It is going to be very difficult for the President to advance his political agenda without a majority in the legislature to back him up. That is how politics works. So he must sit down with the GPR-Inite concentration in the Parliament to see how they can work out their differences and arrive at a consensus on the choice of the Prime Minister to pass this congressional gridlock.

Let us face it. After President Obama lost the House of Representatives to the Republicans last November, the game has changed; the political calculus has shifted. So he had to put on hold some elements of his ambitious progressive agenda to deal with the conservative leadership in Congress. That’s exactly what President Martelly is going to have to do for the time being -until he strengthens his ranks and gets his troops in the chambers of Congress.

My political instinct tells me that more than likely Gousse is not going to be ratified. If my prediction is right, President Martelly is going to have to designate someone else to be his Prime Minister. This time, he should ask the GPR-Inite elements to do two things:

1) Write down the profile of someone they would ratify without a doubt (hopefully, this is something all the parties would agree upon)

2) Send over to him a list of five names of people they would ratify, which he could choose the Prime Minister from.

Once he secures these two things from the Parliament, he will form an independent team of trusted experts/advisers to thoroughly vet each and every single one of them. Once the vetting process is over, they will recommend the best and most suitable person for the job to him. Then that is the name he will send forth to Senator Joazil -the President of the General Assembly.

The GPR-Inite guys cannot continue to play their game for long. Eventually, that game they are playing will get old; they will be running out of options. The President needs to play with a winning state of mind that game these guys are playing. He needs to be patient and stay focused on getting the head of his government ratified, solidifying his political base and changing the makeup of the Parliament so he could get his political, economic and social reforms on the way.