Tag Archives: Le Nouvelliste

Jun 17 2015

President Martelly Has Made a Mockery of Himself

President Martelly and former Prime Minister Lamothe not looking too happy.

President Martelly and former Prime Minister Lamothe not looking too happy.

In an article entitled Michel Martelly: “J’avais dit à Sophia et à Lamothe qu’ils ne pouvaient pas être candidats à la presidence” [in English, Michel Martelly: “I had told Sophia and Lamothe they could not be presidential candidates”] published on Monday, June 15, 2015 in Le Nouvelliste, Haiti’s only daily newspaper, President Martelly stated: “I had instructed Lamothe that he would not be my candidate for president because I had realized that we were going to have elections with political parties not so comfortable with the idea of him being my candidate, which would give him the competitive edge over his opponents. It was important for me to instill trust in the candidates and credibility in the system so that everyone would believe they could win.”

What a load of charade! Who are his political advisers? If this strategy came from his gang of advisers, all of them ought to be fired? I do not want to think he had acted on his own, without consulting with his advisers on political affairs. I really do not want to think that.

How do you instill trust and credibility in an electoral system, Mr. President?

That’s the one-million-dollar question we need to answer. Mr. President, you instill trust and credibility in an electoral system by making sure that the electoral institution operates in full transparency and fairness, which will level the playing field for all the players in the game. As the guarantor of all the state institutions, Mr. President, that is part of your constitutional prerogatives.

It is expected of every sitting president to choose someone in their entourage who is electable [with a positive track record] to represent their party in an electoral contest. It was expected of President George H. W. Bush to endorse Vice President Dan Quayle for president; it was expected of President Bill Clinton to endorse Vice President Al Gore’s candidacy for president to succeed him. For the sake of ideological continuity, Mr. President, that is what sitting presidents are expected to do. And doing so would not compromise in any shape or form trust and credibility in the electoral system itself.

It is like telling me you are the general of an army going to war with a potential enemy and decide to leave behind your best warriors, those you can count on to take your army to victory. What kind of a general are you, and what kind of a battle strategy are you executing?

Choosing Lamothe would not have guaranteed him a win. For him to win, he would have relied on his political astuteness to put together a winning strategy. Since I have been following presidential politics, I have witnessed candidates endorsed by sitting presidents losing elections all the time. The opposition could have won running against Lamothe. They would have bet on the effectiveness of their campaign strategy to frame their political arguments against him.

Further down in the article, almost close to the end, he said about Lamothe: “Lamothe may have more ardor than me and be more hi-tech than I am, but be careful; it’s neither being hi-tech nor having money that makes me but rather my profundity and grandeur.”

Was this statement necessary, seriously? This is puerile thinking, to say the least. It really downgrades the president’s character. It shows me that he is not concerned about the future of the country; he is more concerned about his ego, his delusion of grandeur.

Nothing stops Martelly from being hi-tech. He can always be so if he wants. In that statement, he comes across as someone who is envious of Lamothe for who he is and what he is. There is a level grotesqueness we do not expect our heads of state to stoop to.

Mr. President, with all due respect, you have made a blunder. Please admit it. Find a better excuse to justify your decision next time. And until you find one that makes sense, you should not be talking to the press on that matter, for the more you do, the more you will be making ridiculous and embarrassing revelations.

Oct 7 2010

WYCLEF: A GOLDEN BULLET NOT TO BE WASTED

Some people could say, and rightly so, that I was too harsh on Wyclef when he had declared his candidacy for the presidency in Haiti. Yes, I was, and I had my personal reason for that. Most of us, and possibly including Wyclef, knew that he was not quite ready to lead the country at this very unique and unprecedented socio-political juncture in the country’s history. In spite of that, we had the same people -who were using Aristide as a political card for their own selfish political agendas only to turn their backs on him right in the middle of the raging sea, when the game got tough -on the forefront catapulting Wyclef again as a political card. I and many others said not this time.

Wyclef is a VALUABLE ammunition which we cannot afford seeing wasted. I was fiercely opposing the idea of having him then running for the presidency. In a sense, it was good sport for him to have tested the waters to have a sense of what he needs to prepare himself for the job. I had been writing extensively on the issue, and thank God it seems as though he has been listening, which is a great thing.

Wyclef has proven to us that he is a fighter, and he does not take defeat lightly. As a fighter on the battlefield, that’s what you do -you assess your defeats to find the causes, correct them, and engage the enemy again with a winning state of mind.

After his defeat by the PREVAL Provisory Electoral Council (PPEC), I wrote to advise him to start his campaign for 2015 the day of. That’s what you do as a politician who believes in a dream to transform the face of your country and the situation of your constituents. So Wyclef started his campaign for 2015 the day he got rejected by the PPEC.

In this election cycle, Wyclef was facing two uphill battles –the legal battle and the perception battle. So he is working on making sure that in 2015, if he will have to endure battles, they are not the ones he just got defeated in.

  1. He lost the legal battle because he could not prove that he was legally residing in the country for five consecutive years following the last presidential election as stated in the Constitution of the land. This is an easy fix. All he has to do is to be in compliance with the law by maintaining his residency in Haiti. He needs to get his lawyer’s counsel on how to go by doing that.
  2. We all know that in politics, whether you want to admit it or not, perception is reality. So on the perception front, he was being hammered left and right by the people who did not think he was educated enough, who did not think he met the intellectual profile of someone worthy to be considered as president. This could be a little toughy, for it is not really easy to change people’s perceptions of you. But he is working on that. The last report I have come in contact with confirmed that he is looking forward to attending Brown University, one of the best institutions of higher learning in the United States. On Tuesday, October 5, 2010, he twitted:   “I Had a great day Yesterday [at] BRown University and look forward to being a Great student and learn as much as I can to take back home.”  
  3. When he was complaining on Facebook about nothing being done to remove the rubbles after nine months of the earthquake, in my blog on Facebook, I wrote “Wyclef: Let Me Holler at You” and slammed him (http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=907295022&notes_tab=app_2347471856#!/note.php?note_id=441370712272). My argument was that as a leader, when you see something needs to be done, and you have the means to mobilize and motivate the people and get them to make it happen, you act on it; you don’t complain about things not being done. He is doing exactly that, according to Le Nouvelliste of Tuesday, October 05, 2010 (http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article.php?PubID=1&ArticleID=84221&PubDate=2010-10-05). He has been very active with his organization Yele creating jobs and giving his people on the ground a chance to live better days in a society where desperateness and hopelessness are sapping the inner lives of the people.    

The therapeutic way to cure one’s fear is to have him/her face it, not running away from it. I remember vividly just like it was yesterday that when I was a little boy growing up in Gonaives, Haiti, I was so afraid of “lamayot” that one day I came across one and literally defecated on me. My mother, who found out about the accident, felt embarrassed and decided to do something about it. One Sunday afternoon, she, who did not have any clinical psychology experience to know what she was doing, brought the “lamayot” in the house and had me face, touch and talk to him. And that was the end of my fear of “lamayots” until today. I say all this to say one thing: I want Wyclef to be back PREPARED in 2015 to face and overcome the challenge.

Wyclef is a golden bullet my generation has in its political arsenal which we cannot afford to see going into waste at this early stage in his political career. I do not know what the future has in the bank for him, but I want you to keep eyes on him. He will be back roaring stronger and louder than ever before.