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Same old Haiti

Critical failures, key government officials unable to make decisions, and lack of presidential leadership. Sound familiar?

Federal News Network Staff

August 9, 2010 2:55 pm

2 min read

A friend just returned from Haiti on a relief mission with his church. He has held state and federally elected offices and has managed a large institution and works now in the private sector. He is no slouch as an observer of government.

I asked him about his trip and what he thought of Haiti’s progress in recovering from the horrendous earthquake last January. His answer was quick and blunt.

“The biggest problem in Haiti is its damn government,” he said disgustedly.

He then began to list some of the things he heard and saw.

There was a new, 600-tent city built by United States aid groups. The tents were tents, but they had wooden floors, electricity, and other necessities and the city had a sewer system. It was also empty, surrounded by a guarded fence.

Across the road was another tent city, this one squalid and ready to collapse in the first storm. It was jammed with poor and destitute people.

Why, my friend asked a non-Haitian relief official, didn’t the people in the makeshift settlement move into the new one? Someone in government hadn’t been bribed, yet, was the answer.

My friend heard from another outside donor that $7 million raised in one of the American, relief telethons had disappeared. No one knew where it was. Just gone.

Before my friend’s trip, a client who manufactured homes had offered to give a number of houses to Haiti to relieve the crushing housing shortage. The company was told that to get through customs, it would have to pay a “fee” worth a third of the value of the homes, either in cash or kind. No deal, said the company.

My friend’s stories came on the heels of a U.S. Senate report chaired by Sen. John Kerry. Senator Kerry was diplomatic in his words, but a reader could feel the heat coming off the document.

He said, “There are worrisome signs that the rebuilding process in Haiti has stalled.” The earlier urgent “commitment to prevent a return to the dysfunctional, unsustainable ways of life past” had “subsided.”

The reported lists critical failures including inaction on land ownership, key government officials unable to make decisions, and lack of presidential leadership.

“Fundamentally,” wrote Senator Kerry, “Haitians want to know how they re going to be able to earn a living and send their children to school. Right now these questions remained unanswered. The lack of a plan and the failure to build political support for one makes even small obstacles seem difficult.”

Americans would like to have answers on the same things. But after listening to my friend, it sounds like the same old Haiti is what the Haitian and American people are getting.