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20th
Feburary 2010
France in
Haiti: A fresh start by Sarkozy?
 At
last a French President visited Haiti –
a country that contributed greatly to France’s
accumulation of wealth in the 18th Century and
which France impoverished for a century after
that.
Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in devastated Haiti
on February 17, a month and five days after
a massive earthquake ravaged the Capital, Port-au-Prince
killing more than 200,000 people; maiming tens
of thousands of others, and wreaking billions
of dollars in damage.
The extent of the damage and loss of life in
Haiti were undoubtedly due to the country’s
lack of physical infrastructure and its poor
building standards, neither of which could be
accomplished in a situation where 70 percent
of its gross domestic product was paid over
to France for over a century.
This is not to ignore the excesses of Haitian
governments, particularly under the Duvaliers,
which also deprived the country of monies that
should have been pumped into constructing infrastructure,
providing education and health facilities, and
establishing regulatory bodies to ensure higher
standards across a range of activity including
the construction of buildings.
The harsh imposition by France of a levy of
90 million gold francs, which Haiti did not
finish repaying until 1947, also does not excuse
recent Haitian governments and political parties
for failing to spend aid funds on an agreed
and country-wide development programme instead
of on narrow political interests.
Indeed, on any programme for constructing a
new Haiti – both in a physical and societal
sense – Haitian governments should be
mindful that not only the Haitian people but
the entire international community will want
guaranteed machinery to ensure that aid money
is spent on sustainable development.
The challenge is huge. Taking Haiti off the
world’s “sick man” list is
not a short-term or cheap affair. The Inter-American
Development Bank (IDB) has calculated that the
rebuilding programme will cost US$14 billion
and will take at least 10 years.
And, while there have been mountainous pledges
of assistance from many governments as television
images riveted the eyes of the world on Haiti,
experience of previous disasters elsewhere in
the world teaches that pledges often fall by
the way side as soon as the cameras move on.
Acknowledging “the wounds of colonization”
and saying that he knows well “the story
of our countries on the question of debt”,
President Sarkozy , in addition to cancelling
all of Haiti’s US$77 million debt to France,
also promised to provide aid of US$400 million
over the next two years. Included in the aid
package is US$40 million in support of the Haitian
government’s budget.
This latter commitment was warmly welcomed by
Haiti’s Prime Minister, Jean-Max Bellerive
who described it as “crucial” and
added: It means we are going to use it the way
we want”. The Prime Minister’s statement
is understandable given that the government
has to try to provide some basic services, such
as policing, to the country in circumstances
where government revenues must be very little.
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But the question
still arises as to whether the French government’s
pledge to Haiti is enough.
Haiti’s exiled former President Jean
Bertrand Aristide had calculated the sum that
France extracted from Haiti, as the price
for recognising its participation in the international
community in 1825, as US$21 billion in today’s
values.
As Sarkozy was entering Haiti, Professor Norman
Girvan of the University of the West Indies,
and former Secretary-General of the Association
of Caribbean States, in an invited comment
to the Associated Press was pretty clear about
France’s obligation to Haiti and what
Sarkozy should do.
He declared: “If President Sarkozy were
to make restitution in the name of all the
decent people of the French Republic for the
historic wrong; and support the efforts of
the Haitian people to rebuild their shattered
lives and their economy with the resources
thereby provided, he would undoubtedly gain
the respect of the entire world and be a prime
candidate for the award of the Nobel Prize
for 2010”.
Somehow, I don’t believe that President
Sarkozy will make be a Nobel Prize recipient
for returning to Haiti what was so callously
extracted from it, and which is the underlying
basis for its persistent poverty and underdevelopment.
And, it is instructive that the Haitian government
is not pushing it. Millien Romage, a legislator
for Aristide’s party also told the Associated
Press: “This is not a time to be making
loud demands. We don’t want to fight.
But perhaps the French could recognize their
debt by helping us to get out of poverty.
They can help build roads, houses, schools.”
Sarkozy has at least made a start and it is
to be hoped that when France joins other nations
at a high-level international donors’
conference for Haiti, which will be held in
New York next month, the French government
will open its cheque book more generously
to a country that it exploited and impoverished.
Canada, which has no history of exploitation
of Haiti (or any other country for that matter)
has been far more generous than France. Even
before the calamitous January earthquake,
Canada had pledged more than US$500 million
to Haiti over the next five years.
And, in a visit that preceded Sarkozy’s,
Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, discussed
with the Haitian President, Rene Preval, the
creation of a common fund for Haiti’s
recovery to be managed jointly by the Haitian
government and donors.
A partnership between the Haitian government
and the international community is crucial
to the successful construction of Haiti and
to the restoration of its society.
Calls for the Haitian government to be “masters
of their own development”, should be
tempered with realism. Governance in Haiti
was fractious before the Earthquake, the government
is now in tatters, and many who were leaders
in Haitian society were victims of the earthquake.
In this connection, Haiti needs a lot of help
including help in the governance of the country
over the next few years.
The representative of the 14 governments of
the Caribbean Community, former Jamaican Prime
Minister, P J Patterson, put the task ahead
in clear terms at the Ministerial Conference
on Haiti held in Canada on January 25 when
he said: “Reconstructing Haiti needs
to encompass more than replacing destroyed
buildings and infrastructure and eviscerated
institutions and must include a developmental
dimension. Rebuilding should therefore also
include the empowerment of the Haitians by
the teaching of new skills”.
Responses and previous commentaries at: www.sirronaldsanders.com
Discuss
Story
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