The appointment of President Bill Clinton as special United Nations envoy to Haiti has caused quite a stir there. To many Haitians, Clinton will be little more than a new ''Raj'' in Port-au-Prince. He will supersede the Haitian head of state, they say. Others who may admire the former president do not believe his presence will do much good, for the root cause of the Haitian miasma is Haiti's corrupt elite. Finally, there are those Haitians who think that Clinton will use his popularity and multiple business contacts to bring aid and direct foreign investment to Haiti.
The reality is likely to fall somewhere in between these positions. Too often, Haiti has fallen off the international community's radar screen. It has lacked a valuable interlocutor to keep its issues alive. Clinton can be just such a person; he can make the case, like no one else, for Haiti in the court of international opinion.
Donors have been reluctant to help Haiti because they lack faith in Haitian officials, who have displayed neither the administrative capacity nor financial ingenuity that would give donors confidence that aid money will not be thrown down a rat hole.
The new special envoy could use the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton School of Public Service to help Haiti build administrative capacity. He is likely to be aided in this task by the factor that the next presidential election in Haiti will be the first since 1990 in which someone not named Préval or Aristide will be running.
From the long list of potential candidates comes former Ambassador Myrtho Bonhomme, who received his graduate degree from American University, has held diplomatic posts in Washington and at the U.N. and is now rector of a diplomatic academy in Port-au-Prince. His proposed $20 billion, five-year economic package includes the construction of a new capital city, massive investment in tourism and free-trade and industrial zones capable of creating jobs and generating growth. There also is Guy Theodore, a former colonel in the U.S. Air Force and medical doctor, who practiced in the United States for many years before returning to Haiti to build a modern hospital in his native village of Pignon in northern Haiti.
Clinton's appointment may have come at an opportune time, in which initiatives from Haiti's emerging leaders and the skills of the former president could relieve Haiti from two centuries of economic decline. At last, the stars may be aligned, so the island can again become a jewel in the region.
JEAN-GERMAIN GROS, associate professor, political science and public-policy administration, University of Missouri, St. Louis
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire