|
The Donors Conference meeting in the Trusteeship Council. Over 150
nations and international organizations pledged $5.3 billion in aid to
Haiti over the next 18 months
It was fitting that the Mar. 31
“International
Donors Conference Towards
a New Future for Haiti” was
held in the Trusteeship Council at the
United Nations headquarters in New
York. At the event, Haitian President
René Préval in effect turned over the
keys to Haiti to a consortium of foreign
banks and governments, which will
decide how (to use the conference’s
principal slogan) to “build back better”
the country devastated by the Jan.
12 earthquake.
This “better” Haiti envisions
some 25,000 farmers providing Coca-Cola with mangos for a new Odwalla
brand drink, 100,000 workers assembling
clothing and electronics for
the U.S. market in sweatshops under
HOPE II legislation, and thousands
more finding jobs as guides, waiters,
cleaners and drivers when Haiti becomes
a new tourist destination.
“Haiti could be the first all wireless
nation in the Caribbean,”
gushed UN Special Envoy to Haiti Bill
Clinton, who along with US Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon, led the
day-long meeting of over 150 nations
and international institutions. Clinton
got the idea for a “wireless nation,”
not surprisingly, from Brad Horwitz,
the CEO of Trilogy, the parent company
of Voilà, Haiti’s second largest
cell-phone network.
Although a U.S. businessman,
Horwitz was, fittingly, one of the two
representatives who spoke for Haiti’s
private sector at the Donors Conference.
“Urgent measures to rebuild
Haiti are only sustainable if they become
the foundation for an expanded
and vibrant private sector,” Horwitz
told the conference.”We need you to
view the private sector as your partner…
to understand how public funds
can be leveraged by private dollars.”
“Of course, what’s good for business
is good for the country,” quipped
one journalist listening to the speech.
The other private sector spokesman
was Reginald Boulos, the president
of the Chamber of Commerce and
Industry of Haiti (CHIC), who fiercely
opposed last year’s union and student led
campaign to raise Haiti’s minimum
wage to $5 a day, convincing Préval to
keep it at $3 a day. He also was a key
supporter of both the 1991 and 2004
coups d’état against former Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, now
exiled in South Africa
In counterpoint, the only voice
Aristide’s popular base had at the conference
was in the street outside the
UN, where about 50 Haitians picketed
from noon to 6 p.m. in Ralph Bunche
park to call for an end to the UN and
US military occupation of Haiti, now
over six years old, and to protest the
Haitian people’s exclusion from reconstruction
deliberations. (New York’s
December 12th Movement also had a
picket at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on
47th Street).
“No to neocolonialism,”
read a
sign held up by Jocelyn Gay, a member
of the Committee to Support the
Haitian People’s Struggle (KAKOLA),
which organized the picket with the
Lavalas Family’s New York Chapter
and the International Support Haiti
Network (ISHN). “No to the Economic
Exploitation Disguised as Reform.
MINUSTAH [UN Mission to Stabilize
Haiti], out of Haiti!"
The exclusion of Haiti’s popular
sector was masked by the inclusion
of other “sectors” in the Donors Conference,
although their presentations
were purely for show, with no bearing
on the plans which had already been
drawn up. Joseph Baptiste, chairman
and founder of the National Organization
for the Advancement of Haitians
(NOAH), and Marie Fleur, a Massachusetts
state representative, spoke
on behalf of the “Haitian Diaspora
Forum.” Moise Charles Pierre, Chairman
of the Haitian National Federation
of Mayors and Montreal Mayor
Gerald Tremblay spoke on behalf of
the “Local Government Conference.”
Non-governmental organizations had
three spokespeople: Sam Worthington
for the North American ones, Benedict Hermelin for the European ones, and
Colette Lespinasse of GARR, for the
Haitian ones. Even the “MINUSTAH
Conference” had two speakers. |
