Wyclef Jean by the numbers

Wyclef Jean's candidacy for the Presidency of Haiti came up at last night's pre-season meeting of the Curling Club and Literary Society.

Egbert "Eggy" Sousé (pronounced Soo-SAY) said that if Jean wanted to the Exalted High Potentate, he (Sousé) couldn't see why not, considering that there had been precedents [presidents? ed.] in other countries, including the good ole U.S. of A.

Eggy pointed to the Philippines, where movie star Joseph "Erap" Estrada was elected and lasted a couple of years before being impeached for corruption.

In the Indian state of Tamil Nadu former Bollywood star "iron lady super wonder woman Jayalalithaa Jayaram" served as Chief Minister for a while, and still leads the official opposition. Closer to home we have Ahhnold in California, which also produced Pat Brown...and of course Ronnie Regan.

So if the Haitians want to elect a hiphop "artist" who speaks English rather than the local Créole, and may not have spent enough time in the country to qualify for the office, why not?

Agent 3, being a legal beagle, liked the appeal to precedent, but pointed out some interesting facts about M. Jean's background. One of his (Jean's) dubious qualifications for the job is that he was (until two days ago) founder and director of a charity which has been raising money to help the poor people of Haiti dispossessed by the big quake.

• Amount of money raised so far = $9,000,000
• Amount spent (subject to audit) = $1,500,000 (includes fees paid to M. Jean)
• Balance being held somewhere = $7,500,000
• Amount allegedly owing by M. Jean to the IRS for back taxes = $2,100,000
• Who's in charge of the money now? = not known

Stay tuned for further developments as Haiti gets set to vote!

Haiti: what is to be done?

A reader e-mails (walt.whiteman@yahoo.com) to suggest that rather than waxing pessimistic about Haiti (see yesterday's post), Walt should offer some kind of solution. Let's look at that idea in the light of history and sociology.

Haiti has been independent, in name at least, since 1804, when it threw off the yoke of French colonialism. The population of Haiti, predominantly slaves imported from Africa, defeated French troops, ending a long fight for independence and emancipation. Haiti became only the second independent republic in the western hemisphere, the first being the USA.

The slave rebellion resulted in the death of 100,000 blacks and 24,000 of 40,000 white colonists. Significantly, the revolution unleashed a massive multiracial exodus. French and Créole colonists fled along with the slaves they still held, as did numerous free coloured people, some of whom were also slaveholders who took their slaves with them.

That left Haiti an essentially African country which just happens to be on the wrong side of the Atlantic. In its 200-plus years of existence, Haiti has been led -- or misled -- by a very African succession of "big men": kings, presidents, even an emperor or two.

Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, a Latin American country. In the article I referred to yesterday, The Economist points out that one difference between the two countries is that Haiai has seen just two democratic handovers of power, compared with a dozen (being generous in use of the term) next door.

Which is to say that one of Haiti's fundamental problems is a dire dearth of political leadership. It is not so absurd as it might seem, then, to suggest that hiphop "artist" Wyclef Jean could be suitable to be Haiti's next president. He couldn't do much worse than his predecessors.

It's also worth noting that not all of the French colonies in the Caribbean thought they were capable of running their own show. Guadelupe and Martinique remain French possessions to this day, although they are now legally regarded not as colonies but as "overseas departments" of metropolitan France. Unlike Haiti, the two islands are peaceful and relatively prosperous.

So too is the independent Dominican Republic. It's not exactly rolling in pesos, but it's patently better off than the republic on the western part of Hispaniola. Visitors who've seen both at the same time say it's like two different worlds on one small island.

To sum up, I don't believe the Haitians were or are or ever will be capable of governing themselves in an honest and competent manner, hence my pessimism. All the foreign aid and expressions of goodwill in the world aren't going to bring them to the status quo ante, let alone the average standard of living of other Caribbean nations.

So what is to be done? In a word, nothing. We first-world taxpayers have given Haiti billions of dollars in aid and support, the larger part of which has been unused or wasted. See yesterday's post for some discouraging statistics. Giving more isn't going to help.

Walt says, leave them alone. Let them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps...or not. Either they will survive, like Ghana, or become a failed state, like Somalia. The Haitians' future is in their hands, not ours.

Foreign aid, then and now - part II

In Travels in Nepal (see preceding post), Charlie Pye-Smith makes the point that filling up the begging bowls held out by the governments of the world's poorest nations often has no or negative results.

The author argues that by giving a man a fish when you should be teaching him to catch his own fish, you reduce him to the status of a dependent, and push him deeper into a cycle of poverty which is difficult to break. The same argument has been made many times before and since.

Look now at Haiti. More than half a year after the earthquake, it's still the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, in spite of the infusion (or at least the promise) of billions of dollars in foreign aid and the efforts, volunteer or (well) paid, of those who are "trying to help those who cannot help themselves".

This week The Economist reports on the state of the aid effort and the plight of Haiti today. Here are some numbers to think about.

• Only a tiny fraction of the $5.3 billion in promised aid has materialised.
• The $1.15 billion committed by President Obama is still held up in Congress.
• Over 1 million Haitians are packed into 1300 tent cities in the Port-au-Prince area, and
• The tent cities are actually growing, as people who fled into the countryside come to the city looking for handouts.
• Less than 5% of the 20 million cubic metres of debris from the quake has been cleared, although the majority of able-bodied men in the tent cities are not working.
• The Haitian government has declared more than 100,000 buildings habitable, and
• Another 60,000 could be safely repaired, but
• Many of the homeless remain in the camps, hoping to be given not just shelter but title to a piece of land with it.
• 23,000 portable shelters are available; only 1/3 of them have been erected.

Had enough? The Economist says, "Foreigners are getting impatient. [US senator] Richard Lugar wrote last week that René Préval, Haiti's president, had 'demonstrated marginal capacity to lead his country's reconstruction.' He added that Mr. Préval's 'actions do not suggest a departure from the self-destructive political behaviour that has kept Haiti the poorest country in the hemisphere.'"

But Sen. Lugar should take heart. Help is on the way! There's going to be a presidential election in Haiti in November, and a leading candidate is none other than Haitian-American hiphop "artist" Wyclef Jean. [Do da bro be a cousin of Canada's Governor-General? ed.] Walt kids you not. See today's Jackson Sun. That's what Haiti needs...not more of my tax dollars.