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Analyses & Opinions

Haiti needs Actions not Photo-Ops

Détails: Catégorie : Opinions; Publié le vendredi 24 janvier 2014 14:58

lamothe-google Laurent Lamothe au local de Google

By: Emmanuel Roy a former political advisor to President Michel Joseph Martelly.

Nevada, Las Vegas - If you live in an isolated farm in a poor country with no electricity and spend many hours each day procuring food or carrying water to your home, a small company producing tablets, will do nothing to alleviate your situation.

It is indubitable that Haiti lacks the basic infrastructure to make it a functioning economy where goods, services and people flow at ease. But if you listen to Laurent Lamothe and his propaganda machine you would think that he is Jesus Christ who just resuscitated Lazarus. Social media from Facebook to Twitter, are full of propaganda pictures of Laurent Lamothe making speeches about things he wishes to do, or announcing he is travelling to some location around the world representing Haiti. At times it is sketch pictures of schools, factories, or buildings, jobs, electricity, new companies, and new projects.

The fact of the matter is, all of these are just talk with no real substance or results. The only thing that is real is the Haitian government money flowing to Lamothe’s foreign bank accounts hidden under many shell companies he owns such as Light Foot Holding, a bank account he opened in the Caymans in 2011 while serving as finance manager for the Martelly campaign which at the time had a balance of 2.3 million dollars.

Since becoming Prime Minister Lamothe has made many promises to the Haitian people. First, he promised that within six months all of Haiti would have electricity twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This week, his Minister of Interior David Bazile had to be rushed by police officers to a standby helicopter in order to avoid the wrath of the population who hailed rocks at the Minister demanding the electricity and clean water Lamothe promised the people of Fort-Liberte, in the northeast part of Haiti. A few months ago, Minister Bazile barely escaped a vote of censure in the Haitian Senate for embezzlement and theft.

Second, Lamothe promised clean water, and not only did he not deliver on his promise, he did nothing to alleviate the distress of those who lost their family members as a result of the cholera epidemic.

In fact, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, the ever brain dead Pierre Richard Casimir stated during a speech last year that the United Nations bears no responsibility for the cholera epidemic even though scientists from Europe have demonstrated that the United Nations bears full responsibility for the epidemic, and the UN has recognized its negligence but claims immunity. Earlier this week, a United Nations envoy warned of an impending surge in cholera deaths in Haiti if more money is not available to battle the epidemic. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister and his girlfriend Petra Newcova are en route to Davos Switzerland to represent Haiti in the world economic forum. An opportunity for Lamothe and his girlfriend to earn per diem from the government, while the Haitian people die because of lack of clean water.

In many remote parts of Haiti such as Duverge in Jeremie, people must walk for hours to find clean water, and that is not always available. And when they find it, they must transport many gallons of water under arduous circumstances, so that the water may last them a few days, before they can make the trip again. The bare necessities that make life worthwhile are almost non-existent in Haiti. People in Port-au-Prince do not have electricity all day. A guest at the Royal Oasis hotel, which is near bankruptcy recounted to me how he was in the middle of shaving when electricity was cut off, and it took the hotel at least 30 minutes before they can switch to the inverter. Those who live in the remote part of Haiti such as Fort-Liberte are worse of. But if you listen to Laurent Lamothe and his propaganda machine you would think that everyone in Haiti has electricity and clean running water at their disposal. This type of propaganda is very dangerous because it masks the true problems that Haitians face every day trying to survive.

Instead of addressing the real problem of infrastructure, and provide a plan to address issues like electricity, clean water, education, and healthcare the Prime Minister is spending his time and our money in paying people to lie about what is truly going on in Haiti. A company producing a few hundred tablets in Haiti is hardly something to be proud of when the majority of Haitians have no access to clean water or electricity. What good is a tablet if you can’t charge it?

In addition to lack of water and electricity, police officers and teachers have not been paid for months, but yet Lamothe finds money to procure weapons, finance his girlfriend’s lavish lifestyle, and pay for extravagant trips aboard that yield nothing for Haitians. Lamothe boasts of sending a million students to school with money from the Diaspora, but there is no report of one single new school that has been built, not one single program to train new teachers has been put in place. In fact, last week, the teachers union called for a strike because they have not been paid for over six months. What happen to the sixty-million dollars collected from the Haitian Diaspora? Laurent Lamothe has several overseas bank accounts including an account in Spain under the name of BHR; perhaps we should look there for the Diaspora’s Education Fund.

Follow Manny on Twitter: @EJRManny

Emmanuel Roy a former political advisor to President Michel Joseph Martelly.

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