29811: Du Tuyau, Re: Investment in the DR (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: viandemoulue@aol.com


Investment in the DR?

I can’t think of an issue that has so haunted me personally. I've been 
following it for quite a while now, getting increasingly dismayed by it. The 
last straw was the Haiti En Marche article last week on that very issue. I 
simply wish I could just remain silent, let it go (as most of us have), and 
move on. I promise that I will; but before that time, there's a larger issue 
involved here, to me at least. Once I get it off my chest, I'll go into at the 
very least a very prolonged silence.

This is why the center-right doesn’t even exist in Haiti. And this is also 
how one feeds populism. Any Haitian politician who stays on the sidelines, 
watches closely as this thing goes on, and then waits for the next elections 
can skillfully uses this argument with strong and pointed emotional outbursts, 
against our class of entrepreneurs back home. Would or could that person win? 
Of course... not because such candidate would present a rational agenda for 
curbing this sort of trend but instead, simply because what is going on looks 
bad, as so it is.

It looks as though some in our business community simply do not care about any 
of the negative things that happen to Haitians across the border. Things like 
systematic killing of Haitians; refusal (against their own laws) to give 
Dominican citizenship to children born of Haitian parents in the Dominican 
Republic; massive periodic deportations of Haitans who live and have lived in 
the DR for years, etc, do not seem to phase them either way.

It is not being "nationalist" to say that a country and its citizens, 
especially those in position of economic and political power, have the 
responsibility to defend the physical and even moral integrity of their 
country. When the political and economic leadership fail, so does the nation.

This is not an anti-market argument either. After all, if only as a potent 
example, a nation as pro-market as the US for instance refuses to engage 
economically with very small Cuba, mostly for political reasons.

Well, if at least Haiti politicians could have decided to once and for all 
formalize, arguably one of the largest sectors of the Haitian economy: the 
so-called informal sector of ti machann and madam sara; if our politicans could 
have economic analysts at the Ministry of Finance study the economic impact of 
the informal sector on the economy so it could be better structured; if 
incentives could be given to make sure that such a sector (the informal sector) 
can grow rationally and become even more potent than it actually is, perhaps 
one wouldn't even have to worry about the choices of our traditional business 
class.

I suspect that: so long as the Diaspora is considered as the equivalent of a 
vast welfare organization for the poor in Haiti, rather than as potential 
investors with still undetermined financial resources; so long as the State 
itself continues to look at the poor street vendors as people who can never 
strike-it-rich, and become a large source of employment in a much more 
rationalized and integrated economy, we will continue to complain, frustrated 
with the current status quo of our business community.

Well again, if that sounds far-fetched, one needs to remember that in late 19th 
and even mid 20th century, many who are today wealthy business people in Haiti 
started out as street vendors. They were part of that so-called "informal 
sector" of Haiti's economy.

In a reasonable country where things are done rationally, they could have been 
a point of reference, with or/AND without their help, to help advance the 
larger economy.

But Haiti is not there yet and thus the frustration. It can be, though, and 
thus we wouldn't have to worry anymore about members of our business class 
investing in a country that has decisively and consistently taken anti-Haitian 
policies.

Good-Bye, and good luck,
Jean du Tuyau
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