Haiti, you are wasting my time and the time of the Haitian people!
Boukan News, 04/07/2025 – Up to the age of 10 years old, I was under the belief that I would continue to have an idyllic life surrounded by a middle-class family, headed by my grandparents in which home we were raised in a patriarchal setting.
I am now 79 years old; it means Haiti has wasted 69 years of my life.
Paul E Magloire was than the President, and Haiti was living its golden age where it was seen as the elder and the respected daughter of the Caribbean. This sentiment of innocence came to a sudden halt, when Francois Duvalier came unto power in 1957, and he started to show its true colors. Haiti became a gulag where even listening to a rebel radio was considered a crime punishable by death or long-time imprisonment.
This dreadful time lasted thirty-three years with the connivance of the international powers leading the show from behind. Haiti lost its allure because during a whole generation, it did not keep up with the advance of modernity and civilization.
I did well for myself though, because after my baccalaureate, I obtain a diploma in Law and International Affairs from the State University of Haiti. At the age of 22, I migrated to the United States where I pursued my studies by enrolling in a graduate degree program in Social Work at Columbia University and later a doctorate degree in Law at Tulane University in New Orleans.
By all accounts I had a great life in New York City one of the most civilized place in the world. I became Vice Dean of students at City College of New York and practiced law for the next forty years. In my retreat I returned to Haiti, to run for President to change things in the country. But gaining the presidency of Haiti is a complex matter where the long hand of the international is again pulling the strings.
During that time, out of a population of 11 million people, some 8 million of them are living in abject poverty denied of the most basic sane institutions and adequate infrastructure.
The agony of the population continued after the departure of the Duvalier with the presidency of Jean Bertrand Aristide built with great expectation but was a total failure with the seedling of the gangster culture that is plaguing the country today. The governance of Michel Martelly and Jovenel Moise was marred with corruption and ill governance that destroyed most of the nation’s institutions, including the legislature, the city mayors and the rural counties delegates. For the past ten years there have been no election in the country.
During that time, the nations of the region, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica even tiny St Kitts are advancing a great space in development. When every minute a plane is set to land at the airport at La Guardia in New York, the airport in Port au Prince is closed because the gangsters are shooting on the plane and controlling the way to the airport.
I did my best to have Haiti change its course. Early in the Henri Namphy government, I visited my godfather, Mr. Jacques Francois who was a member of the Council of Government, our conversation was cut short by woman’s chatting that painted myself as a friend of Gerard Gourgue, not a friend of Haiti. As such Haiti has lost its opportunity for getting off its ashes.
Thirty years later I ran to become the President of Haiti to apply the motto of Toussaint Louverture which is to bring happiness to each citizen of Haiti. The vote was for sale at 20$ apiece as Jovenel Moise, the protégé of Michel Martelly had enough funds to pay to win the election.
But Haiti misses the opportunities of:
– A school system that offers an education of excellence for 500 students in each of the 555 rural sections; a lyceum of quality for 5000 students in the 150 towns and a university campus that deserves 15,000 students in each of the 10 departments of the country.
– A wealth creation program that encompasses the entire Haitian society that rests on organic and nostalgic agriculture, farming, utilitarian art craft and rural tourism.
– An environmental program that covers the mountain after mountain of Haiti with mahogany and cedar trees to make the country attractive to investors and create at the same time a sovereign green fund.
– A tourism initiative that rest on religious pilgrimage and Haiti historic legacy.
– A health system that covers the rural sections with a clinic, a hospital in each town and university hospital in each chef-lieu.
– Sane institutions and adequate infrastructure from the most remote rural county to the capital.
– In conclusion rebuilt the country with the sentiment of appurtenance to create a nation hospitable to all its citizens.
– As such the children of my children will again enjoy the idyllic time that I remembered when I was ten years old.
Jean Herve Charles