News­day Editorial

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/editorial-new-life-for-haiti-will-mean-sustained-honest-assistance-1.1844209

In this sea­son of new life, the Hait­ian peo­ple, who have endured so many years of cru­ci­fix­ion, deserve a chance to expe­ri­ence a much-prayed-for national resurrection.

It’s easy to be skep­ti­cal about the prospects for the suc­cess of the recon­struc­tion effort. Too many times, aid to Haiti has been ill-spent or stolen by gov­ern­ments too cor­rupt and despotic to be wor­thy of their peo­ple. Still, the proper response to that tragic his­tory must not be cyn­i­cism, but unshak­able determination.

This per­ilous moment, a fear­some inter­val between the calami­tous Jan. 12 earth­quake and the loom­ing rainy sea­son, is pre­cisely the right time for the com­mu­nity of nations to emu­late the inspir­ing resilience of the Hait­ian peo­ple and match it with an equally per­sis­tent long-term commitment.

A decent first step took place this past Wednes­day at the United Nations. Donor nations pledged bil­lions of dol­lars, includ­ing $1.15 bil­lion from the United States, in addi­tion to the $900 mil­lion it has already devoted to recov­ery from the quake. Even if, as expected, some nations give less than they have pledged, there will be a strong flow of funds, includ­ing gen­er­ous pri­vate contributions.

But money is not the core prob­lem. It’s the tough work of build­ing insti­tu­tions and rela­tion­ships that have been either weak or nonexistent.

The goal is not only to clear the rub­ble, but to con­struct a func­tion­ing nation: to “build back bet­ter,” in the phrase of the moment. That will require a pro­found break with the past.

It will mean devel­op­ing a cen­tral gov­ern­ment that is both strong and account­able. That gov­ern­ment must lis­ten to the poor it has ignored, coor­di­nate well with the non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions that are doing so much on the ground to help, and decen­tral­ize power by devel­op­ing more viable local governments.

All this has to hap­pen despite the loss of so many civil ser­vants in the quake. And it must start in a year when a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is sched­uled, with all the atten­dant fric­tions — if, that is, Haiti can recover enough to carry it off. Mean­while, the incum­bent pres­i­dent, René Pré­val, labors under the bur­den of bit­ter anger over what many Haitians con­sider his weak post-quake performance.

Now Prime Min­is­ter Jean-Max Bel­lerive, with for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton, will run a new entity, the Interim Haiti Recov­ery Com­mis­sion. It brings together Haitians and for­eign donors to guide the recov­ery for 18 months, then becomes the Haitian-controlled Hait­ian Devel­op­ment Authority.

The Clin­ton factor

Clin­ton is the right per­son for this job. He has had a deep inter­est in Haiti, dat­ing all the way back to his hon­ey­moon trip there with Hillary Rod­ham Clinton–now the sec­re­tary of state over­see­ing much of the Amer­i­can response.

As pres­i­dent, Clin­ton had a mixed record on Haiti. He led in the rein­state­ment of Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide after a coup. But he recently apol­o­gized pub­licly for push­ing Haiti to drop rice tar­iffs, which helped farm­ers in his native Arkansas but dev­as­tated rice farm­ers in Haiti.

Mov­ing for­ward, Clin­ton must be care­ful to avoid mis­takes that will force him to make future apolo­gies. Here are some of the keys to his work with Bel­lerive to build a strong Haiti:

Make sure Haitians are involved in all the crit­i­cal decisions.

Lis­ten to non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions. They’re spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars con­tributed by pri­vate cit­i­zens, and they’re close to the people.

Ensure that food aid, which is cru­cial in the short-term, doesn’t fur­ther weaken Hait­ian farm­ers. Hun­dreds of thou­sands have left rav­aged Port-au-Prince for the coun­try­side, but unless Hait­ian agri­cul­ture recov­ers from the global forces that have dev­as­tated it, the coun­try­side will be no answer.

Put a top pri­or­ity on edu­ca­tion, replac­ing the teach­ers who died and the school build­ings that fell. With­out that, a whole gen­er­a­tion could be lost to illit­er­acy and poverty.

Stress account­abil­ity. Some “donor fatigue” may be inevitable, but gov­ern­ments and pri­vate cit­i­zens will be more inclined to keep giv­ing if their money is being well spent.

Per­suade Hait­ian pro­fes­sion­als now liv­ing in the dias­pora to join the recon­struc­tion. One of Haiti’s tragedies is the flight of its best and bright­est. Make them part of the solution.

Like Clin­ton, we Amer­i­cans have a mixed his­tory with Haiti, from its ori­gins until mod­ern times. The revolt of Hait­ian slaves played a major role in France’s deci­sion to pull up stakes and sell 828,000 square miles to the United States in the 1803 Louisiana Pur­chase. Yet Pres­i­dent Thomas Jef­fer­son feared that the revolt that led to Hait­ian inde­pen­dence in 1804 could inspire Amer­i­can slaves to rise up too, and he refused to rec­og­nize the new repub­lic. In fact, the United States did not rec­og­nize Haiti until 1862.

More recently, Aris­tide accused the United States of com­plic­ity in the 2004 coup that removed him — a belief widely held in Haiti. Some mem­bers of the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives have expressed the same con­cerns, propos­ing a com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate Amer­i­can involve­ment. The bill has made lit­tle progress, but sus­pi­cions linger.

Now, through gov­ern­ment and pri­vate giv­ing and the key roles of both Clin­tons, we have a chance for redemp­tion. Bring­ing Haiti back to life, after a world-historical nat­ural dis­as­ter, will require a tire­less per­sis­tence. We owe at least that to the peo­ple of this long-suffering nation.