By Peter Richards, IPS News

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, Jul 7, 2010 (IPS) — They descended in droves after the Jan. 12 earth­quake dev­as­tated the French-speaking Caribbean Com­mu­nity (Cari­com) coun­try, killing an esti­mated 300,000 peo­ple and leav­ing more than one mil­lion homeless.

Now, six months later, the 15-member Cari­com group­ing is appeal­ing to the United Nations to help bring about some “level of order” among the hun­dreds of non-governmental organ­i­sa­tions (NGOs) that they fear could under­mine the frag­ile democ­racy in Haiti.

Cari­com lead­ers, includ­ing Hait­ian Pres­i­dent René Pré­val, met on Mon­day — the first day of their 31st annual sum­mit tak­ing place in this tourist resort city — with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. When they emerged, Dominica’s Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit said that they had asked Ban to use his influ­ence to help bring about some level of coor­di­na­tion among the NGOs.

“With respect to the NGOs oper­at­ing out of Haiti, we called on the U.N. secretary-general to do all that he can to bring some level of order to the sit­u­a­tion, because while we speak about main­tain­ing democ­racy in Haiti we can’t at the same time be afford­ing NGOs to under­mine the demo­c­ra­tic insti­tu­tions in Haiti,” said Sker­rit, the out­go­ing Cari­com chair.

He described the dis­cus­sions with Ban as “very pro­longed” given the num­ber of issues con­fronting the Hait­ian government.

“One of them is the fact that you have sev­eral hun­dreds of NGOs oper­at­ing in Haiti and basi­cally doing what they want. There is no regard to the wishes of the gov­ern­ment of Haiti,” Sker­rit said.

“We are say­ing if you do not put an end to it now, bring some sem­blance of order to it, the tremen­dous strides which we have made in Haiti with regards to build­ing the demo­c­ra­tic insti­tu­tions would be under­mined, par­tic­u­larly tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion that we must hold elec­tions by Feb­ru­ary 2011.”

“We call on the inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ment to cease and desist from putting the resources into the NGOs,” he said, adding that some donors were rais­ing ques­tions about trans­parency and account­abil­ity as a pre­text for bypass­ing the gov­ern­ment and deal­ing directly with the NGOs.

Sker­rit said the regional lead­ers told Ban there were many ways of address­ing such con­cerns, such as using finan­cial and mul­ti­lat­eral insti­tu­tions such as the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund, the Inter-American Devel­op­ment Bank and the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and Tobago to fun­nel funds to Port– au-Prince instead of going directly to the NGOs.

Caribbean coun­tries are also upset that Haiti has not received sup­port to meet oblig­a­tions such as pay­ment of salaries to teach­ers, nurses and police offi­cers. For exam­ple, Haiti has so far received only three-quarters of the 150 mil­lion dol­lars it had requested in bud­getary assistance.

Ban said that it was also impor­tant for coun­tries that promised finan­cial and other assis­tance to the earth­quake bat­tered coun­try to keep their com­mit­ments “since we have an enor­mous task ahead”.

Pré­val also called on the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity to make good on its promises.

“It’s like sev­eral Hiroshima bombs hit Haiti,” he said. “It is nec­es­sary to rebuild Haiti, to refine Haiti and also to decen­tralise the coun­try. This should be done thanks to the interim com­mis­sion that has been set up and also the promise of 10 bil­lion dol­lars made which we hope will be dis­bursed very quickly.”

Jamaican Prime Min­is­ter Bruce Gold­ing, the incom­ing Cari­com chair, said that the recon­struc­tion of Haiti is the grouping’s “most urgent priority”.

While pleased with the pledges from the donor coun­tries, he said there was also need to “impress upon the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity the urgency with which actions must fol­low these com­mit­ments, espe­cially in strength­en­ing the insti­tu­tional capac­ity of Haiti to under­take the mam­moth task at hand.”

“Cari­com will con­tinue to do every­thing it can to ensure that the Hait­ian peo­ple are not only put back on their feet, but on a firm path to sus­tained growth,” Gold­ing said.

Haiti is also prepar­ing for pres­i­den­tial and leg­isla­tive elec­tions on Nov. 28 and Ban said it was impor­tant for the polls to be both “trans­par­ent and credible”.

“The upcom­ing Novem­ber elec­tions will also be fun­da­men­tal for ensur­ing Haiti’s demo­c­ra­tic future. It is essen­tial that they are trans­par­ent and cred­i­ble,” said Ban, the first U.N. secretary-general to address the regional grouping’s annual summit.

But Pré­val told IPS that he is not wor­ried about the cred­i­bil­ity of the polls, since “elec­tions should be trans­par­ent in all countries”.

He said that the insti­tu­tion organ­is­ing the elec­tions com­prises “peo­ple that were picked by the Catholic Church, the Voodoo Church, the Protes­tant Church, the trade unions, women organ­i­sa­tions etc”.

He recalled that the day before the earth­quake, Haitians were prepar­ing to vote for 12 seats in the Sen­ate with a total of 95 can­di­dates rep­re­sent­ing 52 polit­i­cal par­ties registered.

More­over, Pré­val said that inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the U.N., had car­ried out a sur­vey to deter­mine whether or not the polls could really take place in November.

“They came back with an answer and said it could be done,” said Pré­val, whose five-year pres­i­den­tial term ends next February.

The Hait­ian Par­lia­ment recently voted to allow him to remain in office until May 14, 2011, exactly five years after he took office, should his suc­ces­sor not be cho­sen by the con­sti­tu­tional dead­line of Feb. 7.

How­ever, oppo­si­tion lead­ers have been call­ing for Pré­val to step down by Feb­ru­ary, argu­ing that an interim gov­ern­ment could organ­ise the elec­tions, which could run to 44 mil­lion dollars.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52077