President Rene Preval is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths......

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President René Préval is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in Haiti

Open letter to Presidents Lula of Brazil, Obama of the USA, Sarkozy of France and to Prime Minister Harper of Canada

Figure 1: Paul Gustave Magloire

March 9, 2010

President René Préval is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in Haiti

Dear Sirs,

I had the privilege to meet three among you, except for the President of the United States, during the period of time when I was serving my country in official capacities, either as a Special Advisor of the government or as Minister of the Interior Department of my country.

Let me take this opportunity to thank you for having expressed your bountiful generosity towards the Haitian people who are going through the harshest moment of its history.

We shall always be grateful to you.

Allow me to remind you that on January 12, 2010, an earthquake of magnitude 7.2, in the span of just 36 seconds, devastated and transform into rubble the capital of my homeland, Port-au-Prince, and to a lesser degree the towns of Gréssier, Léogane, Grand-Goâve, Petit-Goâve and Jacmel.

As a result of this earthquake, today more than one million of my brothers and sisters sleep in open air, among them children, babies, expecting mothers and old men, casualties, and amputees by the thousands, as well as the thousands of other people who were already living with reduced mobility, or who became casualties at the time of the seism, by losing either an arm or a leg, or who may have all the limbs of their body completely fractured.

Once the first moments of stupor had gone by, the Haitian people, of all ages and of all classes, came out with their bare hands, or with rigged up tools, to launch an attack on the fallen homes and buildings in order to seek and to withdraw from the wreckage the thousands of wounded people, as well as the people who were unscathed.

This gesture of courage, compared to heroism, went on for days and nights until the arrival of the aid brought by your countries and by other members of the international community.

We will never cease to thank you for this great number of lives of our brothers and sisters who were saved.

But, during all this time, where were the Haitian President, Mr. René Préval and the members of his government?

It has been reported that, in the face of the extent of the tragedy, they got frightened and considered fleeing the country to escape the anger of the population.

They publicly appeared only after they were reassured by the presence of the troops, which had arrived in the country to bring the aid much needed by the population.

But, even after President Préval had finally left the hole in which he had crawled, he did not even have the decency to have a word of compassion for all these victims.

His only lament, in front of the CNN cameras, is that he had lost "his" palace.

It was his way of showing that he did not really have any consideration in his heart for these people who were in despair.

But, Mr. Préval had a very good reason to be afraid of the anger of the population.

Because frankly, had it not been for the actions of Mr. Préval and his government, thousands of lives would have been spared.

Indeed, before the arrival of Mr. René Préval to power, in 2006, for his second mandate, the country had been managed by a transition government for 2 years.

I had the honor then to be the Minister of the Interior Department in said government, which organized the elections that brought Mr. Préval to power.

My team and I had diagnosed that the state of the demographic concentration in the capital, Port-au-Prince, represented a danger to the population.

As a matter of fact, this city had been designed to accommodate some 300,000 people and had however grown over the years to a population of approximately 10 times more inhabitants.

As such, most of this population was living outside of the urban infrastructures, without drinking water, electricity and under deplorable sanitary conditions.

Moreover, the construction of the houses and buildings did not follow any code of rational construction for an area crossed by a tectonic fault.

An earthquake had already destroyed this city in the past. Therefore, a disaster could be expected at any time, one which could be caused by either a seism or by an epidemic, considering the deplorable level of the sanitary environment.

As such, we had initiated important measures to launch a vast program of encouraging the population to leave the capital-city.

Among the most visible measures, we had set up a charter for the municipalities to facilitate the decentralized operations.

Within this framework, we launched the construction of the most modern road of the country over the last 20 years, to connect the city of the Cap-Haitian, in the north of the country, to the Dominican Republic.

We had started to equip each geographical department of the country with an administrative building compound to house the decentralized services of the central government and to allow them to function within a modern framework, so that each department can offer high quality services to their respective population.

We had even initiated a telemetric system to equip all the municipality offices throughout the country with dish antennas to enable them to have access to the Internet by satellite and to exchange information in real-time.

The final goal of this administrative and technological environment, which was to spearhead a program of decentralization, was intended also to facilitate and encourage the population of Port-au-Prince to leave the capital, which was exposed to too much risk, and to move to the provincial towns in search of a new life.

As soon as Mr. René Préval and his team arrived in power, they took all necessary measures to put an end to the program of thinning out the capital.

The majority of the projects were blocked, and their financings sidetracked, by forgetting that the decentralization and the thinning out of the capital were programs that could saved thousands of lives in the event of seism or epidemics.

The question that any reasonable person could ask is this, why a government, which was elected to serve people, could act to its detriment and even go as far as taking short-sighted decisions which could harm these very people?

The first answer would be to assume that it is due to the incompetence of Mr. Préval and his team. Not really, since I publicly defended the importance of the thinning out of the capital and decentralization process for the good of the population.

I even went as far as to personally meet with the President in an ultimate effort to convince him on these matters.

But, all effort was in vain: Mr. Préval believes in the concentration in the capital.

The population, which is held hostage in the shantytowns surrounding the capital-city, is a political tool that is used to maintain political power and that is also used to attract international charity.

Mr. Préval was not unaware of the problem or the risks to which the population was exposed.

But, he was ready to do anything to grow rich and to remain in power.

Lastly, like so many Haitian Heads of State before him, Mr. Préval suffers from the disease of desiring to acquire power for life or for at least to pass it to one of his cronies, a disease that has relegated our country today to be the poorest of the hemisphere.

In fact, to appease his boundless desire to stay in power and to grow rich, Mr. Préval and his team did not even hold back from the act of murder.

The 64 projects launched by the Minister of the Interior were slowed down and were not all finished before the end of my passage at this ministry, owing to the fact that the director of the office in charge of overseeing the contracts being signed by the government, Mr. Robert François Marcello, had asked me to submit all the contracts signed by my ministry to the control of his office.

In spite of the urgency of these projects to safeguard the population, I requested all my colleagues to subject themselves to the rigor required by good governance.

Indeed, Mr. Marcello was the symbol of what was the best in the administration of the country.

Mr. Marcello, for his misfortune, had asked the team of Mr. Préval, who followed us, to subject itself to this same control process.

Instead, Mr. Marcello will be kidnapped in broad daylight and has been reported missing until today.

We have since learned through the declarations of a hired killer, who was apprehended in the Dominican Republic and later was extradited to France for assassination of a French consul, that the executive office had given the order to kill Mr. Marcello by running a bulldozer over his body.

The list of the misdeeds of Mr. Préval and his cronies is too long to be put forth within the context of this letter.

This regime is known to be the most corrupt in the history of the country.

Whether it is the drug trafficking, the faked elections or the plundering of the state Treasury or even the acts of assassination, it is all dealt with in the open. Thus, no embassy established in the country can pretend to be unaware of these facts and events.

Therefore, if today the international community supports that Mr. Préval, on the basis of legitimacy that he no longer has, has to be in charge of the rebuilding efforts of the country and organizing elections, it is the equivalent of saying to the Haitian people that they do not have the right to dream that one day they will have a country that is democratic, modern and prosperous.

Haiti cannot die, therefore Mr. Préval must leave.

There are honest men and women in the country who can form a government of public freedom and organize free, honest and democratic elections.

Consequently, we ask the countries, friends of Haiti, to support the Haitian people in this endeavor.

People do not always have the government they deserve.

Dear Presidents and Dear Prime Minister of the countries friends of Haiti, we are very much honored to address you in the name of our suffering brothers and sisters of Haiti, in hope you have a better understanding of the situation in our country right now.

Paul Gustave Magloire

Former Minister of the Interior of Haiti

Paul G. Magloire, March 10 2010, 12:49 AM

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1 - 10 of 33 « First  ‹ Prev  1 2 3 4  Next ›  Last »
Refill your medication ASAP.Your distortion in thinking with respect to over-generalization is getting off balance. read more >
Bon Duprem, 10-Mar-10 3:29 am
Paul G. Magloire, I applaud your courage for sharing this letter with us and put a little light on the deplorable... read more >
Tiba, 10-Mar-10 8:34 am
WRONG TIME AND WRONG PLACE NOW, WE NEED TO REBUILD HAITI AND IT IS NOT THE TIME FOR PLAYING OLD DIRTY TRICK POLITICS... read more >
Magloire, 10-Mar-10 12:02 pm
Tiba and Linda I completely agree with yon. Preval is the worst president Haiti ever had. He not only as you... read more >
Aba Tout Salop Bloggers, 10-Mar-10 5:31 pm
Mr. Magloire, Thank you for your post, but I believe that you would do a great service to other bloggers and readers... read more >
Aba Tout Salop Gnbist, 10-Mar-10 5:53 pm
Magloire, You have got to be kidding. You cannot talk in the both sides of your mouth. Din't you just show your... read more >
Tiba, 10-Mar-10 6:31 pm
Listen, there is a possibility from Cap-Haitian by crossing Fort Liberte and Ouanaminthe known by the Dominican... read more >
Mr. Magloire, 10-Mar-10 7:02 pm
They just comunicated me your IP address and I will find you pretty soon. I am taking notes of all your allegations... read more >
Mr. Magloire, 10-Mar-10 7:09 pm
How is Preval the worst president ever? How can you justify the murders he committed during his presidency? Your heart... read more >
Carolle, 10-Mar-10 7:32 pm
Mr. Magloire, I am being investigated by your restaveks? Are you trying to intimidate me, or are you just... read more >
Tiba, 10-Mar-10 7:43 pm
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