Next month, Haitian Americans are scheduled to organize a forum ostensibly to give them more say in the country’s economic and political affairs.
That is a noble goal, but the devil is in the details.
How exactly these Haitian Americans hope to do so will certainly be hotly debated in the sweltering city of Port-au-Prince, two days before President-elect René Préval is sworn into office.
While there are hundreds, if not thousands, of highly qualified Haitians living abroad who can help the country, the overwhelming majority doesn’t get involved in the Haitian communities or in the affairs of Haiti.
Many of them have preferred to remain incognito because the moment that they decide to get involved, they are attacked and vilified.
The paradox is that these are the people whom Haiti needs to help it move forward. They speak the language of business people who have the cash to pump into the country’s moribund economy. They know how to walk the halls of Congress and the White House, and they understand the lingua franca of American and Canadian academia.
But they remain at arm’s length.
The challenge of the forum organizers is to convince the new administration that they should invest millions of dollars in recruiting these professionals.
They must show the government officials the value of human capital, something that Haitians seem to undervalue.
We know that the first item on the organizers’ agenda is the dual nationality that would have given billionaire entrepreneur, Dumarsais Siméus, the chance to run for president in Haiti. The reality is that even if Siméus were able to run and eventually win, he would have face a surmountable task in leading a country, void of most basic infrastructure and institutions.
Persuading the Parliament to change an article in a Constitution, which is more of an emotional tract than a legal document, is easy.
Persuading a Harvard MBA to leave a blue chip firm for the canyons of Haiti is a daunting challenge [on which] forum organizers, which include Siméus, should focus their attention.
