Business

Haiti: Business Private Sector Against Le Monde Magazine

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (defend.ht) – On January 6, 2012, it was published in the French review, Le Monde, an article by journalist Arnaud Robert, who a few days earlier, was in Haiti to prepare a report on the Haitian private sector and the country’s situation two years after the earthquake.

In this article entitled “Haiti’s wealthiest", Arnaud Robert was very critical towards the business-private sector in Haiti, writing:

In spite of that bad reputation, President Martelly counts on their wealth to rebuild the country, pointed out Robert.

In the long list of the complaints attributed to 'rich' Haitian, full support to the Duvalier dictatorship and paramilitary forces after the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, an almost complete removal of areas of national production in favor of more profitable imports or even involvement in the trafficking of South American cocaine, which has passed largely by the island state for almost thirty years.

Moreover, for all to see, they are guilty of accepting the ever deeper chasm that separates them from the vast majority of Haitians; two-thirds of them live on less than $1 per day.

One of those wealthy Haitians would even acknowledged that his family members are "perceived as birds of prey" in the country.

This article has obviously raised the anger and indignation among the businessmen and women of Haiti, especially those who had met with the journalist through his reporting.

In a letter to the editor of Le Monde, Gregory Brandt, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Franco-Haitian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CFHCI) wrote on behalf of 125 members of this institution, that he strongly denounced the attitude of the journalist, he said, it showed a "lack of respect vis-à-vis his counterparts, while there was talk of present a new image of Haiti with dynamic people who work for their country."

Rather than recount the text in the various topics of discussions on the reconstruction of Haiti after the earthquake, the recovery of the Haitian economy, axes and poles of development, the relationship between the Haitian and French companies, including "Arnaud Robert preferred to recount in his article, and other matters falling within the traditional stereotype, easy, obsolete and offensive evocation of class struggle dear to the nostalgic and undemocratic regimes, some of which still exist," wrote Gregory Brandt.

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Franco-Haitian Chamber of Commerce and Industry questioned the motives of the publication of this article, a week before the commemoration of the earthquake of January 12, 2010 that destroyed a good part of the country.

Businesswoman, Pascale Theard, quoted in the article, has also reacted. She believes that the writings of Robert Arnaud caused her serious harm. She complains that it is the truncated version of the article published on the website of the Magazine on January 6, completely distorting the image of her interview, which was reproduced in the Haitian Press.

Considering that the text is in total contradiction with the approach that the journalist had announced, Pascale Theard said she was "outraged."

It should be added that in his article the journalisthighlighted the fact that all of Haiti's wealth is shared by a small group of large families in the country while the population languishes in poverty for nearly two centuries.