Haiti's impossible dream: good governance

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All the world has seen images of the crumpled presidential palace - a stark, white symbol of the destruction wrought by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

But it only begins there. The Revenue Ministry, demolished. The Palace of Justice, where the Supreme and other courts sit, utterly smashed. Scavengers pick through the remains of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Post Office, rubble except for the posts that once held up whatever they held up. The headquarters of the national police, a ruin. City Hall, the same.

As people lift their heads from the relief effort to consider Haiti's future, several questions dominate: How can the government restore itself? What should they restore, and what should they change? How will "the Blancs," as Haitians call foreigners, influence the outcome?

Most of all, how can anything be achieved, given Haiti's political culture, a culture defined by distrust, betrayal, corruption and violence?

"Our environment is polluted by suspicions of all sorts," acknowledges Fritz Jean, former governor of the Haitian central bank, in an interview. "We suffer from a deficit of vision."

But without vision and without unity - something unknown in this sad country until now - Haiti will never recover.

The smell of decaying flesh reeks from the rubble of the government buildings. No one has any idea how much of the civil service is dead. (The grim joke making the rounds: Laziness can save your life. Those who left early or on time lived; those who stayed at their desks until 5 p.m., when the earthquake occurred, died.)

"Certainly we have lost a good many fine public servants," says Daniel Dorsainvil, who was Haiti's finance minister from 2006 until last year.

Not only do finance ministry officials not know who is alive - the head of the internal revenue service is among the confirmed dead, and others are missing - but the ministry has no ability to raise revenue. The challenges it faces are daunting: conduct an inventory of personnel and infrastructure; find work space, begin restoring payment services, such as pensions and government cheques.

The Haitian government is not entirely consumed with counting its dead and pretending to look as though it is contributing to the relief effort. One task force has already been set up under the leadership of the tourism minister, Patrick Delatour, who is an architect, to look at Port-au-Prince's urban design - or lack of it. Another is looking at the state of the city's infrastructure.

One idea gathering steam is to decentralize the government, to disperse ministries out of the downtown, which is vulnerable to earthquakes and hurricanes. Other people interviewed talked about using the crisis to reform Haiti's abysmal education system. The public schools are so dreadful that 80 per cent of the population sends its children to private schools, which range from quite good to a guy with a shingle.

Get schools set up in the new tent cities, goes the thinking. Establish a board to set and enforce education standards. Think about giving parents vouchers to help them send their children to the school of their choice.

But all of these ideas run up against the reality that prevailed before Jan. 12. Haitian politics were mired in factions, corruption and betrayal. Presidents came to power promising reform. Politicians from other parties - there are many, many parties - crossed the floor in search of patronage. Those on the outs nursed revenge. Presidents entrenched their power. Resistance grew. People started getting killed.

President René Préval steps down next year, but many see the new Unity Coalition he has formed as an effort to exercise power from offstage after he is out of office. Others doubt it will be possible to hold a presidential election this fall, and believe Mr. Préval will stay on, despite his insistence that he will leave on schedule in February, 2011.

Mr. Jean thinks it would a terrible idea for Mr. Préval to remain in power past his allotted time, whatever the circumstances.

"Even in the ashes, if someone extends his mandate - ooph!" He raises his eyes heavenward.

There's a saying that Haiti doesn't have parties; it has particles. With endlessly shifting coalitions, rather than stable, institutional parties, Haiti is constantly at risk of succumbing to the latest strongman - which is why few governments are held in higher contempt by their citizens. At a street market, when a group of vendors and customers is asked how much help they expect from their government, they shake their heads and laugh.

"The government doesn't know what is going on in the street," says a man who identified himself as Puggy. "But they'll make sure that they benefit and make money from this catastrophe."

The crowd around him calls out in vehement affirmation.

You hear no complaints in the tent cities, in the markets and on the street about foreigners throwing their weight around in Haiti, a traditional lament that has been silenced by the earthquake.

This may be an opportunity. The international community has a stake in reforming Haitian governance. Previous efforts have been disastrous failures, but the Haitian people themselves are welcoming direct aid, rather than damning the Blancs.

But for the Haitian government to exercise real influence in the outcome of this disaster, the various political factions - Mr. Préval's, Jean-Bertrand Aristide's (the former president remains formidably popular in exile) and the plethora of smaller actors - will have to set aside their differences, at least until this emergency has passed.

And that's not likely to happen, says Daniel Roy, standing in front of the wreckage of his small office building. "I think the Haitian people will never get along," he predicts. "We will always be fighting. That's the way it's always been."

And then there are the people themselves - 400,000 homeless, according to one count. They are living in the worst squalor humanly possible. They aren't getting enough food. Now they're miserable; soon they will be angry.

What spark will ignite them? And who will choose to ignite it?

No one, Mr. Jean believes. "No major faction has it in its interest to mobilize the street."

Mr. Dorsainvil is equally optimistic. "We are going to seize this opportunity to rebuild better," he insists.

Kesner Pharel, a well-known Haitian economist and radio commentator, is not so sure. Three years of violence and instability leading up to the election of Mr. Aristide stalled growth for a decade, he observes. The violence and instability leading up to his ouster in 2004 stalled growth during the last one. As a result, he says, Haiti's GDP is lower today than it was in 1990.

Still, he observes, the people are in too much need to resent the arrival of foreigners, and "the government isn't thinking about controlling this aid" for personal gain. "They can't. They aren't existent."

So, Option A: The earthquake is yet another disaster that throws Haiti to the ground, leading to a third decade of economic stagnation and growing poverty. Port-au-Prince never really rebuilds. The tent cities never really empty out.

Or Option B: The earthquake convinces Haitians to set aside their history. Bound in common purpose and sustained by billions of dollars in foreign aid, the country begins the long, slow path of progress.

"I'm an economist," Mr. Pharel says. "I am bound to consider past precedents. I have to think Option A is more likely."

"But I am Haitian. Deep within myself, I long for Option B."