Clinton-led business elite gathers in New York to discuss Haiti

By Kim Ives

* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *  September 29 - October 5, 2010    Vol. 4, No. 11

Haiti Liberte, published weekly in Port au Prince, Haiti/Brooklyn, USA

 

Under capitalism, the bourgeoisie often organizes strategizing conclaves for itself and circuses for the masses. The annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), held from Sep. 20-23 at the towering Sheraton Hotel in New York City, was a little of both.

 

Held concomitantly with the United Nations General Assembly's opening, the CGI is a giant meeting of "business executives, heads of state, and non-profit leaders who work together year-round to implement projects that get results," its website states. Cost of membership to this elite club of implementers: $20,000 a year.

 

Clinton plays the ringmaster in this sprawling extravaganza of giant plenaries, "breakout sessions," and "small group discussions," which drew about 1,200 attendees (covered by over 700 journalists while 46,000 viewers followed the live webcast online). The CGI seeks to foster the "enlightened" capitalism which Clinton champions through focusing on themes like protecting the environment, providing micro-finance loans to the poor, and fighting AIDS and cancer.

 

After only six years of existence, the CGI has already become the world's preeminent business meeting. According to a study released in January by the international public relations firm Weber Shandwick, the 2009 CGI attracted more CEO speakers from top companies than any other conference.

 

"I'm grateful these CEOs are proving through the Clinton Global Initiative that businesses can do well by doing good," Clinton responded.

 

Perhaps it's not surprising that Haiti held a spotlight at the conference with Clinton co-chairing the Interim Commission to Reconstruct Haiti or CIRH (whose composition of "half donors... half members of Haitian society" Clinton admitted was "highly unusual") and acting as the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy to the country. Just before the closing Plenary Session, Clinton hosted a special session, "The Recovery in Haiti," addressed by President René Préval, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, and a panel of Haitian and foreign businesspeople.

 

The panel was preceded by remarks from Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum (the previous business conference gold-standard, held yearly in Davos), and Denis O'Brien, the chairman of Digicel, who heads up the CGI's Haiti Action Network. The HAN's vision is summarized by the watchwords "Technology, Governance, Globalization," which subtitled a slick 120 page issue of the MIT-published quarterly journal "Innovations" distributed at the Special Session. The publication is basically an investment guide entitled "Build Back Better: Strategies for Societal Renewal in Haiti."

 

"Sometimes it is good to have a foreigner look at what you are doing," said Préval with almost comic understatement about militarily occupied Haiti. He claimed there was progress prior to the earthquake ("we had lots of security, security had been restored"), but after the disaster "we need public investment in infrastructure" and "private investment to create jobs... We want to make a 'one stop shop'" where businesses can invest "rapidly."

 

Finally Préval emphasized the need for education, because, as he declared with classic Liberal Party logic, "the country cannot be developed without men and women who have the capability to take charge of this country."
(Préval invited a reluctant-looking musician Wyclef Jean and AIDS fighter Dr. Jean William Pape from the audience to come stand with him on the podium briefly).

 

Unfortunately, Haiti's future looks very troubled if one takes Préval's words at face value: "A country today cannot be built without democracy. That is why we must rapidly have elections in November. We need a legitimate government. Without a legitimate government, there will be no reconstruction."

 

But as Ira Kurzban, the former Haitian government lawyer of Préval (and Aristide), recently argued in a Sep. 8 Miami Herald op-ed: "the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in Haiti on Nov. 28 are ... unfair, unconstitutional and undemocratic. The country's Provisional Electoral Council, which itself is not constitutionally composed, is refusing to allow the country's majority party -- Fanmi Lavalas (Lavalas Family) -- to participate in the election. Thirteen other legitimate political parties are also being excluded from parliamentary elections."

 

But the main purpose of the CGI session was to reassure potential investors, not alarm them. The business panel, like all things official in Haiti these days, was half foreign, half Haitian: Adam Goldstein, the president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International; Mati Kochai, the founder and CEO of the technology company AGT; Magalie Noel Dresse, president of Caribbean Craft Haiti; and Maryse Pennette Kedar, director of Progress and Development Foundation. Their message was that Haiti was "open for business" and a good investment opportunity despite (or maybe because of) the 1.7 million people still homeless there.

 

The point was hammered home by Bellerive who said that the $5.5 billion in foreign government pledges over the next three years remain mere promises and, if ever delivered, would only amount to $180 per Haitian per year. "We are not going to make development with that kind of money," Bellerive said. He called on audience members "to seize the opportunities that exist in Haiti" saying his government "would like, would love to sit down with entrepreneurs and investors" and discuss how "to link all those public investments with the needs of private enterprise so we are not wasting out time and our money."

 

In the audience were Haitian businessmen like Reginald Boulos and Gregory Mevs, and their U.S. counterparts like Brad Horwitz and John Stanton, respectively the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Trilogy, the parent company of Voilà.

 

There were also people in the crowd like "my longtime friend and college classmate Prince Turki al Faisal of Saudi Arabia," said Clinton, "who has set up his own foundation after being ambassador to our country and the United Kingdom, and for many years the head of Saudi intelligence."

 

It would be a mistake to think that CGI's interest in Haiti and other poor nations was motivated by humanitarian concern. Nor is it just that Clinton wants to show his capitalist friends inventive and innovative ways to make profits in "emerging markets." Clinton is trying to preserve U.S. imperial interests in the region.

 

As he said when introducing President Barack Obama at the Closing Plenary, Clinton is "profoundly grateful that the President has embraced the development and partnership with emerging countries, beginning with Haiti, as a core national security interest of America."

 

In other words, we ignore the rising and rebelling former colonies of the world at our own peril. We must embrace them, engage them, and bring them under our influence and control. This, in a nutshell, is the strategy of the "enlightened" bourgeoisie's represented by Clinton and Obama.

 

The 2010 CGI meeting was closed with a speech by US First Lady Michelle Obama, who appealed to the CEOs and NGOs present to hire war veterans. "Whatever you're looking for, whether it's technical expertise or management ability, whether you're trying to lift a struggling community or boost your bottom line, I'm asking you to reach out and engage our veterans and military spouses," she said.

 

"It would be better if the Obamas simply stopped waging the wars creating unemployed and crippled war veterans," responded Ray Laforest of the International Haiti Support Network (ISHN), who followed the speech online. "That would free up money for jobs and services, not squander it on war. And that's the fatal flaw of the Clinton and Obama approach. They are trying to save capitalism by reforming it. The whole system needs to be scrapped and replaced with something similar to the societies developing in our neighbors like Cuba, Venezuela or Bolivia. Only then we will see real advances in healthcare, environmental protection and quality of life for the poor that the CGI claims to want."