ARTICLE - QUESTIONS OF ACCOUNTABILITY

HAITI'S NEW ADMINISTRATION STILL FACES OBLIGATION OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY
(Defend Haiti) - By RC

PORT-AU-PRINCE - (December 9, 2011) - On the eve of the 63rd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this December 10, 2011, the new administration policy in Haiti has yet to prove its case in terms of good governance, accountability and transparency in the affairs of the country, observes the online agency AlterPresse.

The position of Haiti, ranked 175th out of 183 countries (tied with Iraq with a score of 1.8) in the Perception of Corruption Index Report 2011 in public administration and policy - published by Transparency International in early December, restarts questions, of public opinion, on the direction of the Presidency of Michel Joseph Martelly and his team of six months.

Note that the Dominican Republic, is in the 129th position, a score of 2.6 out of 10, along with Armenia, Honduras and the Philippines.

When asked by the national press, Martelly still refuses to provide information on the cost of his many trips abroad since taking office on May 14, 2011, with large delegations.

At the time of travel to Venezuela on Thursday, December 1st 2011 for the first session of the Community of Latin American States and the Caribbean (CELAC), Martelly invited journalists to see for themselves the number of people in his delegation.

In his view, this information is not relevant to what he considers important for the media to mention in its daily minutes.

Before and after the results of the 2010 presidential election, Martelly, has always expressed annoyance about the questions of journalists, seemingly wanting to lecture information professionals, clenching the right to determine what direction to deliver the news, contrarily to the prescribed freedom of the press.

His wife, Sophia Saint-Remy, has an office, for which resources from the public treasury is not known. One of his children, Olivier Martelly, was appointed director of projects under the rehabilitation and/or construction of ten arenas in the national territory.

Today, there is still no hard data on the financial costs of travel by the chair or on the share devoted to travel of staff in the national budget execution.

No information, either, as to the amounts used to fund the salaries of 18 ministers and 19 secretaries of state, an unprecedented situation in public administration that has never been succeeded since 1986 in Haiti.

A legal provision directed the officials of the government to file a return of their property to a clerk of the court of first instance. To this day, nobody knows the administrative and legal declaration of assets of the President, his Prime Minister, ministers or secretaries of state.

The legal provision also applies to Parliamentarians (senators and deputies) who not only do not use transparency by declaring their assets, but seem to use discretion in the production of records relating to financial management. To date, no clarification has been made on the salaries of 100,000 gourdes for several months per consultant, provided by various departments in several former parliamentarians.

Moreover, in several public offices (such as in certain branches of the National Police of Haiti), private transactions are conducted without any receipt received from duties or taxes levied. This casts doubt on the destination of the funds collected.

When the current leaders are talking about investment objectives, creating 500,000 jobs over three years of positive growth of the economy, in recent years, the lack of transparency of information has weighed heavily, to the point of providing the Republic of Haiti a very low level of competitiveness compared to other countries in the region (Haiti is 141st out of 142 countries, just before Chad, in terms of competitiveness, in the ranking released in September 2011).

Meanwhile, the government of Prime Minister Garry Conille promised to soon make known his agenda of actions over the next 12 months to allow the public to follow the policy and conduct and evaluate its programs.

On the issue of corruption, the former Prime Minister Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis announced Wednesday, December 7, 2011, exclusively on the private station Radio Kiskeya that the Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes (CSCCA) conducted an audit of her administration and cleared her of all suspicion in the alleged misuse of $197 million of Petrocaribe, a scandal which led, in 2009, to her dismissal from the position.

Indicating receipt of a certificate, the CSCCA credited her government as sound financial management. Michèle Pierre-Louis said, "now wait for the verdict of the Unit to Fight Against Corruption (ULCC) and the General Inspectorate of Finance ", the other two bodies called upon to audit the use remaining unexplained of $197 million allocated for emergency response in the wake of four hurricanes in 2008.

"I did my experience in government. What was important for me was to hold my head high and I think I've succeeded," she said....