PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Haitians should seize U.N.-backed elections in November as an opportunity to build a better nation from the ruins of this year’s earthquake by taking charge of future development and shedding years of aid dependency, the top U.N. official in Haiti said.
Edmond Mulet said the Nov. 28 presidential and legislative polls to be held 10 months after the massive Jan. 12 earthquake would be a chance for Haiti to shake off its identity as a weak, unstable, poverty-ridden “Republic of NGOs” dominated by foreign aid organizations.
“We’ve had billions of dollars spent in Haiti over years with zero impact on the rule of law — that has to change,” Mulet said in an interview on Wednesday at the sprawling U.N. logistics base in the quake-ravaged Haitian capital.
As the world pumps hundreds of millions of dollars more aid into the crippled Caribbean state, Mulet said Haiti’s leaders must show the political will to break the cycle of dependency and shape and lead a viable sustainable state governed by laws that will attract investors and foster economic development.
“Nobody wants to reconstruct Haiti the way it was, we have to do it completely differently now,” Mulet said, evoking the “build back better” motto that has become the mantra of Haiti’s foreign relief partners helping in the reconstruction effort.
Mulet, a Guatemalan U.N. veteran who heads a 12,000-strong blue-helmet peacekeeping force in Haiti, said the international community, wary of chronic corruption, mismanagement and instability in Haiti, had actually contributed to weakening the government by often sidelining it from essential tasks.
