When the State Forgets National Priorities

The government is pulling out all the stops to royally celebrate the bicolor flag. More than 300 million gourdes for a two-hour ceremony in Cap-Haïtien. The State is never poor; honor must be paid to the flag, a symbol of national unity and sovereignty. When the Minister of Youth announced the budget for the festivities on May 13, during the government's weekly program called «Tuesday of the Nation», most journalists thought it was an hallucination. To justify the disbursement of this sum, the minister stated that the government plans to make Flag Day a national celebration. Are we serious or unconscious? While we spend lavishly on a mass and just another speech, Haitians are suffering in the neighboring Republic. They are expelled, humiliated, and returning to their homeland is even more dangerous than the torment inflicted by Dominicans. Thousands continue to live in the indignity of internal displacement. Life in makeshift camps has become hellish. Public institutions continue to accumulate salary arrears. 300 million is a «Caca Harang» (a small amount, a pittance), what can be done with it? The country has too many problems; we would do better to celebrate and hoist our bicolor flag to remind the whole world who we have always been. To honor the flag, who will pay the price? According to an analysis by former Minister of Commerce Jonas Coffy, the CPT alone would cost the Haitian State more than 60 million gourdes per month. Expenses for their spouses, second residences, food costs, clothing, not to mention travel. The delegation going to Cap-Haïtien will not have to pay tolls at the toll booths installed along National Road Number One. No difficulties to face due to the threat of fuel shortage weighing on the country. But their travel will be ensured by helicopters at the nation's expense; per diems or risk bonuses will be calculated. For all this, not even a cent will be deducted from the total allowances of the Advisor-Presidents. Let's do what we do best, and other peoples will not let us perish While we try to suppress our own humanity by denying our reality, the world continues to progress in various fields. But this leaves us neither hot nor cold, because the progress of others is ultimately for us. We won't need to make efforts in agriculture because the Dominican Republic does, no investment in education because Canada does, no need to fund scientific research because the United States does. We had the Biden program, we will surely have others... such is life in Haiti. One day, things will have to change. We can eternally resort to corruption to get rich, but we cannot always plunder the State's coffers. We cannot always engage in arms and ammunition trafficking, because you can do anything with a weapon except sit on it. Weapons alone have never made a country rich. It is the progress of science and the relentless work of citizens that create prosperity. Jean Mapou