CODEL DURBIN MEETING WITH PRESIDENT, PRIME MINISTER

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SUBJECT: CODEL DURBIN MEETING WITH PRESIDENT, PRIME MINISTER

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Summary
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1. (SBU) The Haitian President and Prime Minister told Codel
Durbin December 17-18 that Haiti's main priorities after the
August-September hurricanes are economic growth and job
creation, infrastructure-building, education, environmental
restoration, and strengthening Haiti's political
institutions. The President stressed that political
stability requires reforming the constitution. He insisted
that Haiti needed the pre-fab classrooms that Broward County
was ready to donate, while Congressman Meek and the Prime
Minister said that building schools in Haiti was the
economically feasible alternative. The Prime Minister
stressed the need for policies to encourage Haiti's middle
class to stay in the country, to bring Haiti's sprawling
network of private schools under state supervision, and to
induce citizens to pay their taxes. End summary.

Preval: How Donors Can Help
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2. (SBU) Senators Dick Durbin and Jeff Bingaman, Congressman
Kendrick Meek and Illinois State Senator Kwame Raoul visited
Haiti December 16-19 and met with President Preval December

17. They were accompanied by the Ambassador, PolCouns
(notetaker),staffers Chris Homan and Michael Daly (Durbin),
Jeffrey Phan (Bingaman),and Christian Hassan (Meek).
Accompanying President Preval were his political adviser Bob
Manuel and economic adviser Gabriel Verret. Senator Durbin
introduced Senator Bingaman and Congressman Meek as the two
U.S. legislators who have worked the hardest on behalf of
Haiti. They wanted to learn Haiti's top priorities following
the August-September hurricanes. Senator Bingaman concurred
that post-hurricane priorities had to be identified in time
for the upcoming conference of donors. The President
immediately asked for help transporting to Haiti the
prefabricated classrooms which Broward County had donated.
He said that behind the initial tranche of 100 such
classrooms was an offer to provide 3,000. Congressman Meek
warned that transport costs were prohibitive. The
alternative was to build schools in Haiti. Senator Durbin
noted that this money could be better spent on teachers and
school construction.


3. (SBU) The President declared that the donors conference
should discuss Haiti's main development priorities over the
next three years. Those priorities must be infrastructure
(including roads and telecommunications),agriculture, and
elections. Preval said he would dispatch the Prime Minister
and Minister of Economy and Finance to the main donor
capitals to prepare the agenda for this conference. The
Ambassador commented that the donors conference would be held
tentatively in Canada in February. Senator Durbin commented
on the demanding nature of these priorities. Haiti faced
overwhelming economic and environmental challenges. Haiti
should pursue economic growth in a way that preserved the
environment, reforested the countryside, and found an
alternative to charcoal as a household fuel. The President
replied that Haiti's deforestation was the result of 200
years of history. Reforestation was an economic problem
which could be solved only if farmers could live off crops,
such as fruit trees, which they planted to cover denuded
land.

Constitutional Reform
--------------


4. (SBU) The President said that political stability was the
fundamental prerequisite for Haiti's development. Only
Haitians not foreigners could achieve it. The U.S. could do
its part by helping Haiti staunch the drug trade. Bob Manuel
stated that drug money had pulled Haiti back considerably.
The Ambassador pointed to the work of DEA in Haiti and to USG

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work to build Haitian police capacity. The President replied
that Haiti lacked the capability to fight the traffickers,
who had infiltrated parts of the Haitian National Police.
Senator Durbin pointed out that drugs were a hemispheric
challenge which had caused thousands of deaths in Mexico.
Verret interjected that Haiti's constitutionally-mandated
cycle of frequent elections was a source of instability. The
President insisted there were serious problems with the
current constitution, but that Haiti was still a long way
from constitutional reform. Many suspected the President
wanted to reform the constitution only to allow his
indefinite re-election. He said he was prepared to pledge
that he would not serve another term.

Criminal Justice System
--------------


5. (SBU) Noting that he had visited the National Penitentiary
the previous day, Senator Bingaman asked how the U.S. could
help ameliorate deplorable conditions there, where prisoners
languished for years without their cases being processed.
The President conceded the weakness of Haiti's judicial
system. Bob Manuel explained that Haiti's criminal and civil
codes were 25 years old and needed revamping. They provided
excessive protections for criminals. Haiti had to train
judges and better protect them. Judges adjudicating
narcotics cases sometimes were threatened. Prosecutors and
investigating magistrates often clashed. Suspects were held
for too long. Judicial reform was a complex of problems that
had to contend with drug trafficking, corruption, and the
overall weakness of the Haitian state. The lack of property
security was a disincentive to investment. In any case, the
U.S. Department of the Treasury was helping train Haitian
officials in coping with financial crime, money laundering,
and tax evasion. Increasing state revenues was indispensable
to strengthening the Haitian state.

The Economy, Education
--------------


6. (SBU) Turning to the economy, Economic Adviser Gabriel
Verret declared that the U.S. Congress's recent renewal of
Haiti Hemispheric Opportunity Through Partnership
Encouragement Act (HOPE 2) was a qualified success whose full
potential had yet to be realized. Haiti had to create
industry outside of the crowded capital, and was seeking to
acquire land to open an industrial park in the north.
Ongoing road construction was making this possible. The road
along the north coast from Cap Haitien to Dajabon in the
Dominican Republic opened up new economic and tourism
possibilities. However, Haiti had to amend its restrictive
labor laws. Provisions mandating overtime pay for second and
third shifts deterred investment.


7. (SBU) Senator Durbin asked how Haiti could improve its
educational system. The U.S. NGO working in Haiti ''Hands
Together'' had told the delegation about the difficulty of
finding and keeping good teachers. The President agreed that
the dearth of teachers was the crux of the problem.

TPS
---


8. (SBU) Congressman Meek answered the President's question
about his request for Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for
Haitians in the U.S. by saying he would pursue it with the
incoming U.S. administration. Senator Durbin remarked that
it was twice as hard to reform U.S. immigration law in bad
times as in good. However, immigration had not been an issue
in the U.S. presidential campaign. He hoped the U.S. could
pass ''the right law at the right time.'' In any case, the
credit crisis put the incoming U.S. administration in a
difficult position to deal with this issue.

Prime Minister: Post-Hurricane Priorities
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9. (SBU) The Ambassador hosted a breakfast for Senators
Durbin and Bingaman and Congressman Meek with Prime Minister
Michele Pierre-Louis December 18. PM aide Marys Kadar;
staffers Homan, Daley, Phan and Hassan; and PolCouns
(notetaker) participated. The Prime Minister recounted that
over the last nine months, Haiti had lurched from crisis to
crisis: energy and food inflation, the April food riots, the
lack of a government for five months, and then the hurricane
devastation of August-September. Her government had
reshuffled the priorities contained in the previous
government's development plan, the National Strategy Document
for Growth and Poverty Reduction. The new government aimed
to strengthen the economy and stimulate domestic production
and job creation. It would concentrate on infrastructure and
environmental restoration. The government was studying
electricity as a separate issue, since publicly-owned power
plants were selling electricity at a loss that the state had
to cover. Three Venezuelan power plants were a benefit of
Haiti's participation in the Petrocaraibe oil arrangement.


10. (SBU) The second priority was education and health. The
government wanted to bring private schools under state
supervision, and reverse the decline in national health
indicators. The third priority was reforming the judiciary,
police and the penal system. Overall, Haiti suffered from a
''problem of leadership.'' Weak leadership had caused the
failure of efforts to build democratic conditions after the
fall of the Duvaliers.


11. (SBU) Responding to Senator Durbin's question about
education, the PM explained that 89 percent of all Haitian
schoolchildren attended non-public schools, which all charged
tuition and which were run more as businesses than as
educational institutions. The Ministry of Education had no
control over these private schools. Only 10 percent of them
were licensed. Teacher pay was abysmal, about 1500 Haitian
gourdes (USD 40) per month in rural areas. The PM said it
was preferable to build new schools than import prefab
classrooms from the United States, for which transport costs
were prohibitive. Of 400 schools damaged in recent storms,
the GOH was rebuilding 90 and renovating 100. Senator Durbin
stated that money for mobile classrooms that the President
hoped to obtain from Broward County would be better spent on
teachers and building schools.


12. (SBU) The PM stressed her government's commitment to the
environment. She had created a commission of six government
ministers to channel donor country environmental assistance.
The IDB was financing assistance to coordinate foreign
financed environmental projects. The government intended to
set legal boundaries to Haiti's three remaining forests.

Helping the Middle Class
--------------


13. (SBU) The PM expressed a personal interest in expanding
housing construction and home ownership in Haiti. She wanted
to change the Haitian political tradition of taking into
account only the elite and the poor masses, and beginning
addressing the aspirations of the middle class. As it was,
Haitians who acquired higher education had few prospects in
Haiti. A middle class salary in Haiti could not finance the
purchase of a home or car. Middle class Haitians needed to
have confidence in their country. Currently, such Haitians
emigrated in large numbers, primarily to the U.S. and Canada.


Broadening the Tax Base
--------------


14. (SBU) When Senator Durbin inquired about increasing tax
collection, the PM conceded the failure of most wealthy
citizens to pay direct taxes. The poor paid indirect taxes
through the goods they purchased. Haiti was building a
computer database with a file on every taxpayer that would
monitor income from all sources. She explained that making
the rich pay in Haiti could be dangerous, but the government

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had to make an effort.

Prisons
--------------


15. (SBU) Addressing Senator Bingaman's question about
prisons, the Prime Minister recalled that the U.S. had built
Haiti's main prison, the National Penitentiary, in the 1920s
to hold 200 inmates. Today it held nearly 4,000. She said
that plans to refashion a former psychiatric hospital into a
new prison had fallen through after the Canadian government
had pulled out of the project. Following the collapse of two
schools in Haiti in October, the Canadians no longer believed
the structure could hold the planned number of inmates. The
Ministry of Justice then hit on the idea of building a new
facility for 1,500 inmates on a large piece of land recently
seized from a drug trafficker. That project would cost USD
6-8 million.
SANDERSON