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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 PORT AU PRINCE 000013 
 
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SIPDIS 
 
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E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL EAID SNAR HA
SUBJECT: CODEL DURBIN MEETING WITH PRESIDENT, PRIME MINISTER 
 
PORT AU PR 00000013  001.2 OF 004 
 
 
This message is sensitive but unclassified.  Please handle 
accordingly. 
 
Summary 
------- 
 
¶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 
---------------------------- 
 
¶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 
 
PORT AU PR 00000013  002.2 OF 004 
 
 
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 
------------------------------------------ 
 
 
PORT AU PR 00000013  003.2 OF 004 
 
 
¶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 
 
PORT AU PR 00000013  004.2 OF 004 
 
 
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