President Martelly, First Lady and Son

This week, I received three documents that are serving as evidence by four senators to put under indictment, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe. According to two lawyers, there is corruption and embezzlement happening in Lamothe’s government and it is all because there is nepotism in the ranks. Accusers are pointing to two commissions that plan work for government ministries who have at their head the wife and son of President Martelly.

The charges were brought forward by two lawyers, Newton Saint-Juste and Andre Michel. These two lawyers have two executive orders and a resolution signed by the council of ministers that have caused tens of thousands to protest for the president to step down.

It will be a tough road to prove anything on the level of corruption because the documents do not prove the charges being made but the documents do portray a broken system throughout the Haitian government that may likely be enough to cost the prime minister his job.

There is favoritism on every level of the Haitian government. People with power hire friends and relatives to do jobs they are not capable of doing and rather complicate the course of routine functions.

It is an ugly problem that the people of Haiti have not overcome, while other western democracies had dealt with those issues centuries ago.

The international community helps to enable this behavior by funding a Martelly/Lamothe administration that operates like a non-governmental organization, unsustainable, unstable, and not towards building a sovereign nation with a working economy and peaceful people.

For example of the quality of individuals we get through this favoritism: The Haitian government appointed Consul Charles Forbin to represent the people of Haiti in the great city New York.

Two sources, that DH can conclude are credible, told us that a year before this diplomat was sworn in to office he was laying around the house, selling drugs and sending out childish and offensive tweets on twitter. (tweeted jokes )

These are the PG-13 jokes. There are about two dozen other vulgar p^$$y and d!&* jokes that are too extreme to be published here.

We don’t believe someone is sexist or a pervert or a lowlife for sending out tweets of jokes debasing to women and their bodies but we do believe that someone who does this should not be getting sworn in a year later to represent the Republic of Haiti in one of the greatest cities in the world, the global trade and business capital of New York.

The second of the two sources whom I was referred to conferred with DH that the Consul of Haiti in New York got the job from being high schools friends with the prime minister and before becoming Consul he worked at a SEARS department store stocking shelves at night.

There is nothing wrong with hard work, we believe in hard honest work, but Consul Forbin was fired from this job for stealing electronics. According to the source, his modus operendi was to throw expensive items into the dumpster at night and send a friend to pick them out of the trash later.

There is lastly a third source; a close friend to Consul Forbin’s mother who hastened to tell DH that before becoming consul, the college dropout, Forbin, refinanced his mother’s home, took out cash equity and bolted to New York leaving his mother with a new mortgage for home that she had already paid off.

We have contacted Consul Forbin and the Prime Minister for comment. We had not received a response at the time of publishing.

None-the-less, the Haitian people deserve better than this. There are fine Haitian college grads of international relations coming out of Rutgers, New York and Syracuse Universities who are honest and hardworking.

It is a wonder when President Michel Martelly tells journalists they must work to improve the image of Haiti when his government is full of stand-ins that take checks but don’t improve the country’s image or standing.

This is just one example. There are many more. The point is, favoritism, for years has stopped Haitians from recruiting the quality talent that exist in their community and it is at the root of Haiti’s problems, corruption.