On Haiti, Concrete and Corruption

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-02-26 09:24:00 UTC
Topics:

On first blush, the news doesn't make Haiti's tourism minister, Patrick Delatour, look very good. Over the past month, Delatour -- who lost two elderly parents in the quake -- has headed a commission that's overseeing efforts to rebuild Port-au-Prince. And now, according to USA Today, it turns out that Delatour also happens to own 5% of a concrete-mixing company that's in prime position to receive reconstruction contacts.

Naturally, the story registered with those looking to sniff out corruption, especially in connection with the Haitian state. And sure, by likening his own situation to that of Dick Cheney (who held onto his stock options in Halliburton after taking office in the White House in 2001), Delatour wasn't doing himself any favors.

But calling out the minister based on this report feels more like an aha, gotcha! kind of move than one with real sauce. This was a company, after all, that Delatour founded back in 2000 with his cousin. Are we really to think that he founded it 10 years ago with the expectation that Haiti would get hit with an apocalyptic earthquake he'd someday cash in on? That strikes me as about as glued to reality as the theory that Obama backers oh-so-cleverly planted a birth record in a 1961 Hawaii newspaper to seed his eventual rise as U.S. president.

When it comes to corruption, "conflict of interest" cases are among the more obvious out there. But especially in the developing world, I'm not convinced they're among the most important. Persuading officials to drop their stake in a company is hardly a cure-all: it just shifts opportunities for corruption into a less easily traceable direction. If an official doesn't have a financial investment in one company, does that make him or her any less susceptible to other interested parties' attempts to sway the contracting process?

I'm sympathetic to its spirit, but I think calls for Delatour to drop his ties to the company are too simplistic. There many, many companies and NGOs with a stake in Haiti's reconstruction process. To begin with, it's not at all clear that the Haitian government is going to be the one primarily disbursing related funds. And if the company's reports are correct, too, and there's no other company in Haiti offering ready-mixed concrete, why should Haiti's one indigenous supplier get passed over in a time of such great need?

Photo Credit: Hoppo Bumpo (Liesl)


Te-Ping Chen Te-Ping Chen is a freelance writer and U.S. Truman Scholar whose writing has appeared in the Nation Magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, Le Soir, and Slate.com.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Gotta Problem? Blame the Nazis
NEXT STORY:
A letter from Bettina Siegel, "Pink Slime" petition creator

COMMENTS (0)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.