A National Plan Without the People?
Jane Regan

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jun 21 (IPS) - Haiti has a new, all-embracing plan aimed at pulling the country out of its economic, social and political rut with new roads and schools, policy changes and millions upon millions of dollars.

The only problem, critics say, is that it was written behind closed doors, it follows a neo-liberal economic recipe and is little more than ”disguised colonialism” because of the large role played by international institutions.

The Cadre de Cooperation International (CCI) or Interim Cooperation Framework, a draft summary of which was released earlier this month, does have a generally neo-liberal economic orientation. It calls for more free trade zones (FTZs), stresses tourism and export agriculture, and hints at the eventual privatisation of the country's state enterprises.

But it also promises broad social and economic interventions, including the immediate repair or building of hundreds of kilometres of roads, the promotion of alternative energy sources and a radical improvement of the education system.

The CCI -- which represents the first time that donors and lenders have sat down with one another and with the government to coordinate efforts in this overwhelmingly aid-dependent country -- will be used to orient the aid ”pledging conference” scheduled for Jul. 19-20 in Washington, DC.

Donors and lenders like the World Bank and the European Union are expected to make financial commitments to Haiti during those two days.

The plan was developed over the past six weeks by about 300 mostly foreign technicians and consultants, some 200 from institutions like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank, and the rest mainly government cadres.

That means that a two-year social and economic plan for a country of eight million has been drawn up by people nobody elected.

Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue and his ministers were hand-picked last March to run the country by an eight-person ”Council of Eminent Persons” who had backing from the world's powers -- led by the United States and France and backed by the United Nations Security Council.