by Samuel Maxime

Philadelphia – Haitians at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia are trying to bring attention to Haiti, where Bill and Hillary Clinton are accused of defrauding the country of billions in earthquake relief money and destabilizing the nation’s economy and state institutions.

Mainstream media has moreover tried to ignore this most significant part of the Clintons’ background. It is where Bill and Hillary Clinton spent their honeymoon. But since then, the poor island nation has become a source of undue enrichment for friends and family of the Clintons and for the Clintons themselves.

The two-pronged tragedy

When the 2010 earthquake hit Haiti, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exacerbated the devastation to their own benefit. In the end, billions of dollars donated by individuals from countries all around the world, weeks upon weeks of top story attention on any and every news agency around the world, left Haitians not just where they began, but in worse circumstances.

Financially

Bill Clinton was United Nations envoy to Haiti and managed himself to head the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC). It was a commission of Haitian and international actors who would coordinate more than $13 billion in earthquake relief and reconstruction money. It wouldn’t take long before members of the commission began complaining about being shut out of discussions and planning.

By all accounts, the money and what it was meant to do never really reached the Haitian people. While the Clinton Foundation puts only 10 percent of its donations towards charity, the IHRC was a real racket for Clinton pals. Only 1 percent went towards Haitian groups and agencies on the ground. All that is transparent is that the money didn’t go to Haiti; beyond that the trail goes cold.

By all accounts, the money and what it was meant to do never really reached the Haitian people. It was a major kickback scheme.

The money for earthquake relief was funneled massively to friends of the Clintons, who so happen to be donors to Bill, Hillary and Chelsea’s Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign.

It was a major kickback scheme. Even the projects that were expected of the Clinton cronies didn’t match up to their billing and barely endured a year. The State Department Inspector General’s Office would release a scathing report of waste and poor oversight to a degree all but criminal. New York Times best-seller “Clinton Cash” highlights much of these entanglements and conflicts of interests.

Politically

Hillary Clinton, as the U.S. secretary of state, sent her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, to Haiti in January 2011 and according to live, on-air radio, testimony by the director general of Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council at the time, Mills changed the presidential election results to favor a raunchy musician, Michel Martelly, who had finished in fourth place.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) paid a group that a month prior, on Dec. 7, 2010, staged riots in the cities of Port-au-Prince and Les Cayes. It was exactly this disorder, by a group that would be funded by USAID to the tune of $100,000, that the Clinton State Department would use as basis for its intervention in the elections and changing of the results of the will of the Haitian people.

Furthermore, for five years, Martelly, the musician-turned-president, attempted to install a totalitarian regime in Haiti by not organizing elections. One by one Haiti’s institutions fell as elections were not held. All local townships fell in December of 2011, a third of the Senate in May of 2012 and, ultimately, a second third of the Senate and the entire Chamber of Deputies on the fifth anniversary of the earthquake, Jan. 12, 2015.

In the absence of checks and balances, Hillary Clinton’s younger brother obtained one of two of the first gold mining contracts awarded by Haiti in more than 50 years. The other went to members of the totalitarian regime.

Haiti went from a democracy of 5,000 elected officials in 2010 to a totalitarian regime in 2015. By the time Americans go to the polls to vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton for president this November, Haiti still will have not one legitimately elected official in office. From the lowliest township up to the presidency, a representative government in Haiti is absent.

By the time Americans go to the polls to vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton for president this November, Haiti still will have not one legitimately elected official in office.

Samuel Maxime is editor in chief of the Haiti Sentinel, where this story first appeared. A Haitian-born citizen living in the United States, he founded The Haiti Sentinel to bring Haitian issues to an English language audience. He can be reached at zoemagltd@gmail.com.