News Information
- NEWS_POSTED_BY: Haiti Place
- NEWS_POSTED_ON: Aug 06, 2015
- Views : 640
- Category : Haiti News
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Description :
Miami Herald
August 5, 2015
- Location : Port-au-Prince, Ouest, Haiti
- Website : http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/obituaries/article30016278.html
Overview
PORT-AU-PRINCE - Henri Bazin, a university professor and former Haitian minister of finance and economy, died Tuesday at his home in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Turgeau, Haiti’s Nouvelliste newspaper reported.
Word of Bazin’s death quickly spread through social media and was confirmed by his friend and former boss, ex-Prime Minister Gerard Latortue of Boca Raton. Bazin served as Latortue’s finance minister and chief economist during the 2004-2006 U.S.-backed interim government that Latortue led.
The government came to power after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced to flee into exile — for a second time — amid a bloody coup.
"With the death of Henri, Haiti has lost one of its most skilled and most honest sons,” Latortue said. Bazin, he noted, was admired for his sense of humanity and patience, “always willing to dialogue.”
“He wore high the traditional values of dignity and rectitude, which characterized the great personalities who have marked our history,” Latortue said.
Indeed, in a country plagued with corruption, Bazin was considered a rarity. He had the reputation of being Mr. Honest. One of his marks during his tenure as finance minister was getting rid of the “zombie" or ghost checks that went to people who were either double-dipping or not employed in the tasks for which they were being compensated.
He also initiated other reforms, say former colleagues and friends.
Before Bazin took office, 73 percent of funds expended by Haiti’s public treasury were basically sent out as blank checks, with no consideration as to whether they were to go for items actually in the national budget, said Gabriel Verret, who served as Bazin’s chief economic advisor. Half of that money went directly to the National Palace’s checking account, an aberration that became the focus of reforms and investigations. By the end of the 2004-2005 budget year, Bazin had almost done away with the practice, getting it down to under 10 percent.
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