00:00This is your second term. Can you talk about some of your top goals for this term?
00:03What is the need of Haiti currently? Actually, it's security. So I think in the short term,
00:12what we need now is to find a way to cooperate with Taiwan and security to help solve the problem,
00:21this problem in Haiti. And then after, there are other important goals, like since I left for my
00:33first term, one of the projects that I had is to see with the government of Taiwan what we can do
00:40to have a science park in Haiti. So I think this is one of the things because we have achieved a lot
00:45of thing. But now I think this is the moment to bring to the floor some technological important
00:54project that can help Haiti not only solve the poverty problem, but also the prosperity goal.
01:02I guess, do you see any challenges in Haiti-Taiwan relations right now?
01:07Difficulties, I won't say that. But we need to know that it's politics. The relation as well
01:13depends on what the political elite they pursue. They understand the relationship because we need
01:24to know in Haiti, it's not like all the population, they are all for Taiwan. We have also some political
01:34leaders who believe that we should have relation with other countries instead of Taiwan. But
01:43mostly our political elite, our political class, they believe, and it's because this is what it is now,
01:54that having relation, diplomatic relation with Taiwan, it's not only a transactional relation, it is a relation
02:04based on democracy, a relation based on freedom, sovereignty, and the pursuit of dignity.
02:17And so did you say some people within Haiti might think that Haiti should have relations with China?
02:23Definitely, as it is in all the countries around the world. Even in the countries which don't really,
02:31don't have like diplomatic relation with Taiwan, you will find people who believe that
02:38their country should have diplomatic relation with Taiwan instead of China, even though it's a minority
02:44or a majority. But when you are in a democracy, people are free to believe in what they want to believe to even
02:54they just have to have their reason for this belief.
02:59I've seen just a couple of reports, not recently, but in 2019, the head of China's Office of Commercial
03:07Development in Haiti said to a Haitian newspaper that it could offer Haiti interest-free loans and direct
03:13investment in areas like infrastructure if Haiti upheld the one-China principle. I guess, do you consider
03:19that pressure? Consider that as a pressure? I won't say that. They are doing politics. For me, it's normal.
03:30They would love to have a country like Haiti as a diplomatic partner. Maybe we even suffer from that.
03:39Maybe they could offer more. So they are giving a lot of or doing a lot of propositions. But what we need to know is
03:52even though they are present in Haiti, Haiti is still a sovereign state, a sovereign country. We do what
04:01we want and we do it on behalf of our people. And our people now stand for democracy and stand as our long past
04:12and history of democracy stand for Taiwan because we want, we support the dignity, the freedom and the
04:21sovereignty of Taiwan as a small state as we are.
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