#3945: Re: Keyword : Compromise : Justin comments

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: rljustin <rljustin@email.msn.com>

Another comment on Olivier Nadal's article


Keyword : Compromise


I am well aware that "compromise" is a dirty word in our lexicon.
Yet, we Haitian need to expand its meaning to include " consideration
for the position of other people  and making mutual concessions".
I have never met either Mr. Olivier Nadal or Ms. Hudicourt(?), but
I surmise from their articles that one is bitter and the other one,
sour. Like Ms. Hudicourt, I called myself a "Lavalas" in 1991, I don't
know whether I would do that today. But one thing I know for sure
is that I belong with the people, by whatever names it is called :
plebs or lumpem. From that perspective, I am still closer to the Lavalas'
formal ideological position. I firmly believe that the masses must
have their say in the governance of the country and share in whatever
benefits produced by their contribution.
However, from the very beginning, our governing elite has sought to
exclude the great "unwashed" and relegate them to the backyard or
the countryside. It can be argued that our ancestors didn't know any
better, and that they should not be held responsible for the dismal
legacy of exclusivism and intolerance handed down to them by their
former slave-holding masters. But from Jean-Jacques Dessalines to
Dumarsais Estimé down now to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, every time the
masses have risen to demand their fair share, the response from the
elite has always been the same : a brutal re-affrimation of traditional
privileges. This, in turn, has led to the building of resentment within
the masses, and the advent of some power hungry individual capable
of exploiting that resentment, whence Faustin Soulouque, François
Duvalier and the rest. Whenever that has happened, the traditional
elite has always paid a heavy price, the masses dragged down deeper
into poverty and the country led further down the road to disaster.

It is said that the most fortunate people are are those who can learn
from others' mistakes. Most people are able to learn from their own
mistakes. The least fortunate are absolutely incapable of learning,
neither from others' mistakes, nor from their own.
The time has come for us Haitians to stop repeating the same mistakes
again and again. It is time that we learned the virtue of compromise.
We need to reject the evil of intolerance. We need to clean our political
discourse, remove the gratuitous insults, the finger- pointing, the
cheap calumnies that make it impossible for us to sit together and
create anything of value. And sitting together, we must. That, however,
does not preclude each faction from vigorously fighting (in a civil
manner) for its particular interests. It is the only sure way to check
the advent of the tyranny that Mr. Nadal and Ms. Hudicourt seem to
fear so much and perhaps rightly so. Historically, only those nations
that have discovered the secret of compromise have been able to make
progress in all fields of activities and live peacefully in freedom.
Isn't that what we all say we want for our country?

 Remon L. Jisten