6695: Pina responds to: GILMAN SUPPORTS HAITI CIVIL SOCIETY DIALOGUE (fwd)] (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: KEVIN PINA <kevinpina@usa.net>

If you were to read the Haitian organizations backing this "non-partisan"
initiative it reads like a veritable who's who of Haiti's business sector with
a little window dressing. It smacks of putting the foxes in charge of guarding
the henhouse.

Apparently "civil society" does not include community based organizations
working on the national level to improve the conditions of their breathren,
women's organizations or peasant organizations. Haiti's peasantry could not
possibly be "civil" as they are largely illiterate and undernourished despite
the fact they represent 70% of the population of Haiti. 

Gilman's plowing the road to lay the blame for the failure of this
"non-partisan" initiative on Lavalas is transparent and shameful. Whether it
be the Convergence or this new tactic of "non-partisan" initiative the goal
remains the same, to so bog down and burden Lavalas with "opposition" that it
will forestall any debate of the real problem behind the problems in Haiti. 

The real problem behind the problems is unquestionable the redistribution of
wealth in Haiti and putting an end to the carte blanche priviledges of the
economic oligarchy which many appear to have agreed to pretend no longer
exists. It is a game of smoke and mirrors that can only serve to further
fracture Haitian society precisely because the genie of the poor majority are
now far too conscious to ever be put back into the bottle. 

Congressman Gilman's and Ambassador Curran's embracement of this "civil
society" initiative is not only cynical but further proves an unfortunate
historical axiom of US foreign policy in our Monrovian "backyard", that which
we cannot control we destroy. It leaves conscious citizens of the United
States wishing that US foreign policy would grow up and accept that the world
has changed.      

____________________________________________________________________
Get free email and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1