9345: Re: 9336: RE: 9304: one of Ira Kurzban's notable services (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Pierre Jean <pierrejean01@yahoo.com>

Kevin Pina and Catherine Orenstein have detailed for
us some concrete actions that Kurzban & Co. have
undertaken on behalf of the Haitian government, and I
thank them for that.

However, it still begs the question of why the Haitian
government is NOT releasing such information. My issue
is not so much with Kurzban getting paid $600,000+ a
year for his services. Rather, what I want to know is:
what are we as a country getting for the money we are
paying lobbyists. There is a simple reason as another
contributor (Philippe Charles?) wrote: if we spend on
a lot on questionable lobbying activities in the US
but can barely afford to buy a laptop for Judge
Gassant or cannot pay judges a decent salary, for
example, then something is horribly wrong. But we
won't know whether the lobbying activities are
justified until we are told what the lobbyist did.

It all comes back to the notion of TRANSPARENCY which
is simply non-existent. This is the promise that
Lavalas has NOT kept, as we witness scandal upon
scandal surfacing regarding large expenditures and now
slush funds (a la Menard).

Also, since the Corbett list is about Haiti first as
we are reminded all the time, it is secondary to me
what IRI and USAID spent, and how they spent it, on
democracy building in Haiti ... although we are all
dying to know, Mr. Lucas. What is important is that,
no matter what our detractors and foes in Washington
do, that the Haitian government be true to its people
and lifts the veil of secrecy.

If not, the rumblings coming out of Cite Soley and
other parts of poor neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince,
Cap and Gonaives, today may get much louder very soon.


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