18404: Simidor re 18377: Aristide rides a tidal wave of love (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel Simidor <karioka9@mail.arczip.com>


The problem with this panegyrical press is its utter lack of credibility.  How can a serious journalist or columnist write a report about Haiti today without at least a mention of the phenomenal corruption and mismanagement that epitomizes the lavalas regime?  Corruption is the most serious and most entrenched problem the country faces today.  It is the biggest stumbling bloc in Haiti’s search for democratic governance and accountability.

Aristide and his lavalas cohorts are riding the kleptocratic Haitian state like there is no tomorrow.  And there may not be a tomorrow if they are allowed to continue with this joy ride.  Aristide spends the country’s meager resources like it’s money out of his own pockets: $9 millions plus expenses for his private security (more than the budget for the departments of Agriculture and Health combined); fleets of luxury SUV’s for deserving OP leaders; a private plane; multiples trips abroad with a large entourage of sycophants; several millions on lobbying to polish his image abroad; money and weapons a-gogo for his militias, the so-called Chimères, who hold hundreds of no-show jobs in various ministries and government projects.  The list goes on….

“A stirring orator with an almost messianic appeal among the poor, Aristide was elected president of the country in 1990, riding a wave of populist fervour that was unlike anything seen in Haiti since the late 1700s,” writes Oakland Ross in the Toronto Star.  Please, Mr. Ross! The Haitians I know are in the main disillusioned and weary of Lavalas politics.  One gets the sense of the author riding his own tidal wave of illusion -- with a rather strong dose of manure.

Daniel Simidor