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18528: anonymous: Re: 18504 White: Maxine Water's press release
>Washington, D.C. -- Today, at a press conference on Capitol Hill, >Rep.
Maxine Waters (D-CA) made the following statement:
>President Aristide is pursuing a progressive economic agenda in >Haiti.
On February 7, 2003, the government doubled the minimum >wage from 36 to
70 gourdes per day, despite strong opposition >from the business
community.
Ms Waters being paid and shopping in US dollars and not in gourdes can be
excused for ignoring that, at the very same moment, feb. 2003, gourde had
dropped at more than 50 for one US... when it was at 25 some one year
before... This mainly by the neverending printing of local currency...
Besides, even calculated in US dollars, common goods prices are now
usually 25 to 100 % more expensive than in november 2002... not to speak
about the inflation of those prices in gourdes!!! Could Ms Waters explain
what the poor gained with this "progressive agenda"... Good intentions
are a good thing perhaps, but the poor do not eat from them...
>There have also been a number of reforms to prohibit trafficking >in
persons and protect the estimated 400,000 children from rural >villages
who work as domestic servants in households in the >cities.
Hmmm... Did Ms Waters checked with people taking care of the street
children and restavek to see if the children flow from hills to towns had
decreased ?
Did Ms Waters noticed that more and more children are sleeping in the
strets at night in Port-au-Prince?
Has Ms Waters any idea about the suffering of these children? Does she
know how they fear the police and are helpless when arested, beaten,
humiliated or worse?
Making speeches is probably her job, but she should not ignore the misery
of the poor...
It is true that those children will never make any "press release"... And
their voice is never to be heard in the American Congress... But, as a
Democrat, perhaps could she think about giving THEM a voice, and not
Aristide who already has Ms Karshan, Mr Kurzban, and all the money he
wants to buy any media support...
She should perhaps know that political agenda and speeches do not
necessarily equal the bettering of poor people's condition.
>President Aristide has also made health care and education >national
priorities. More schools were built in Haiti between >1994 and 2000 than
between 1804 and 1994.
It is probably true as few haitian governments did a lot for education...
But it is also true that Haiti population is slightly larger than in past
decades or 19th century, or am I wrong?
Ms Waters is perhaps unaware of the fact main part of those schools are
privately funded and privately operated, Haitian State part being reduced
to this: delivering the license in order school can operate [even if many
have no license at all and have their pupils presented to exams through
other schools...]... and collecting fees for the national exams...
Ms Waters should perhaps visit several of those schools and understand
that education is seldom their aim: operating a school is probably, after
a private church, the easiest legal way to make money in Haiti...
Counting how many schools were built says NOTHING about the education
level in Haiti... and it might even be true those days that the more
schools there is, the less the children learn in them!!! It will take a
long long time, and more than speeches to change this and have in Haiti
both
1/all the children going to school
AND
2/schools being the place they receive real education, and a serious help
to built their lives!
>The maternity wards of eight public hospitals have been >renovated, and
hundreds of Haitians are being trained as >physicians.
It seems also that police is shoting in hospitals, thugs threatening
patients, doctors and nurses... clinics looted...
In Cite Soleil, even the food for pregnant women is regularly stolen from
a clinic... and the patients files were at least once thrown down and
dispersed... Police does not care... Thieves are well known thugs you see
also in pro-Aristide demonstrations, and in front of several State
buildings at payroll time, and in front of regular businesses where they
"ask" money to customers at other times, when there is no street action,
no pro-Aristide demonstration nor anti-opposition actions...
>Twenty new HIV testing centers will open around the country >during the
next two years.
>All of this is being accomplished despite a continuing embargo by >the
IMF and the World Bank.
Was I wrong thinking those 20 new HIV centers were US funded?
>The so-called opposition is supported by many of the same people >who
were content with the brutal dictators of Haiti's past.
It is true... It is ALSO true that opposition is supported by almost all
of those people who supported Aristide at his beggining, and often risked
their lives for him or for what he represented...
Would Ms Waters have the "courage" to assimilate actual opposition with
the militaries in front of the very persons actually asking for Aristide
stepping down and who were tortured, rapped, exiled by the Dualiers and
or the military?
She should have more respect for at least one journalist woman who paid
dearly her love for democracy under the militaries, and pays dearly her
love for freedom under Aristide regime...
I would have understood this kind of despising approach from a machist
Rep... It is difficult to understand how Ms Waters dares ignore such
fidelity, courage, strengt and suffering from a fellow woman, haitian,
black, democrat...
>Unfortunately, these gangs appear to be obtaining support from the
>so-called opposition in the hope that their attacks will help to >fuel
other attacks in other parts of the country and eventually a >coup d'etat
in Port-au Prince. This is clearly an attempt at a >power-grab.
It is true all the Opposition says cannot be taken for granted... But Ms
Waters might, even if she does not believe opposition leaders, she might
have added they expressed clearly their condemn of violence and their not
being linked with armed rebels...
She might also have added that those gangs were armed, paid, encouraged
for years by Aristide himself... Why is Ms Waters showing such a
manicheistic view of things? It seems that, sitting in the White House,
she would probably not hesitate to accuse Haitian oposition of producing
WMD, and being BAD, ennemy of freedom and civilisation, AND a threat for
US security...
>Unfortunately, the same forces that fashion themselves as the
>opposition also have control over the broadcast media in Haiti. >They
have used the power of the press to discredit President >Aristide and
disseminate false information to the international >press about the
situation in Haiti.
Hmmm...? Right now, It seems Ms Waters never leastened to those broadcast
media in the last months... She should have heard Aristide speeches
diffused over and over again on Radio Metropole as paid ads...
Is she aware that in the whole Cap-Haitian region, the very Cap town
excepted, but in the morns around, no radio station is to be heard except
Radio Nationale that diffuses governemena\tal truth... and also lists the
names of people and families described as enemy of the people... In the
US, where Ms Waters lives, works, speaks and is elected, this would be
punished by law as incitation to hatred, propaganda for crime or else...
Does Ms Waters condemn the fact that someone being SUSPECTED of being
related to "184" mouvement or political opposition has to fly from Cap
Haitian and have his house looted and burned?
>Finally, the international press must discontinue the practice of
>repeating rumors and innuendos and begin to spend quality time >learning
the truth and writing the truth about what is really >going on in Haiti.
This is wise and good advice... But one might wish Ms Waters would act
accordingly...