18555: Aristide, Preval, Schools, Steele Foundation and Money (Was: Re: 18528: anonymous: Re: 18504 White: Maxine Water's press release) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Pierre Jean <pierrejean2004@yahoo.com>

Maxine Waters states:

>  >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.

These schools were built by René Préval (1996-2001),
not by Aristide. Préval was hamstrung by Aristide on
many fronts, but he managed to build schools and
secondary roads (lots of them.)

What Waters also doesn't say is that:

1. Aristide has built fewer schools in his 5 years (by
far) than René Préval did. Instead he focused on his
"places", Lesly Voltaire's pet project and the
latter's main source of illicit income (through
kickbacks from constructions companies.) Oh, and did I
mention that Voltaire is a silent partner in Routes &
Ponts?

If your resources are limited, would you rather build
a "place" or a school to educate the children who
cannot afford to go to private schools? Tough choice,
maybe, but I know what I would do. What would you do?

2. Although Préval had good intentions, he never was
able to find enough funding to pay the school teachers
of these new schools. So you have many schools that
are functioning part-time and some that are completely
closed (especially in the Nord-Ouest.)

So why doesn't President Aristide sacrifice some of
the millions he is paying to the Steele Foundation for
his protection and instead allocate it to pay for the
education of poor Haitian students?

Let's assume that the 6 million dollars that are paid
to the Steele Foundation are exaggerated and that the
contract is worth about 3 million dollars: minimum of
15 mercenaries @ US$150,000 a year each plus perks
(house in Montagne Noire, transportation, women when
they feel lonely) plus Steele's hefty management fee.
The Steele Foundation is not in the charity business
so I am sure that they are earning well above 6
figures for protecting the President and his family,
not the Haitian people, as Louis "L'Etat c'est moi"
XIV, pardon me, Aristide, would have you believe.

Do you realize that with these 3 million dollars
(which is equivalent to 135 million gourdes today)
Aristide could have paid the salaries of 2,000
teachers a year? That would be plenty to get the rural
schools that are closed going full-time. Talk about
misallocation of meager state resources.

The greatest legacy Aristide could have left was to
educate enough young Haitians from modest backgrounds
so they would forge their own path and not let anyone
else pull the wool over their eyes ever again.
Instead, he chose to spend these funds on his own
safety. This shows how much faith he REALLY has in
USGPN, CIMO, and the like. What does that say about
his priorities?

It is clearly to me that Maxine Waters did NOT write
that press release. If she had taken the time to
verify the facts, she would have realized that the
real authors are taking her for a ride.

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