23069: anonymous: reply to Walton

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

FROM: Anonymous

Walton wrote:

"Meanwhile- If the poor are eating better than they
were under Lavalas and getting health care; if jobs
are being created and infrastructure is being
repaired, it would be more productive to expend effort
in support of such activities than to complain about
the temporary government conducting such activities."



The author of this statement is clearly not living in
Haiti. Eating better?  Better healthcare? Roads
repaired?  How about some proof of all that. Doesn't
seem to conform to the experience of several
journalists who just returned. The only ones who seem
to be happy these days are Lartortue's charges in the
government, former military in Abraham's Interior
Ministry which more closely resembles a FADH HQ with
each passing day, UN administrators with lovely
salaries, USAID and EU NGOs with lovely budgets (some
things NEVER change!!), and killers like Chamblain and
Joanis who I am sure would absolutely agree with you.

Meanwhile, the price of rice is squeezing the poor,
who happen to still be the majority in this
rose-colored little neo-liberal experiment. Corpses
are turning up in lesser numbers on the streets of Bel
Air but the level of mutilation and otherwise creative
"wet work" is clearly on the rise. And a friend of
mine dares you call the dirt strip that crosses at the
top of Petion-Ville from the direction of Place Boyer
to Legliz St. Pierre, anything resembling that high
faloutin infrastructure we are hearing so much about
these days. Were that it were true. Perhaps Haiti
would  start to resemble this mythical place I heard
described earlier.  In that world she was not being
charged more then half of the 1.4 billion in
assistance and loans offered by her "friends" to cover
the cost of the intervention and peacekeeping in this
new Shangra-La. I hope future generations of Haitians
who will have to bear the costs of this new paradise
come to agree that it was all worth it at the end of
the day. In the meantime, perhaps the power of words
will console their empty bellies and protect them from
the criminals unleashed by this wonderful exercise in
rebuilding their democratic credentials and
institutions.