23192: Simidor: A Latortue watch for Haiti? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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


Maybe it is not too late to talk the weather center in Miami into bestowing the name Latortue on the next hurricane after Karl.  Then instead of a full-fledged calamity, we could all count on a tentative little gust, a hurricane by commission -- the only kind that will not kill Haitians by the hundreds.

With Aristide, every strong wind was an opportunity to bring out the National Begging Bowl and to lobby the “international community,” pathetically in seven languages, for donations.  Coming from a man who lived most of his life on public charity, the reflex did seem normal.  But the world expected more from the great can-do prime minister sent from above to save Haiti from itself.  To whip out the National Bowl after the Mapou and now Gonaives disasters, and to label 2004 “a bad year for Haiti,” is beginning to tell on Mr. Latortue.

The whole world ought to know by now that Haiti is an ecological disaster, brought about by 200+ years of raping the land and stealing from the poor.  Please, not another fancy commission to waste more money on stating the obvious!  Rather, now that it has been painfully established that when others in the region sneeze, Haiti is  sick pneumonia, what urgent measures does the Latortue government propose to take to stem this dangerous trend?  The environment is Haiti’s most immediate challenge, greater than disarming a few hundreds uniformed “Sans-Manman” and Chimères, even greater than the threat of an Aristide comeback.

We want to know in a month or so, out of the $1.4 billion pledged to his government by the world donors and lenders, how much Mr. Latortue intends to spend on protecting the environment, on aggressively attacking erosion.  We want to know what alternative his government is proposing to cutting down the country’s few remaining trees for the production of charcoal?  Then and only then, with an actual plan and a program to propose to the country, can any official of any government go out and raise funds on behalf of the people.  To such an emergency fund, the diaspora will contribute millions.

Daniel Simidor