23647: (Discuss) Anonymous (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Before abandoning the soapbox I feel that I must try to clarify why I think
that ³Change² must precede Democracy.

Societies need efficient government to function. In the outer world ­
outside Haiti ­ we take for granted that the governed will cooperate by
giving the government money or labor and the government will in exchange
supply security and services.

This has never been true in Haiti. Most governments have taken from the
rural majority without giving anything back. Most of the taking has been
indirect through export taxes on produce or the redirecting of their
rightful share of foreign aid from the boondocks residents to the city
dwellers.

A former parish priest of Pestel (an ex French paratrooper) once told me
that he had calculated how much the central government had taken from the
Pestel area in export taxes on coffee and determined that only one twentieth
of this had returned to the region in road building and other projects or in
salaries for school teachers, military personnel, magistrates and judges
etc.

I cannot confirm the accuracy of Père Legareq¹s calculations but they
reflect a conviction of the rural masses and perception is often more
important than reality.

Mr. Aristide¹s government tried to give the rural masses the illusion that
this situation had changed. In fact he led them ­ and their relatives
emigrated to the city ­ to believe that they had the right not only not to
give anything but also to receive manna from the government perceived as an
endless well of good things that would now flow to them rather than to the
rich.

Naturally nothing really changed except that the minority doing the
receiving changed.

The rural masses have a profound ­ and well-founded ­ distrust of
government. Do you not find it strange that Haitians ­ particularly the ones
at the bottom of the pile ­ are prejudiced in favor of foreigners whom they
tend to view as inexplicably (maybe because they are so rich) trustworthy
and unselfserving.

A dictatorship rules because it is too powerful to be overthrown. A
democratic government rules through the consent of its people, but it cannot
rule effectively if that consent is based on lies and false expectations.
There is no free lunch to be had.

A Haitian dictatorship could, were it that illusive thing, a benevolent
dictatorship, teach its people that the government should not take without
giving and that they, the governed, cannot expect to receive without
contributing.

A foreign dictatorship would have a far higher chance of being benevolent
and would start with the trust the masses give to foreigners. In addition it
could impose its will without having to be brutal.