27905: Simidor (reply) Re: 27884: Boswell -- Haiti - Democracy/Dialogue (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: daniel simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

I take your challenge to help move away from this
sense of a separate reality that prevails on both
sides. (?You think about yourself too much and that
gives you a strange fatigue that makes you shut off
the world around you and cling to your arguments,?
Carlos Castaneda.)  I start with two positive Lavalas
developments I readily acknowledge, and then I take
issue with two claims you made in your post.

1.1.	Aristide expanded health care to the Haitian poor
by sustaining the Cuban medical assistance program
initiated under the Preval administration.

1.2.	The call for restitution of the so-called
independence debt was a just demand, which accounts
for France?s role in the 2004 ?kidnapping? of
Aristide.  But I still maintain that Aristide?s
downfall had as much to do with corruption and his
inept administration than with Jean St-Vil?s ?white
supremacists.?

2.1. On the other hand, to ?openly criticize? the
Lavalas government had become dangerous business.  The
independent/opposition media persisted but at great
cost.  A climate of intolerance and fear had become
pervasive, the more so because it was unofficial.  The
role of Lavalas so-called popular organizations in
this new coercive climate is documented in numerous
reports by Amnesty International, Reporters without
Borders and other human rights organizations, and in
Michael Deibert?s book, ?Notes from the Last
Testament,? which is being vilified in ugly and abject
manner on Znet.  Lavalas apologists who like to talk
about ?the rule of law? choose to ignore Aristide?s
use of mob rule (the Lavalas ?bases? and  so-called
armies) to silence the opposition.  On top of all
that, Aristide was building a personality cult that
rivals Papa Doc?s.

2.2. Aristide claims he built more schools than all
other Haitian governments combined.  Never mind that
some of the schools he claims credit for were built
under Preval.  All sides agree that Aristide invested
in construction, mostly public places, but also some
schools too.  We need to know the date of completion
of each school, and the particulars of each school
that actually opened (opening date, number of pupils,
etc.).  The Lavalas paid officials on the list should
have no problem supplying this type of information.


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