a1934: BBC: Haiti: Opposition leader ridicules president's remarks on poverty (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Robert Benodin <r.benodin@worldnet.att.net>

Haiti: Opposition leader ridicules president's remarks on poverty
BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; May 3, 2002


We now have Evans Paul of the Convention for Democratic Unity [KID] and
member of the Democratic Convergence, who has denounced the situation of
people's organizations and criticized [President] Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
[Rotchild Francois Jr - recording] You just heard the statement by the
president, who spoke of infiltration. What is your reaction?
[Paul] //It is pure demagogy. Everybody knows that Aristide is in the habit
of being demagogic in order to try to manipulate the people. It is not at
all fair for Aristide to make people believe that he is living in poverty
just as the people are. I think that it is just one more way of showing that
he does not take the people's demands seriously.
It is one more way of proving that he has betrayed the people when he says
that when misery bites the people, it bites him too. I can tell him that
poverty bites the people with sharp teeth and if poverty does indeed bite
him, then it can only be with gold teeth.
In this manipulation, he speaks of a relationship between a father and a
child. A father does not have the right to kill his children. When a father
kills his child then it is a social matter. The people's demands concern
everybody. They concern me, they concern everybody who shares the problems
of the masses. The people do not need pretty words now. They need action.
The people want to know what they [the government] do with the money they
get every day from the General Directorate of Taxes [DGI], the National Port
Authority [APN] and Telecommunications of Haiti. It is no longer time for
Aristide to speak. It is time for him to make assessments [as heard].//
Source: Radio Metropole, Port-au-Prince, in French 1145 gmt 2 May 02
/¸ BBC Monitoring
/BBC Monitoring/ © BBC.