18528: anonymous: Re: 18504 White: Maxine Water's press release

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

 >Washington, D.C. -- Today, at a press conference on Capitol Hill, >Rep.
 Maxine Waters (D-CA) made the following statement:

 >President Aristide is pursuing a progressive economic agenda in >Haiti.
 On February 7, 2003, the government doubled the minimum >wage from 36 to
 70 gourdes per day, despite strong opposition >from the business
 community.

 Ms Waters being paid and shopping in US dollars and not in gourdes can be
 excused for ignoring that, at the very same moment, feb. 2003, gourde had
 dropped at more than 50 for one US... when it was at 25 some one year
 before... This mainly by the neverending printing of local currency...
 Besides, even calculated in US dollars, common goods prices are now
 usually 25 to 100 % more expensive than in november 2002... not to speak
 about the inflation of those prices in gourdes!!! Could Ms Waters explain
 what the poor gained with this "progressive agenda"... Good intentions
 are a good thing perhaps, but the poor do not eat from them...

 >There have also been a number of reforms to prohibit trafficking >in
 persons and protect the estimated 400,000 children from rural >villages
 who work as domestic servants in households in the >cities.

 Hmmm... Did Ms Waters checked with people taking care of the street
 children and restavek to see if the children flow from hills to towns had
 decreased ?
 Did Ms Waters noticed that more and more children are sleeping in the
 strets at night in Port-au-Prince?
 Has Ms Waters any idea about the suffering of these children? Does she
 know how they fear the police and are helpless when arested, beaten,
 humiliated or worse?
 Making speeches is probably her job, but she should not ignore the misery
 of the poor...
 It is true that those children will never make any "press release"... And
 their voice is never to be heard in the American Congress... But, as a
 Democrat, perhaps could she think about giving THEM a voice, and not
 Aristide who already has Ms Karshan, Mr Kurzban, and all the money he
 wants to buy any media support...
 She should perhaps know that political agenda and speeches do not
 necessarily equal the bettering of poor people's condition.

 >President Aristide has also made health care and education >national
 priorities.  More schools were built in Haiti between >1994 and 2000 than
 between 1804 and 1994.

 It is probably true as few haitian governments did a lot for education...
 But it is also true that Haiti population is slightly larger than in past
 decades or 19th century, or am I wrong?
 Ms Waters is perhaps unaware of the fact main part of those schools are
 privately funded and privately operated, Haitian State part being reduced
 to this: delivering the license in order school can operate [even if many
 have no license at all and have their pupils presented to exams through
 other schools...]... and collecting fees for the national exams...
 Ms Waters should perhaps visit several of those schools and understand
 that education is seldom their aim: operating a school is probably, after
 a private church, the easiest legal way to make money in Haiti...
 Counting how many schools were built says NOTHING about the education
 level in Haiti... and it might even be true those days that the more
 schools there is, the less the children learn in them!!! It will take a
 long long time, and more than speeches to change this and have in Haiti
 both

 1/all the children going to school
 AND
 2/schools being the place they receive real education, and a serious help
 to built their lives!


 >The maternity wards of eight public hospitals have been >renovated, and
 hundreds of Haitians are being trained as >physicians.

 It seems also that police is shoting in hospitals, thugs threatening
 patients, doctors and nurses... clinics looted...
 In Cite Soleil, even the food for pregnant women is regularly stolen from
 a clinic... and the patients files were at least once thrown down and
 dispersed... Police does not care... Thieves are well known thugs you see
 also in pro-Aristide demonstrations, and in front of several State
 buildings at payroll time, and in front of regular businesses where they
 "ask" money to customers at other times, when there is no street action,
 no pro-Aristide demonstration nor anti-opposition actions...

 >Twenty new HIV testing centers will open around the country >during the
 next two years.
 >All of this is being accomplished despite a continuing embargo by >the
 IMF and the World Bank.

Was I wrong thinking those 20 new HIV centers were US funded?

 >The so-called opposition is supported by many of the same people >who
 were content with the brutal dictators of Haiti's past.

 It is true... It is ALSO true that opposition is supported by almost all
 of those people who supported Aristide at his beggining, and often risked
 their lives for him or for what he represented...
 Would Ms Waters have the "courage" to assimilate actual opposition with
 the militaries in front of the very persons actually asking for Aristide
 stepping down and who were tortured, rapped, exiled by the Dualiers and
 or the military?
 She should have more respect for at least one journalist woman who paid
 dearly her love for democracy under the militaries, and pays dearly her
 love for freedom under Aristide regime...
 I would have understood this kind of despising approach from a machist
 Rep... It is difficult to understand how Ms Waters dares ignore such
 fidelity, courage, strengt and suffering from a fellow woman, haitian,
 black, democrat...

  >Unfortunately, these gangs appear to be obtaining support from the
 >so-called opposition in the hope that their attacks will help to >fuel
 other attacks in other parts of the country and eventually a >coup d'etat
 in Port-au Prince.  This is clearly an attempt at a >power-grab.

 It is true all the Opposition says cannot be taken for granted... But Ms
 Waters might, even if she does not believe opposition leaders, she might
 have added they expressed clearly their condemn of violence and their not
 being linked with armed rebels...
 She might also have added that those gangs were armed, paid, encouraged
 for years by Aristide himself... Why is Ms Waters showing such a
 manicheistic view of things? It seems that, sitting in the White House,
 she would probably not hesitate to accuse Haitian oposition of producing
 WMD, and being BAD, ennemy of freedom and civilisation, AND a threat for
 US security...

 >Unfortunately, the same forces that fashion themselves as the
 >opposition also have control over the broadcast media in Haiti. >They
 have used the power of the press to discredit President >Aristide and
 disseminate false information to the international >press about the
 situation in Haiti.

 Hmmm...? Right now, It seems Ms Waters never leastened to those broadcast
 media in the last months... She should have heard Aristide speeches
 diffused over and over again on Radio Metropole as paid ads...
 Is she aware that in the whole Cap-Haitian region, the very Cap town
 excepted, but in the morns around, no radio station is to be heard except
 Radio Nationale that diffuses governemena\tal truth... and also lists the
 names of people and families described as enemy of the people... In the
 US, where Ms Waters lives, works, speaks and is elected, this would be
 punished by law as incitation to hatred, propaganda for crime or else...
 Does Ms Waters condemn the fact that someone being SUSPECTED of being
 related to "184" mouvement or political opposition has to fly from Cap
 Haitian and have his house looted and burned?

 >Finally, the international press must discontinue the practice of
 >repeating rumors and innuendos and begin to spend quality time >learning
 the truth and writing the truth about what is really >going on in Haiti.

 This is wise and good advice... But one might wish Ms Waters would act
 accordingly...