Monday 27 December 2010

Beggars Banquet

Haiti dropped off the worlds news map very quickly after last years disaster ...... 
 
Haiti Earthquake Damage
Haiti Earthquake Damage

 .... the reasons are the usual ones for this benighted country ..... violence, and corruption, and lets face it, ignorance.
 
Since the UN 'peacekeepers' moved in to quell violence while aid and reconstruction was under way, the Haitians have displayed all the national flaws that they have shown ever since independence.
  • They first blamed Nepalese peacekeepers for the arrival of cholera following the earthquake .... possibly with good cause if some reports are to be believed. They then rioted and looted the aid warehouses (destroying 500 tonnes of food aid), which of course stopped the aid, but when that didn't actually produce enough corpses, the
  • Mobs then started lynching 'Voodoo priests', who they blame for spreading cholera, with at least 45 people have been lynched in recent weeks. "The victims... were stoned or hacked with machetes before being burned in the streets," communications ministry official Moise Fritz Evens said.

However today the Prime Minister of Haiti complained that the international community has not allowed his country to 'play a bigger role in its own reconstruction' following last January's earthquake.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive  Haitian Leader
Latest Haitian Leader

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive is specifically that most aid money was channelled through outside agencies. "It's very difficult for me to give explanation for the use of money that I never receive," he said.
 
What he neglects to mention is that the NGO's are the only organisations that foreign governments will allow to have the money, because Haitian governments have a long track record of corruption and theft of all the funds that pass through their hands - from the Duvalier family (and before) .... to the present day.

Papa Doc Duvalier
Papa Doc ....

History suggests that Haiti will probably never be much more than a backward nation, but they could help themselves and start advancing, if only they could tackle the public corruption and lack of education .....  according to many web reports some of the current aid is being stolen.


Update 2022: 
 
The UN envoy has said that the chronic gang, economic and political crisis has led to a humanitarian catastrophe in Haiti .... yet another one. This was after an estimated 2,000 tonnes of international food aid, valued at close to $5m (£4.6m), were lost following repeated attacks on local warehouses of the UN Food Programme this year by local gangs, who rule much of the capital Port-au-Prince, and other cities.

Ironically with Haiti's current mess .... many would look back on the despotic Rule of Papa Doc ....
 
The Much Feared Tonton Macoute
The Much Feared Tonton Macoute
 
... that was enforced by the feared Tonton Macoute as a paradise compared with the anarchy of the current Haiti. That alone tells you how far the country has fallen from an already low state.

2 comments:

  1. Talkling of "Is there a Doctor in the house?" ... 'Baby Doc' (aka Jean-Claude Duvalier) flew into Haiti over the weekend.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11943820

    That can't be good news for anyone.

    ReplyDelete

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