Hti: Clinging to illusions

Pierre Esperance, director of the National Coalition for Human Rights, says aid groups should focus less on political reforms and more on building local institutions that can help tackle poverty. "We need structures to be put in place," he says. "We don't need any more saviors like Aristide."

Foreign aid groups have to be careful not to instill a "culture of dependence" as has happened in the past, Smith says.

Many Haitians say their society's deep divisions can be repaired only by their own hands. But the international community can help, they say, by sticking to the reform projects it starts - such as training and staffing a national police force, one of the goals after Aristide's return to power in 1994.

If Haitians had been able to repair their divisions, they would have done it. Instead, they've demonstrated an inability to develop a thriving society which functions according to imperfect democracy.

Contrary to Pierre Esperance's contention, Haiti does not only need institutions to tackle poverty, it needs political reforms and instruction in the praxis of democracy. These are the changes that may well ensure that Haitians do not elect another Aristide. With infrastructural and political issues held in equilibrium, Haiti might be able to look past the idea of the head of state as godlike-ruler who is the best and only hope. Then, perhaps, the disillusionment that comes, when the god is revealed to have feet of clay, may not lead to change via machete, gun, and blood.