Should Opposition be in on Reconstruction in Haïti?

Here's a new report by the Washington Post.
Tell us what you think at the bottom.

Opposition leaders want to help rebuild Haiti
Their objective is a unanimously supported plan

By Edward Cody, Washington Post | February 28, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Faced with a disaster of overwhelming proportions, Haiti’s fractious political opposition is trying to set aside its differences and work with President Rene Preval to reach a consensus on how to rebuild the devastated country.

The objective, several political leaders said, is to cooperate with Preval’s government in drawing up a unanimously backed reconstruction plan and an arrangement for broader political leadership during the emergency.

The plan, they said, would be presented to a donors’ conference scheduled for March 28 at the United Nations, and would be used in discussions with the international relief bureaucracy that has mushroomed here since a magnitude-7 earthquake shook Haiti on Jan. 12.

Running through the discussions is a widely shared sentiment that the destruction caused by the earthquake, and the expected arrival of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid, should become a departure point for fixing the economic and political rot that for years has made Haiti one of the poorest, most unstable, and most corrupt countries in the hemisphere.

“For this exceptional situation, we need an exceptional government,’’ said Myrtho Bonhomme, an aspiring presidential candidate who is a former ambassador and rector of Haiti’s largely destroyed Diplomatic and Consular National Academy.

But Preval has shown no sign he is willing to include opposition groups in reconstruction planning or to agree to the special assembly - a “national conference,’’ perhaps, or a “state council’’ - that the opposition is mulling.

He has been working mainly with US and other foreign aid officials, out of sight of the Haitian public, to deal with the havoc caused by a temblor that killed an estimated 200,000 people and left a million homeless.

A spokesman for Preval, Assad Volcy, said he was unaware of the opposition discussions or of Preval’s attitude toward a broadened emergency leadership.

More deaths in Haiti 6 + weeks after earthquake. Why?

At least 11 people have been killed after heavy rain caused flooding in southwestern areas of quake-hit Haiti, according to officials.

Officials said on Saturday that heavy rains filled Haiti's third most populous city Les Cayes with more than one and a half meters of water.

The civil protection department said a prison flooded and more than 400 prisoners were evacuated.

In parts of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, hundreds of thousands of people are living outdoors after their homes were destroyed in January's earthquake.

UN peacekeepers are helping Haitian police for emergency supplies. Les Cayes was unharmed during the quake that devastated the Caribbean nation.

Last month, the magnitude-7 earthquake in Port-au-Prince killed more than 200,000 people, leveled nearly every government ministry, and made 1.5 million people homeless. (Report by Press TV )

From PVS Canal 16 Newsroom.

President René Préval has now a different view of the solution to the problem of big tent cities: move the people back to their neighborhood.  
According to Mr Préval, instead of having big tent cities of 1000 to 4000 people, it would be wiser to have smaller camps of 50 to 100 people near their homes.  How does that help in removing the rubles from the quake and rebuilding the country with those camps in every neighborhood?