Haiti - Politic : Mirlande Manigat has doubts on the program of free education
Speaking to journalists, Mirlande Manigat, a candidate defeated in the last presidential election, casts a lucid and pessimistic eye on the political crisis and expresses doubts, on the promises of the Head of State to provide free education to children by mixing without distinction the objectives and partisan statements.
"...If there is a party which has the parliamentary majority, meaning 16 Senators and 50 Deputies, is this one who has to choose the Prime Minister, but if you do not have a party with a majority, you need to sit with them [the parliamentarians] in order to agree, there is no other solution. [...] The current situation has reached a dangerous level of decay... I personally do not see a positive outlook for our country, because we are entered into a spiral of escalation, it means I am strong, strong you are [...] We will see who will win the battle... I do not think that it's a good thing for the country...
[...] The free school, means that the state has the means to sent only 100,000 children to school ! I say that the school population is of 5 million children and this is what the population believes, it believes that this year, their problems will be over, because the school is free... I do not see by what means, the Haitian state, with the production capacity of the Haitian society, the state revenues, the deficit in institutional terms, in terms of organization, in terms of planning... It is an ideal that is not possible in the next 5 years.
NO, you will not have the free education for everyone, it is necessary to be reasonable, you must be clear, when you make policy [...] you should not say to the people what it wants to hear, the population is mature enough, intelligent enough, when you tell it the truth [...] In Haiti, we have about 43% of people who are illiterate. When we have no education, we must speak of education and literacy... the people who are illiterate want that their children attend school, it is a necessity for them. There is an aspiration, a need for education, there is a need of knowledge in the country, and we must take this into account [...]
It is necessary to tell the reality, to explain how the Haitian state is able to send for free 5 million children in school, personally I do not see yet"
