A step going nowhere
Chi Chun-chieh’s (紀駿傑) simplistic op-ed (“Canceling Haiti’s debt a step out of poverty,” Feb. 4, page 8) left me feeling empty.
Chi provides two feel-good points about Haiti: One, Chi gives us a villain to blame; two, Chi provides us with an opportunity to seem magnanimous by wiping away Haiti’s debt, but then what? Nada.
Like an ivory tower academic, Chi talks a lot about social resilience, but he offers nothing substantial to show he understands its complexity and what it takes to make it work.
In one column, we certainly cannot expect Chi to offer a road map for success or a five or 10-year plan, but what we can expect would be a hint, a whisper or a faint suggestion that establishing social resilience is not simply a zero-sum game of eliminating interest rates and wiping away debt.
His words, “The first step that the international community — including Taiwan — should take is to cancel Haiti’s debt” is just as easily the first step to repeating the horrendous cycle of so many poverty programs (ie, throw money at a problem, complain, find a villain, forgive the debt and throw money at it again) as it is a step at attempting a solution.
Without even the merest hint of what it takes to overcome the conflicting challenges of national interests, personal greed, lack of long-term commitment, needed education programs, etc, we have only the feeling of a detached observer saying, “I have given you a villain, and told you the first step, expect no more of me.”
“That is the limit of my commitment. Now we can all feel absolved,” the observer says.
JEROME KEATING
Taipei
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