Editorials
Monday, December 1, 1997THE United Nations is pulling its peacekeepers out of Haiti after a three-year mission trying to establish peace and order in that impoverished country. It looks as though the effort has failed, but it's time to go. It’s time for the U.N.
to withdraw from HaitiAs a report from a correspondent on the scene in Port-au-Prince says, Haiti is struggling with economic malaise, a political crisis, police corruption, drug trafficking and plots to overthrow the government. So what else is new? Haiti has been a mess for a long time. A few years of occupation by an international force couldn't change that.
President Clinton ordered an invasion when the generals who had overthrown the elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, refused to restore him to office. At the last minute, the generals blinked and the troops landed unopposed. That was the easy part, as it turned out.
Despite efforts to train a professional, honest police force, corruption and brutality continue to be problems. Opponents of Aristide and his successor, Rene Preval, have been murdered.
Last year, after the withdrawal of U.S. troops -- succeeded by Canadians and Pakistanis -- Washington dispatched security forces to Haiti three times. At one point, 40 U.S. security specialists were assigned to protect Preval from assassination.
It was naive to think that a military occupation could quickly change the realities of Haitian life. Just as the U.N. pulled its peacekeepers out of a hopeless situation in Somalia, so is it leaving Haiti with little prospect of permanent improvement.
There have been other peacekeeping failures -- notably in Cambodia, where the elected prime minister has been ousted. Bosnia is another situation where real peace is still remote after two years of a truce imposed by outside forces. A country's people must solve their problems themselves. If they lack the will to do so, no foreign intervention can provide a quick fix.
IT takes money to run for public office. Bank of Hawaii Chairman Larry Johnson reminded us of that when he stated that his organization would make contributions to the campaigns of candidates who supported the recommendations of the Economic Revitalization Task Force. For that, Johnson was unfairly accused of bribery. Contributing to the campaigns of candidates who stand for the ideas one supports is not bribery, as the director of the state Campaign Spending Commission attested. Campaign donations
However, it is widely acknowledged that the high cost of campaigning provides opportunities for big contributors to unduly influence election results. In a View Point article on the opposite page last Friday, Desmond Byrne, chairman of Common Cause Hawaii, made some sensible observations about the problem.
Byrne charged that corporate political action committees are financed by the "involuntary tithing of employees, with the allocation decision made by top management." The same might be said of union political action committees. PACs are not the menace to democracy they have sometimes been painted as. But the law should ensure that contributions to PACs are voluntary and that those who decline to contribute are not penalized.
Byrne also observed that politicians sometimes extort contributions from businesses, which feel compelled to give or face the consequences in the form of rejection of their attempts to secure contracts. This amounts to buying protection, not influence. The solution is strict enforcement of the laws aimed at eliminating political considerations from the awarding of contracts. If business executives didn't feel compelled to contribute in order to get government contracts, many would not.
Public financing of elections, favored by Common Cause, is not a popular idea and may not be necessary to solve the problem. It would help if more of the people who complain that their voices are not heard got involved and made modest donations to the candidates of their choice. Not enough do. The apathy of many is the opposite side of undue influence for the few.
KRONEN Loando and Malakai Maumalanga were once incorrigible street thugs. Loando was a member of the Pinoy Boys in Kalihi, while Maumalanga was a key figure of the rival gang in the same community, Cross Sun. "I was someone you wouldn't want to bump into because of my passion for blood and violence," says Maumalanga, 21. "I was just waiting for death to claim my worthless soul." No more gang life
On Friday night, however, the two former toughs wore elegant tuxedos, as each accepted a Youth of the Year Award at the Adult Friends for Youth Dinner Auction, the annual event that raises money for a cause that is many-fold. Contributions to AFY help to reform gang members, fight the problem of youth crime, aid in the often traumatizing transition of students going from elementary to intermediate school age and, most important, save young lives.
Loando, 20, and Maumalanga are two of the most dramatic success stories of AFY, led by founder and CEO Sidney M. Rosen. "We strongly believe that destructive behaviors can be changed into constructive behaviors when youth believe that they matter," he says. "We have practiced what we preach and have been rewarded with overwhelmingly successful results."
For example, 30 former "problem kids" at Aiea, Farrington, McKinley and Waipahu high schools earned degrees in 1997, through the help of the program. Also in large part to AFY, gang warfare on the streets of Kalihi has been drastically curtailed.
That two former rivals could stand together on stage to accept citizenship awards is testament to the effectiveness of AFY. In fact, Maumalanga aspires to become a social worker himself because, he explains, "I want to follow in their footsteps."
Rupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
