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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
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Haiti: Half-hearted neo-colonialismThree years ago we described the situation in Haiti as catastrophic. We urged the international community to intervene on a massive scale to stop the humanitarian crisis. We even suggested that the country is to be placed under international protection, a situation that from the exterior may look like neo-colonialism, but in fact being the only way to restore law and order and to guarantee basic rights and freedoms until democratically elected authorities are established. Three years later we can conclude that the international community has since tried to do exactly this, but unfortunately its willingness to help has recently decreased substantially. What we may predict is that Haiti will return to its common circle of violence and political anarchy, until a new major humanitarian crisis forces the international community to intervene again. The last time we looked at Haiti in 2003, the former regime of President Jean-Betrand Aristide was agonizing. Only months later, in a midst of armed and civilian rebellion, he ran away from the country. A wave of refugees from Haiti started to bother all neighboring countries, thus making their intervention more than necessary. The international community, a nebulous term, usually including the richer countries plus some regional powers, pledged to provide more than $1 billion for economic reconstruction and development. In the years that followed no more than half of this pledge was honored. An international police force was sent to the country, having as a main task guaranteeing law and order and making sure that the new democratically elected public authorities can start working efficiently. In fact the world has listened to the voice of reason, forced to apply some neo-colonial schemes in order to save thousands of lives, and perhaps more importantly, to save itself from millions of new unwelcome refugees. These two basic tasks were accomplished, especially the second. Thousands of Haitian refugees continued storming the shores of the neighboring islands, but nothing of the proportions most analysts feared two-three years ago. Which actually led some major countries concluding that Haiti could be transferred from the group of 'urgent' to 'enduring' problems. Once the threat of massive refugee crisis was eliminated, Haiti became much less interesting to many who switched their attention to other regions and subjects, e.g. Middle East, oil prices, North Korea, illegal aliens, rising China, etc. In the meantime Haiti desperately needs substantial economic aid. Without it, the newly elected politicians will soon lose most of their public credibility, and the world will have again to send 'firefighters' instead of bankers. The real miscommunication between Haiti and the world comes from the unclear meaning of the word 'aid'. Webster dictionary gives several closely related definitions to this word. For the purpose of our analysis we will limit ourselves to two, assistance and a gift. Haiti understands the aid as a gift, meaning the country should develop economically by mainly receiving gifts from the rest of the world. The long-term list of wishes is already measured at $7 billion. The rest of the world, on the other hand, looks at the 'aid' as a temporary and as secondary assistance, meaning the main task should be accomplished by Haiti itself. With such miscommunication my prediction is that Haiti will soon return to the circle of violence and the West will have again to deal with it as an 'urgent' problem.
Haiti profile:
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