To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?The dis­as­trous earth­quake that es­sen­tial­ly lev­elled the cap­i­tal of Haiti and broke the pre­car­i­ous lives of the peo­ple of that na­tion, on Tues­day, has bro­ken the lev­ees of po­lit­i­cal dis­in­ter­est that have for long decades shield­ed the im­pov­er­ished na­tion from as­sis­tance in its de­vel­op­ment. Haiti's his­to­ry over the last two cen­turies has been a stag­ger­ing litany of al­most un­re­lent­ing hor­rors. The is­land was the first in the Caribbean to wrest its des­tiny from the im­posed yoke of colo­nial rule, claim­ing in­de­pen­dence by force of rev­o­lu­tion on Jan­u­ary 01, 1804. From the highs of that suc­cess, it is ar­guable that the na­tion's des­tiny has been steadi­ly down­hill. The guid­ing mind of the Hait­ian rev­o­lu­tion, Tou­s­saint L'Over­ture was kid­napped and would die in a French prison in 1803. L'Over­ture's suc­ces­sor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, rout­ed the French and be­gan the trag­ic his­to­ry of bru­tal, to­tal­i­tar­i­an rule that would plague the next 200 years of the is­land's his­to­ry, which in­cludes 32 coups.

In the mod­ern age, the reign of the Du­va­lier fam­i­ly, from 1957 to 1986, turned the na­tion al­most com­plete­ly in­ward, as the cit­i­zens of Haiti strug­gled to sur­vive the vi­o­lent reign of Pa­pa Doc Du­va­lier and the rape of the coun­try's fi­nances by his son, Jean-Claude. Since then, the gov­er­nance of Haiti has been hall­marked by in­sta­bil­i­ty and con­fu­sion. Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide was elect­ed by an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty, but his ad­min­is­tra­tion was trou­bled by ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion, and he was oust­ed from pow­er twice be­fore go­ing in­to ex­ile in 2004. The col­lapse of Haiti may have had its gen­e­sis in trou­bled pol­i­tics, but it has found phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion across the coun­try's land­scape as a des­per­ate pop­u­la­tion, sur­viv­ing on sub­sis­tence farm­ing, stripped the coun­try's nat­ur­al cov­er, lead­ing to the de­struc­tion of large tracts of arable land and wide­spread flood­ing and soil ero­sion.

In 2004 alone, floods are es­ti­mat­ed to have have caused the deaths of thou­sands of peo­ple, as storms drenched the coun­try. This was a coun­try, at the start of 2010, com­plete­ly un­pre­pared for a mag­ni­tude 7 earth­quake, which col­lapsed build­ings con­struct­ed with­out ref­er­ence to the uni­form build­ing code, lead­ing to deaths on an un­prece­dent­ed scale in the Caribbean. The sight of Port-au-Prince streets, pho­tographed from the air, filled with dead bod­ies cov­ered in dust and sur­round­ed by de­bris, is not one that will soon be for­got­ten. The emo­tion­al re­sponse to the dev­as­ta­tion in Haiti, a coun­try that any sen­si­ble cit­i­zen of the Caribbean would have longed to help, has been con­sid­er­able. Plane and boat­loads of sup­plies and re­lief work­ers mo­bilised with­in hours to make their way to the coun­try, but have been ham­pered by the al­most com­plete col­lapse of the coun­try's in­fra­struc­ture.

While no one should rea­son­ably sug­gest that aid to Haiti, a na­tion that has been in a state of eco­nom­ic col­lapse for decades, should be any less than it is, there is an­oth­er point to con­sid­er in all of these ef­forts to cor­rect a tragedy that is mea­sured, most no­tably, in days, but more re­al­is­ti­cal­ly in decades. Dur­ing his vis­it to Haiti in 1983, Pope John Paul II fa­mous­ly not­ed that "some­thing must change here." As a lead­ing na­tion of the Caribbean, Trinidad and To­ba­go is unique­ly placed to lead that change, specif­i­cal­ly through a re­gion­al ef­fort to guide and as­sist the re­build­ing of this failed na­tion at this crit­i­cal time. What Haiti will need in the months and years to come–and yes, it is not too soon to think in those terms, even in the midst of this great tragedy–is clear, prac­ti­cal guid­ance and as­sis­tance in gov­er­nance, cou­pled with hands-on work­ing ef­forts to re­build the na­tion's ba­sic util­i­ties and in­fra­struc­ture from the ground up.

What Haiti will need, af­ter the hor­rors of this week leave the loop of con­tin­u­ous news cov­er­age, is a strong sup­port­er ca­pa­ble of help­ing its lead­er­ship to rene­go­ti­ate its con­sid­er­able debts and chart a course out of the quake-strewn rub­ble to a fu­ture that will give it a long over­due chance to flour­ish once again. Trinidad and To­ba­go must be that cham­pi­on, and lead Cari­com in plan­ning a re­gion­al project that will lever­age the Caribbean's tal­ent, wis­dom and vol­un­teerism in re­build­ing the Haiti we have all wished for, out of the de­bris of this week's dis­as­ter.