Mr. Goldring just put his finger on a rather important issue, in our view, and this is an important part of the project. I can't come to you today and say that we've come up with the magic solution. A lot of our attention in deploying resources is going to be placed on this very thing, because the heart of the success of the project is democratic practices—in fact the accountability, if you will, of Parliament to the citizens. It's not sufficient to remain only working in the area of institutional reform.
The examples I gave were what I might call initial steps in that process, attempting to explain to Parliament in a virtual way, if I can put it that way, what Parliament actually does, because there's not only a major alienation but a major ignorance in Haiti of what parliaments are supposed to be doing.
In our view, what has to be done is prepare the parliamentarians not just to engage themselves with the citizens at the time of elections, but to create their local bases. As you know, even though they're elected on a constituency-type basis in Haiti, they do not have a presence in the constituency in a permanent manner. The budget of the state does not provide sufficient resources for them to engage the population, and unfortunately the work of Parliament retains them in Port au Prince for too much of the time.
In the project's view, what we're going to have to be doing is putting forward some resources as incentive resources for parliamentarians to engage with the population. From looking at other experiences that have been attempted, it seems that rather than simply sending parliamentarians into the départements to listen to the population and ask what they want, the population is more likely to be perceptive and participatory if this is done around particular issues. I cited the example of education as one area, and many more could be used on that process.
That generally is the strategy that we feel is most likely to pay off: that we use the parliamentary institutions—commissions, if you will—and engage them in a direct relationship with the community.