4/14/2005

Haiti Plans For Elections

This is the first news I’ve heard from/about Haiti for a while. It was just over a year ago that things started getting really crazy there and we had to send in troops to help keep the peace. I don’t even remember hearing what finally happened to their old, corrupted President after he left the country. But now the country has plans for elections and chaos is getting fiercer. Top diplomats representing U.N. Security Council member nations are in Haiti at the present time to check on the interim government's progress toward November elections. Meanwhile, U.N. peacekeepers on the ground have been forced to adapt to increasing chaos. Just what are we to do with Haiti?

1 comment:

Dr. Tufte said...

Haiti's former president (Aristide) was granted asylum in Jamaica. Usually they don't like to let crackpots like him stay to close, but he apparently had relatives he wanted to be near.

This is more of a macroeconomic topic, but Haiti is a classic case of a country which has never developed growth-compatible institutions. It was not always the poorest place in the western hemisphere, but it has been steadily losing ground as its neighbors put the pieces required for sustained growth together one by one.