RE: Haiti Become Us Territory

It is not as simple as all that to elect a government and a president in Haiti.

There are several issues with various dimensions that must come into play.

First and foremost, you have a large illiteracy issue.

One of the reasons that Haitian presidents have deliberately not address the illiteracy issue is because it would put their own existence at risk.

In the past twenty years or so, the Haitian populace has put people in power based on their ability to connect with them verbally.

Those seeking power in Haiti know that connecting verbally is an emotional exercise which should be balanced by the empirical logic that can only be conveyed through the written word.

So illiteracy is secretly desired.

Second, and just as important, electing a president in Haiti was always difficult because of the race and class issues.

Haitians often confuse the race and class of a person with their true character and intent.

Hence, the elite will go after someone from their own social class whom they think will represent their interest.

In that way, they have been fairly stupid.

Someone who only represents elite interest will allow the rest of the country to suffer as long as things are good for the elite, but the end result is that if the mass Haitian population who don't come from the elite group is not prospering at all, the elite profits will also suffer.

The elites have been so selfish and greedy in the past (there are exceptions to this) that they've hurt themselves in the process.

The poor population, which is now mostly black (it wasn't always that way we use to have poor mulattoes too), because of many years of injustice at the hands of the elite, has learned not to trust them.

So when an elite is pitted next to a guy that looks like the masses, the masses tend to look to that elite as the enemy and to vote for the guy that looks like them; this, as we saw with Duvalier pere and Aristide, is most times a colossal mistake.

Another problem with electing the right people in Haiti is that no one seems to demand that the individual actually has the credentials necessary to lead.

There are no established criteria that one who wants to be president in Haiti must meet.

It's really au petit bonheur.

Let's assume that a person who wants to be president in Haiti says, "well I have a degree." Well, the next question should be a degree from what University.

Is that university at least one of the top 30 in the US? What did that person major in? Does he know anything about social structure, policy making, human relations (in terms of how to unite people to get things do)? Did anybody check that person's credential to see if the person even really graduated from that school? The next question would be what has that person done in their lives to show us that they actually have leadership experience.

So many of these practical questions are never asked by Haitians, elite or poor.

There are some more fundamental things that are missing in our election processes, but this is taking too long already.