THE HAITIAN LEGISLATURE: A CASE STUDY FOR ALL POLITICAL JUNKIES

I understand democracy can be hard, but it is poised to get harder when you have people in political positions with no clue whatsoever of how democracy works and what it means to be public servant.

As we speak, we have a serious crisis in Haiti, and it has nothing to do with our democratic experience; rather, it has to do with the people we have in our political institutions, especially the legislature, to represent us. So solving this crisis requires that we take bolt and unpopular measures.

I strongly believe we need to find a way to get rid of this legislature we currently have in Haiti and start over with a new and functional body –if we really aspire to a new and better Haiti.

This Congress, it is sad to say, is bringing nothing but shame and deception to the land of Dessalines, Toussaint, Christophe and Petion. So, by any means necessary, democratic or otherwise, we need to retire it urgently before it is too late. Retiring this Congress is just as urgent as unclogging a clogged artery so that the tissues of a specific organ it is there to irrigate can be perfused before the undesirable occurs.

These two chambers of the legislative branch of our government are instruments put in place by ARISTIDE and PREVAL to destroy the country. They are saturated with their vassals -criminals, drug dealers, thieves, crooks, ignorant and unqualified heads, etc. Their only qualification to accede to these respectable chambers was to pledge allegiance to their bosses, ARISTIDE and PREVAL, not to the republic and the people that elected them.

So basically, These two LAVALAS guys, ARISTIDE and PREVAL, during their twenty years in power, have done to the country the same thing they had been blaming the Duvaliers for, which is vasalizing all the institutions. That’s why they do not have the moral authority and political leverage to take legal actions against Jean Claude Duvalier curently living peacefully in his country. To prosecute Duvalier is to prosecute the two of them.

Institutions are made of people, and they are the reflection of the people inside them. A better way to look at it is like this: Tell me who you have to body your institutions, I will tell you how effective and functional they are.

Some of these people in our legislature can barely read, let alone comprehending the wording of and logic embedded in the articles of the Constitution, how can you expect them to legislate in total knowledge of the law? Haitians, seriously, are these folks the best you have to offer? Where are the highly qualified and honest Haitians? How did we end up with these guys as our representatives?

Well, I don’t know. Maybe I am expecting too much from a group of people for whom the mess seems to be working and to whom the filth seems to be beneficial.

It is not my fault that I am holding these guys to such higher standards; it is that the little bit I know in politics, I have acquired that in the United States. In other words, the only model I have of how government institutions work and are structured and staffed, I have obtained that in the country where everything seems to be working for its people, and that is the United States of America.

The lesson all political junkies like myself have to learn from observing the Haitian legislature is this: When you have crooks, thieves, drug dealers and politically illiterate folks in your political institutions, you have the Haitian model, you have what is happening now in Haiti -a case study of a politically, economically and socially dead country due to its lifeless institutions.

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