Haiti hobbles on
Finally, a president; and the challenges are big
Voters in Haiti elected Jovenel Moise as president among 27 candidates last month. The good news is that Haiti now has a president, after the office was vacant since February when Michel Martelly resigned. The scary part is that Mr. Moise, a banana farmer, was elected in a turnout of only 21 percent.
The meager number of voters was attributed in part to the plethora of candidates, and in part to a general feeling that government officials are simply corrupt.
The problems are numerous. The half-island nation of 11 million is cursed by poverty, a shortage of resources, and years of bad, contested governments. Nature has not been kind, with a major earthquake in 2010 badly damaging infrastructure. The United Nations, which sent peacekeeping forces there to help maintain law and order in the wake of the earthquake, has only halfway acknowledged introducing a strain of cholera previously unknown there. The U.N. continues to wriggle away from its role. U.N. SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon addressed that question ambiguously on Thursday, seeking to tidy up his legacy before leaving office Dec. 31.
Haiti’s other frightful problem is overpopulation, not necessarily an issue in an economically healthy country, but in the case of Haiti, making it pay a hefty price for the mismatch between its resources and population size.
For the United States, the problem Haiti presents is several-fold. First, it is nearby, which means that when things get too bad there, some Haitians can and will find a way to migrate here, by boat or through Mexico. They are not necessarily easy for America to absorb: sometimes they are unskilled and their native languages — Creole and French — are not widely spoken. Second, there are enough Haitians or Haitian-Americans in the United States already, estimated at up to a million, to make it difficult for U.S. authorities to ignore them. There is also some feeling of responsibility for Haiti. U.S. forces have intervened there numerous times since Haitian independence in 1804 to try to right an upset apple cart, and some American cities, such as Pittsburgh, have direct links to Haiti, such as the work of the Albert Schweitzer Hospital, founded in 1956 by Dr. Larry Mellon and his wife, Gwen.
Americans should congratulate Haitians on having finally elected a president, but should not expect its problems to cease being of continuing concern.