Haitian Traditions

More violence in Haiti. Ongoing violence in Haiti. No clear prospect of the nightly, daily violence receding into dim memory. People go about their normal activities during the day and bulwark themselves as best they can, against the marauding gangs of protesters that come out like cockroaches, during the night. It is politely called "unrest".

Civil disobedience usually takes the form of quiet and peaceful protests, to bring home a message to a ruling elite. In free and democratic societies civil disobedience, while breaching established laws, is not seen to be anything other than a mild form of illegal protest. While it is not condoned, neither is it prosecuted to the full extent of the law, representing a minor misdemeanor.

One, however, generally heeded for the message it sends, by those toward whom it is directed. Not so much as the protesters would like it to be acknowledged, but sufficiently so in reflection of the fact that civil disobedience most often is a reflection of group thought of a minority of people, not reflective of the majority in the social contract.

In Haiti the opposite is true and the reason is more than obvious. It is an insidiously failed state. The country represents a state that has failed repeatedly, miserably, even impressively in the complete paralyzation of government to heed the will of the people, to establish itself as a free and just society, to implement useful and meaningful civil infrastructure and wield just laws.

Haiti is a nation that continually implodes into itself, succumbing to an inner anarchy, served by a political-social elite that benefit themselves through the purloined avails of international donations meant to assist the government in instituting real advances in governance, resulting in real change for the improvement of Haitian lives.

The viral and violent disagreement following the recent elections - following the basic hygiene-health failure resulting in a runaway cholera epidemic following the natural catastrophe of a dreadful earthquake that levelled much of the country and its already-weak infrastructure and killing tens of thousands of Haitians, leaving over a million people internal refugees - all relates to Haiti's failures.

The disputed election results overseen by the U.S., U.N., Canad and the E.U., all of which had expressed reservations about 'irregularities' resulting from government-sponsored ballot stuffing and more, saw the populist candidate, a Haitian entertainer of high repute shut out of the final run-off, and two other candidates, both establishment politicians, succeed in the final ballot count.

Presidential candidate Michel Martelly, a charismatic singing star who has no political experience whatever, has voiced values that Haitians are eager to see put into place: "the right to education, to health, to be able to drink clean water from a tap". Martelly has his own sense of responsibility, seemingly lacking elsewhere, that Haiti "put its own house in order".

Whether he is the one to enable that is unknowable, although his supporters are passionate that he be given the opportunity. But then there is certainly that about Haitians; they are passionate, they are spiritual, they are hopeful even while they are despondently desperate, and they enthuse readily.

But they are also impressionably volatile and manipulable, and given to violent reaction. And all of this along with the miserable past gives no reason for hope for progress in Haiti. The human spirit is inextinguishable, but it is also ill-equipped to transcend its own failings.