Elections Won’t Save Haiti

In a recent interview with TV5 Monde, Haiti’s transitional council president Leslie Voltaire told a nation on the brink of collapse that tentative elections would be scheduled for mid-November. It’s been nearly a decade since the small island’s last democratic contest, and understandably so. The guardrails for democracy have all but collapsed in the years since, and in its place, anarchical gang warfare has swept across a broken state. It begs the question; can a country where half the inhabitants currently face starvation support an election? Is Haiti’s violent political climate right for a democratic transition?