Hemisphere's Saddest Country

The Western hemisphere has been blessed almost exclusively with nations enjoying relative peace and prosperity- the glaring exception being of course Haiti. Beset for generations with leaders who were kleptocrats, incompetent, or both, Haiti has just gone though an election, conducted in the midst of a cholera outbreak, blamed on United Nation personnel ostensibly there to help after an earthquake caused the most fatalities in this half of the globe in the modern era. After surviving the ravages of the Duvalier family with both Papa and Baby Doc notably vicious and corrupt, the country had the misfortune of turning to a defrocked priest who now preached the gospel of Karl Marx to run it. He was replaced by a routinely incompetent bureaucrat who left the administration of Haiti to the United Nations as violence was beginning to fill the power vacuum. Now a runoff election excluding a widely popular candidate will take place to see who has the onerous burden of filling the leadership void and trying to drag that bedraggled nation from the gates of hell. Unfortunately no matter who leads, Haiti will certainly remain an aid-dependent basket case ward of the more developed states.