Haiti’s sham elections

(Image from The British Comedy Guide on The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)

Zaphod Beeblebrox and the Heart of Gold must be in this galactic quadrant, because only the Improbability Generator could have placed a Kurzban and Concannon OpEd in the Miami Herald:

Late last month, Haiti’s government took the undemocratic and dangerous step of excluding 15 political parties, including Haiti’s most popular party, Fanmi Lavalas, from parliamentary elections scheduled for February and March 2010. The decision threatens not only Haiti’s democracy and stability, but billions in foreign investments financed by taxpayers in the United States and elsewhere….

the PEC [Provisional Electoral Council] called the international community’s bluff and kept the excluded parties out. The international community blinked by not only accepting the flawed elections, but paying for them, too: International donors supplied $12.5 million, 72 percent of the election’s cost….

The Obama administration can guarantee a better return by immediately cutting off all funding for the electoral charade and insisting that it will neither finance, nor recognize, elections that are not fair and inclusive.

It could happen… at odds of 2^187 to 1.