When Haitians Vote, The World Looks On.

Today, people in Haiti are voting. When you consider the history of Haiti, this is a pretty interesting thing to keep an eye on for a few reasons - some obvious, some not.

The Reuters Article covers some of the obvious things -

Exactly 20 years after the dictatorial rule of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier crumbled, Tuesday's vote offers some hope for an end to the coups and instability that have crippled Haiti since then.

In the most recent uprising, former allies and long-time enemies forced former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to flee two years ago.

A new round of fighting, however, could plunge the poorest country in the Americas into even deeper chaos.

"People are exhausted by this instability, the lack of security," Gerard Le Chevallier, the top U.N. official overseeing the election, told Reuters on Monday...

...A Preval victory could upset Haiti's business elite and the U.S. government, which in 2004 dropped its earlier support of Aristide and pushed him to step aside...

Well, there's a bunch of different ways to look at Aristide's departure from Haiti - and having spoken to a few different Haitian friends, I know that it's a much more complicated issue than the media has allowed for. The answer here is that I Don't Know.

What I do know is that this affects CARICOM; a word whispered from a bird at a recent conference said that CARICOM had extended the present government of Haiti an invitation, but that it was not responded to. In a business sense, there is little Haiti has to offer the rest of the Caribbean at this point, but that doesn't mean it has nothing to offer.

A stable Haiti will lead to a happier and healthier Dominican Republic - which itself has had a strengthening economy. People from the D.R. talk about the 'silent invasion' as Haitians come across the border - and the fact that so few people of African descent exist in the Dominican Republic, plus the difference in language, makes Haitians rather easy to spot and be either taken advantage of, ignored, or tossed back across the border.

Hungry people across the border that are unstable are the things that remind people in the D.R. of the period in which Haiti ruled the entire island of Hispanola. How things have changed. How things haven't changed.

The impact on the region can be quite large. While the rest of the Caribbean goes about it's daily lives, Haitians are trying to change their own lives.

Personally, I hope it all works out - but it's so complicated, I'm not sure which way would be best. I suppose either way that is non-violent and gets Haiti on it's feet is best. We have to hope that these elections are the means toward that end.

I'll keep an eye on things, hope for the best - but there's not much more that I can write.