Word: haiti
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...good news is that there hasn't been a coup d'etat in Haiti in the wake of violent protests over increased food prices. However Saturday's vote by 16 of the country's 27 lawmakers to oust Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis means that the country is in the middle of a severe leadership crisis - and that Haiti's Head of State, President Rene Preval, is now politically impotent, bereft of his chief executive...
...halt, reminiscent of bloody protests that have plagued this country for the last several decades - most recently in 2004, when former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown. President Rene Preval, respected for his probity but criticized for his lack of leadership and statesmanship, has been trying to improve Haiti's squalid conditions since taking office in 2006, but demonstrators squeezed by spiraling food costs say they're tired of waiting for a solution to their constant hunger. "We used to be hungry enough to drink Clorox," a local mechanic told TIME by phone from Port-au-Prince...
...cost of staple foods has risen some 50% in Haiti since last year, a crushing trend in a country where three-quarters of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Only Somalia and Afghanistan have a higher per capita daily deficit in calorie intake than Haiti does. (The figure in Haiti is 460 calories below the United Nations' daily minimum of 2,100.) The U.N.'s World Food Program says it has received only 13% of the $96 million it needs to help Haiti's 10 million people in 2008 - barely enough to support its operations there through...
...Haiti's turbulence began last week when food riots broke out in the southern city of Les Cayes. It's hard to know what sparked Tuesday's explosion in the capital - protests in the countryside have been simmering for weeks, and have only recently trickled into Port-au-Prince, where nearly a quarter of the population lives. It's also difficult to know if the protests were organized or spontaneous. If Haiti's history is any example, whenever riots break out its weak security system collapses, giving way to a free-for-all that allows anyone with a vendetta...
...Gardere, whose showroom was ransacked Monday, fears that store owners may then take things into their own hands. "It's been quiet now," he said, "but if business owners have to protect themselves, that's how civil war starts." One Roman Catholic priest in Port-au-Prince, who called Haiti's situation a "near-famine," told the Associated Press this week, "Some can't take the hunger anymore." If "some" turns into many or most, as seems likely, the world may once again have to watch the hemisphere's poorest nation be reduced to one of the most violent...