“Proven competence, well-acquired experience, and integrity frighten Haitians and especially the Friends of Haiti, who only want to see mediocre people in power so they can turn them into puppets.” (Guylène Sales)

No parliamentary-style democratic process, however open it may be, can succeed if its foundations do not rest on public institutions conducive to a competitive economy. Democratic experiments that make no connection between a process of political democratization and economic liberalization are just as flawed or doomed to failure as societal projects that fail to recognize that their foundation should always be the improvement of the living conditions of the vast majority of citizens who today face an existential risk. No reform of our political, judicial, security, educational, or other systems will be sufficient to consolidate the rule of law unless the economic system and the infrastructure of socioeconomic relations in all its components (agricultural, commercial, fiscal, budgetary, monetary, banking, etc.) are also addressed. In exposing and denouncing the social inequalities and economic violence that have shaped Haitian society since its origins, we must also challenge the myth of the effectiveness of electoral democracy, democracy by proxy, and “democratorship.”