The Joys of Haitian Government

Two things happened recently that I think highlight the awesomeness of the Haitian Government.
Exhibit A: The constitution of Haiti says that government officials cannot have dual citizenship with any country. They must be soley citizens of Haiti. This makes perfect sense to me. However, there was recently a big hoopla over President Martelly's citizenship. Reporters have been hasseling him for months, asking to see his passport at press conferences and accusing him of having dual citizenship. Of course the president denies that he has dual citizenship, but he also told the reporters that he's the president and doens't have to prove anything to them. If they wanted to see his passport, he dared them to come and try to take it from his pocket.

Fast forward to last week one day. A senator came on the radio and told everyone to go home. He warned that the president was going to make an announcement later, and they anticipated riots in Port au Prince. My husband texted me to say there was a problem and he was on his way home. I turned on the radio just in time to hear the president announce that he is in fact a citizen of Haiti and does not have dual citizenship. He presented all eight of his Haitian passports he's had over the years and a US senator was there to confirm that Martelly is not a US citizen.

Here's my issue with this. Doesn't the government have a committee or something in place to check that all CANDIDATES meet the requirements of the constitution before they are allowed to run? Why in the world did they allow him to be elected as president and serve for 7+ months before they decided to see if he met the presidential requirements? This is seriously distrubing to me.

Exhibit B: Haiti switched to Daylight Savings Time on Sunday. That's not really a problem. What is a problem is that the government decided on Wednesday and, here's the real issue, didn't make any announcements about it. Cell phones just switched time overnight Saturday and everyone was confused on Sunday. Crazy!

I really do enjoy living in Hait, but this kind of crap stuff from the government really irritates me.