Haiti's rogue's gallery

From Cali Ruchala in Sobaka:

Former President-for-Life and First Brat Jean-Claude Duvalier has officially announced his candidacy for the upcoming Haitian presidential elections, just making the deadline for registration.

The announcement came from the members of the irony-challenged PUN political party (Parti de l'Unite Nationale), a group of hardcore Duvalierists led by forrmer officials Joseph Turgot and Arthur Calixte.

Duvalier's candidacy is probably not legal - not even by the loose and rather haphazard rules of the central election board, which is in the business of disqualifying some candidates and bending the rules for some others. Earlier this week, Fanmi Lavalas candidate for president Father Gerard Jean-Juste was disqualified because he hadn't filed the official forms with the board himself. Jean-Juste has been "indisposed" for the last month as Haiti's most famous political prisoner, jailed on the hilarious accusation that the good priest took part in the assassination of journalist Jacques Roche.

Neither has Duvalier lived in Haiti for the last five years - which, unlike the reason used to bar Jean-Juste from running, is a restriction which is actually enshrined in the Haitian constitution. Another candidate, Haitian-American millionaire Dumarsais Simeus, head of Simeus Foods, presently has a team of crack American lawyers employed to argue that Haiti is no longer governed by the constitution and hasn't been since February 29, 2004, when former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the country. Slavery, rape and pillage are also apparently legal now as well.