Baby Doc Duvalier Splits Atoms...With His Mind

I mentioned earlier that Baby Doc returned to Haiti and was promptly arrested and prevented from leaving the country. Now we have some indication as to what prompted him to show his face:

Duvalier, 59, made the trip just before a Swiss law that could entitle him to at least $4.6 million takes effect on Feb. 1. To collect the funds, he would have to show Haitian authorities aren't interested in prosecuting him.

So he tried to collect money by proving that Haiti wasn't going to prosecute him, which he did by showing up in Haiti, where they are now prosecuting him.

Dictator Rule #1

If you get gone, stay gone:

Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier was charged with corruption and the theft of his country's meagre funds last night after the former Haitian dictator was hauled before a judge in Port-au-Prince

Two days after his return to the country he left following a brutal 15-year rule, a noisy crowd of his supporters protested outside the state prosecutor's office while he was questioned over accusations that he stole public funds and committed human rights abuses after taking over as president from his father in 1971.

I honestly did not see this coming. I assumed that if Baby Doc was coming home, that he would have, you know, some kind of a plan for surviving, something to avoid this kind of nonsense. Of course, maybe he does. Papa Doc surely would have. But this is Baby, so...

A Brief History of Haitian Democracy

Since I mentioned the return of Baby Doc below, I think it meet and proper to look at Haiti's sad history, and why cynicism survives longer than anything else there:

One Tyrant Out, Another Returns

The official silence surrounding the Tunisian Revolution invites gales of laughter. This sort of things isn't supposed to happen in the Arab world, where the people have two choices:

1. Bloodthirsty screaming Islamists who will behead your brother for reading Oscar Wilde, and stone your sister for reading anything; or
2. Meretricious gasbags who will funnel the wealth of your country into Swiss Bank accounts, and cause your cousin to vanish in the dead of night when he snarks too loudly about it.

But here the people, having already voted out the Islamists 24 years ago, have sent the gasbag, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, into exile. No doubt he can buy an estate in San Marino and commiserate with Roman Polanski about the world's injustices.

Obviously, this too will pass. Though the sight of furious young men in beards and galabiyeh, invoking the Prophet's wrath, has been blessedly absent from Tunisia's popular uprising, they may soon return. Algeria, which has experienced a civil war between Islamists and anti-Islamists for nearly 20 years, is just over the border. And there's no guaruntee that a secular government will govern any better than Ben Ali did.

But for the moment, let's enjoy watching the Saudis, Syrians, Egyptians and Iranians glance warily over their shoulders. Let's quietly savor the obvious discomfort of the French, who are again hung upon the hypocrisy of their crypto-colonialism. 'Tis time to kiss, when tyrants seem to fear.

On the other hand, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, the dictatorial heir who was flung from Haiti like a wormy apple the year before Ben Ali came to power, has returned. The feckless son of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, the humanitarian medical man who murdered 30,000 Hatiians during his 14-year reign, Baby Doc has shown up out of the blue during Haiti's elections, for no stated reason. Perhaps Ben Ali can rent his chateau.