"Baby Doc" (from the net) |
You want delusional, egomaniacal craziness? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will have to be expanded with an entry for a syndrome to be known as Duvalierism.
This thug reigned over Haiti for a brutal decade and a half, from 1971 to 1986, after inheriting the presidency from his father, Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier. His crimes are so heinous, they almost resist cataloguing.
Among them are murder, torture and plunder of the public treasury. He lived in the splendor of a king, his lifestyle financed in part by the sale of drugs and, most horrifically, human body parts.
After being overthrown in a popular uprising, Duvalier fled to France and lived without fear of prosecution. Then, all of a sudden, he flew into Haiti while the country struggles through the political crisis of a disputed election and suffers the extended ravages of last year's earthquake.
The government had no choice but to arrest Duvalier. But his very presence, free or behind bars, is poison because, there is no doubt, he hopes that in their misery enough Haitians will overlook his predations and come around to thinking that only a strongman can lift their lot.