Aristide's Haiti could once make a claim as the junior charity-case member based on its vileness and impotence. But Aristide is now unemployed and reduced to emailing Jesse Jackson or something equally productive. Haiti may be depressingly poor and ungovernable but that's merely sad.
Colombia's long-running insurgency was my sentimental favorite, but not controlling the government is a real disqualification. Vile, but no cigar.
But now we have a real potential candidate for the number three spot:
MANY PEOPLE outside Latin America probably assume Daniel Ortega's political career ended 15 years ago when his ruinous attempt to install a Marxist dictatorship in Nicaragua ended with an election he decisively lost. The slightly better informed might suppose that his two subsequent electoral defeats, the allegations of corruption and child molestation that haunt him, or his single-digit rating in opinion polls have made him a marginal figure in Nicaraguan politics. Sadly, the truth is otherwise: Thanks to the weakness of the country's new democratic institutions, Mr. Ortega is close to regaining power and to broadening the Latin alliance of undemocratic states now composed by Cuba and Venezuela.
There will be a lot of happy tenured college professors on American campuses should Danny Boy reclaim power. Even after fifteen years of operating in a democracy, Ortega has learned only how to pry democracy apart at its weak points.
Belatedly, we are trying to pull the seams together and prevent this travesty:
Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick is due to visit Managua this week in what officials say will be an attempt to bolster Mr. Bolanos and persuade Mr. Aleman's right-wing supporters to abandon their self-destructive alliance with the Sandinistas. As happens so often in Latin America during the Bush administration, high-level intervention arrives late. It does have one thing going for it: Eighty percent of Nicaraguans say they oppose the Ortega-Aleman pact. Nicaragua's rescue will depend on people power, inside or outside the polls.
I guess you can never trust ex-communists. Probably because, like the mob, you can never really leave communism. It will be a sad day if Nicaragua abandons their democracy to the tender mercies of the vile thug Ortega.
And sorry Aristide, your heart is in the right place but you just aren't in the same league. Maybe the Axis of Weenies, or something.
