Would-be presidential candidate tours Quebec in search of support for Haiti

If Jerry Tardieu runs to be the next president of Haiti, he will, by his own admission, be vying to take the reins of a “ghost state.”

The 58-year-old businessman and former congressman for the once-prosperous Port-au-Prince suburb of Pétion-Ville rattles off the disturbing statistics of national collapse: more than a million internally displaced people, six million without enough to eat, 85 per cent of the capital under the control of gangs, five years of severe economic contraction. The country’s last elections were in 2016; no elected officials remain in office.