The devastating earthquake that hit Haiti 15km south-west of Port-au-Prince on January 12 with a 7.0-magnitude on the Richter scale destroyed large parts of the capital, including the presidential palace, the Ministry of Justice and the UN headquarters.
While this loss of authority (both real and symbolic) is significant, more important in the short term is the destruction to the country's infrastructure, with damage to the airport, ports, emergency services and hospitals severely curtailing relief efforts.
Some 230,000 people are estimated to have died, a significant proportion of the country's 10 million inhabitants.
Assessing the damage left by the earthquake will be no easy task, and we note that many of our fundamental macroeconomic and political assumptions for the wider Caribbean region will need to be revisited over the course of 2010.
Unusually for Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo, his administration has been forced to take a defensive stance on several key issues of late, all of which could erode his party's support base in the run-up to next year's elections.
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