RHEL/CentOS to Debian

[dandart]

I currently have RHEL and a half upgraded version of CentOS whose yum outputs:

There was a problem importing one of the Python modules
required to run yum. The error leading to this problem was:

/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/cElementTree.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Please install a package which provides this module, or
verify that the module is installed correctly.

It's possible that the above module doesn't match the
current version of Python, which is:
2.3.4 (#1, Feb 6 2006, 10:38:59)
[GCC 3.4.5 20051201 (Red Hat 3.4.5-2)]

If you cannot solve this problem yourself, please go to
the yum faq at:
YumFaq - Linux@Duke Project Wiki

I'd like to completely replace it with debian. I have root access but no physical access. I'd somehow like to remove everything and replace it with debian if at all possible. I can debootstrap but how would I do this to / ?

[daark.child]

I don't know how to help with installing Debian, but to resolve the CentOS issue, install python-elementtree.