Haiti’s last elected senators left office in January. This leaves the country of 11 million without a parliament. It has not had a president for nineteen months. Essentially, Haiti has no democratic government.
The terms of the last ten elected senator expired at the beginning of this year. Haiti failed to hold legislative elections in 2019, which would have introduced new senators. Haiti has not had a president since the last one was assassinated in July 2021. The government is currently being run by an appointed prime minister who has been associated with the assassination. Meanwhile, society collapses: hunger threatens 40% of the population, inflation is nearing 50%, and cholera has jumped by 60%. Gang violence has killed thousands and thousands more have fled the country.
Haiti has slid from a nation-state to modern chiefdom. Unfortunately, democracy never took root in Haiti. The constitution dates back to 1986, when the dictator Baby Doc Duvalier was ousted. Since then, the county has had four coups and one assassination. Democracies need time to mature and the right people to drive that maturity. Haiti has had a serious brain drain since the 1960s so many of the people who would have been best positioned to move Haiti forward after Duvalier’s ousting had left for the US years earlier. By 1990, roughly 220,000—many of them the best and brightest—had left for the United States. Now the hollowed-out country is collapsing from within because it never developed the institutions, checks and balances, and mindset required for a democracy to flourish.
In December, the government formed the High Transition Council, which is committed to holding general elections this year. The Prime Minister called it: “the beginning of the end of the dysfunction of our democratic institutions” and the Organization of American States called the Council “crucial for restoring democratic order and improving security.” Unfortunately, neither is true. Haiti is now a chiefdom. As such, its best step forward is to become a fiefdom. Even a dictator would be preferable than another attempt at democracy because the governmental structure is far simpler to run. Haiti is starting way below the floor needed to secure stability in the form of a democracy.
Source:
Widlore Merancourt and Amanda Coletta, “Senators’ Departure Leaves Haiti without an Elected Government,” Washington Post, A14, 1/22/2023; see also, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/21/haiti-democracy-crisis/
Nathalie Baptiste and Foreign Policy in Focus, “Terror, Repression, and Diaspora: The Baby Doc Legacy in Haiti,” The Nation, 23 October 2014, accessed from https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/terror-repression-and-diaspora-baby-doc-legacy-haiti/
“OAS Adopts Resolution on Haiti,” US Mission to the Organization of American States, 10 February 2023; accessed from https://usoas.usmission.gov/oas-adopts-resolution-on-haiti/
Evens Sanon, “Haiti Appoints Council Amid Push to Hold General Elections,” AP News, 6 February 2023; accessed https://apnews.com/article/politics-caribbean-ariel-henry-haiti-61e72730433e284ae165462cfb97b323
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