(Port-au-Prince) In the absence of elections organized since 2016, Haiti no longer has any elected representative at the national level since Monday, while gangs reign supreme in the territory, a year and a half after the assassination of President Jovenel Moses.
The last ten senators still in office symbolically completed their mandate, but the legislative power in fact ceased to function in January 2020, when all the deputies and two thirds of the elected members of the upper house left their posts, without successors to replace them.
“We cannot dare to speak of democracy”, deplores the lawyer Samuel Madistin, “and this comes at a time when the State is losing control of the majority of the territory, 60%, to the benefit of armed gangs”. This jurist believes that Haiti “is a State which, practically, does not exist”.
The assassination of President Moïse by an armed commando, in his private residence in July 2021, only amplified the already deep political crisis in which the country was mired because of the decay of public institutions.
It is Prime Minister Ariel Henry who currently manages affairs but, appointed only 48 hours before the attack which cost the life of Jovenel Moïse, his legitimacy is widely questioned.
“There was a Machiavellian calculation by the PHTK regime (political party of Jovenel Moïse) who did not want to organize elections”, analyzes Me Madistin.
“The failure is also that of the international community and the United Nations, whose mission was to stabilize the country politically,” underlines the lawyer.
After the 13 years of Minustah (2004-2017), a mission that counted up to 9,000 peacekeepers and more than 4,000 international police officers, the UN has gradually reduced its presence in Haiti.
Reduced today to a political office of about sixty people, the international organization has retained the mandate of “strengthening political stability and good governance”.
That no one is able today in Haiti to control the action of the government or to pass laws does not particularly move the inhabitants, oppressed by the threat of gangs, extreme poverty or the resurgence of cholera.
“Citizens are not really interested in this problem of representativeness: their priority is security,” observes Gédéon Jean, director of the Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights (CARDH).
During the year 2022, this civil society organization recorded at least 857 heinous kidnappings committed by armed gangs.
Corrupt and traffickers in Parliament
The disinterest of the inhabitants for politics has gradually increased over the scandals in which ministers, deputies or senators have been implicated, without the Haitian justice taking any sanction.
Barely more than 20% of voters took part in the last elections that the country organized, in the fall of 2016.
“Parliament has become a high place of corruption: people vote there for money, for management positions”, denounces the director of CARDH.
“We had corrupt people in Parliament, drug traffickers, people we used for money laundering,” adds Gédéon Jean.
The opprobrium had indeed fallen on the last legislature even before the entry into office of the parliamentarians.
Like the Guy Philippe affair: in January 2017, four days before the start of his term as senator, which would have offered him immunity, this man linked to powerful paramilitary forces was arrested in Port-au- Prince.
Extradited the same day to Florida, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison for laundering drug money.
In November 2022, several businessmen and politicians, including outgoing Senate President Joseph Lambert, were sanctioned by the United States and Canada, which accuses them of being involved in drug trafficking and of maintaining links to criminal networks.
Mr. Lambert was the target Sunday of an armed attack in Port-au-Prince, his car being taken under the bullets. The chosen one was injured and hospitalized, but his life would not be in danger according to the local press.
“We must think about moralizing political life and cleaning up the electoral system […] to prevent people from taking the next elections hostage with dirty money,” warns Gédéon Jean.