Ignoring all signed agreements and with the support of the United States and some armed groups, it is said, rightly or wrongly, Dr. Ariel Henry directs a power to which he imposes no limits. He therefore confuses tomorrow with eternity. Without Washington, we can do nothing, but with him, we can do anything. He is the only master of political time in our country, the only reality around which the de facto power and the de facto opposition gravitate.
For now, Washington is playing around and letting it happen and we assume that Uncle Sam’s attitude – or inaction – corresponds to its programmatic agenda. The agreement of December 21, 2022 was hailed by the international community under the leadership of the United States as a “decisive step” but the latter nevertheless considered that others remained to be taken. But how can we move forward when the practice of politics at home is that of the banishment and destruction of the other: the ability to act together fails us. And it is this inability to act in favor of the common good that undermines the country.
During this transition, the longest since 1986, what prevented Ariel Henry from setting up an Electoral Council to organize elections in the country? Person! If he had done so even after the conclusion of the last agreement, this decision would have been interpreted as an announcement of the end of the transition and the return to the normalization of the institutional and democratic life of the country.
After the failure of the two political agreements, the international guardians who control everything on the ground because of the total collapse of Haiti, must realize that this team leading the country is incapable. The protest movements which are multiplying across the country indicate that the current government has lost all credibility to move anything forward. Its inability to curb gang violence is extremely serious because this exponential, organized crime risks taking everything away. The time has come to ward off once and for all the so-called inevitability of failure in the governance of our country, by resolutely directing our living forces towards the higher goals of peace and prosperity.
The circle is complete. The country is standing still because of the ethical and intellectual collapse of the elites who barricade themselves behind a rampart of certainties preventing them from understanding things in order to act accordingly. Their decline led the people to vote for incompetent leaders. Which explains why violent and anti-democratic speeches are so popular in our society, the sense of ethics being absent.
Shared failure
Responsibility for the failure of the December 21, 2022 agreement is attributed to the de facto Prime Minister. But he is not the only one at fault. This text also engaged the responsibility of the opposition, even if it did not sign it, to the extent that it had provided for continuous dialogue with all stakeholders to broaden consensus. It is on this basis that political negotiations took place throughout 2023 between signatories and non-signatories with a view to finding a broader and more consensual solution. This agreement was therefore binding on everyone and it was up to everyone to make it enforceable. Moreover, even the international community does not attribute responsibility for the failure solely to Ariel Henry but to the entire Haitian political class which, through its conduct, constituted – and still constitutes – an obstacle to dialogue, therefore a threat to peace.
If responsibility is shared between the actors involved in resolving the crisis, it must however be recognized that those who demand the departure of the Prime Minister on February 7, 2024 on the grounds that he had not succeeded in handing over power to elected authorities, themselves never wanted the implementation of this agreement. Their strategy from the start was to implement another transition, their own. It is doubtful that this position has evolved. Besides, how can the opposition reproach Ariel Henry for not having respected an agreement that she herself has always refused to sign? As the late Leslie Manigat said, “Haitians must sincerize politics as we sincerize prices in economics.” There are too many false tokens in this political class short of ideas, solutions and projects.
Whatever anyone says, February 7, 2024 will not be a fateful date, even less the celebration of democracy. But perhaps this would be a moment when the nation and the current de facto government must courageously acknowledge the final downfall of this chaotic transition that transformed Haiti into a non-state. Nothing remains of the proof, except anguish.
The defeat of this chaotic transition is due to the fact that for 31 months the government led by Dr. Ariel Henry did not put in place the electoral institution called to organize the elections. It is a colossal defeat. Whatever we think of the deep causes of this disaster, to remain in the thoughts of Marc Bloch, one of the founders in 1929 of the “Annals of Economic and Social History” with Lucien Febvre, the direct cause is therefore that of inability of the Prime Minister to bring together the actors in unity of action. At a time when discontent is widespread with the risk that it will turn into widespread revolt, remaining in power under these conditions to ensure the management of the defeat which is worse than the defeat itself, reflects a flagrant lack of responsibility.
Unprecedented human distress
This political catastrophe, to which is added an unprecedented human distress of the Haitian populations, can be explained by the inaction of a team in power more concerned with perpetuating itself and making money than carrying out useful actions which could contribute to national happiness. Competence is a question of efficiency, performance and results. This is why high-flying intellectuals must cultivate the relationship between thought and action; and above all positive action, since this is about the management of a republic. Seen from the angle of the effectiveness of political action, the first defeats were always intellectual, says Marc Bloch in his work entitled “The Strange Defeat”. The greatest error of a people is to leave to animal souls, therefore irresponsible, the power to decide in a republic. The Haitian people must become aware of this state of affairs.
The inaction of everyone for 31 months has meant that the disaster has become immeasurable! Everything is falling apart. Make no mistake! The current government does not have the means to save itself. Everyone leave, such is the cry of the wounded people.
From the perspective of history or long-term action, we must not lose hope. It is first a question of asking ourselves how to give rise to new hopes after this long and dark period of transition? And also see to what extent we are still capable of a small gesture of humanity, by concluding an agreement to prevent Haitians from dying in this war in which they find themselves and which they themselves did not have. triggered? A stupid, fratricidal war in which we kill or assassinate someone we don’t know and with whom we have no personal problems. We murder others because we simply deny it. What inhumanity has led our society to the abyss of its evil?
False debate
Ariel Henry’s time was a time in history. And the story was all that was possible at one point in time. The debate around a two-headed or single-headed executive in a collapsed, destroyed democratic and constitutional order makes no sense. It’s legal tinkering. The function of the head of government has no constitutional justification apart from the non-existence of parliamentary authorities invested with the mission of control, jurisdiction and drafting of laws. Two-headed governance is only possible through the application of articles 134-1, 137 and 158 of the Constitution. Since the law is not there, we are going in circles. Two-person governance is only possible in a constitutional framework, that is to say only if we give the people the right to exercise their sovereignty of which they are the exclusive depositary (arts 59 and 59 of the Const).
In these two options, the Basic Law is inoperative in its integral validity. A zombie constitution, undead, to repeat the historian Leslie Manigat, it is this that we want to apply when there are no longer institutions to implement it, forgetting that the greatest good to the greatest many still respect individual freedoms and fundamental rights to which this Fundamental Charter devotes an entire chapter. The blind persistence of this debate reflects the intellectual collapse of Haitian political personnel. A lack of intellectual solidity which requires the renewal of the legal tinkering which was applied after the unconstitutional overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.
The repetition of the transition, although it is a failure of democracy, is however not a dead time, a dry period in terms of innovation and normative production, to the extent that this useful debate can chart the way towards legislative modernization. As we can see, the rulers who have succeeded each other have nothing to their credit. Without a record of satisfaction, the political minority of the right as well as the left, which is farting in silk and moreover Machiavellian, risks suffering the dechoukaj of the suffering and vulnerable majority, of the “great historical masses”, a concept so dear to the author of “Capital”. In fact, it has already started. But nothing justifies violence, the destruction of lives and property of citizens, not even revolution, wrote Albert Camus. The failure of our country is due in large part to our constant revolutions. Too many revolutions kill, wrote the former Minister of Finance and Haitian novelist Frédéric Marcelin. Instead, let’s give democracy a chance to triumph!
I have been saying it for a long time, it is a misfortune for Haiti to have more politicians than industrialists, engineers, agronomists. A nation only counts by the number of its entrepreneurs, its scientists, its science teachers, its professionals graduated from technical schools, its industrialists. Haiti has become increasingly poor because of the hemorrhaging of its gray matter. Only prosperity, growth and economic development are capable of introducing the people to modern and democratic practices.
In a humanist spirit, today we must make a lucid effort to find a political solution with everyone without exclusivism. If we do not do this, we risk seeing the year 2024 end without an elected president, with a parliament and authorities at the level of local authorities. This is the sacrifice we must make to save Haitian lives and return to living together and in harmony.
Sonet Saint-Louis by
Professor of constitutional law and legal research methodology at the Faculty of Law and Economic Sciences of the State University of Haiti.
