U.S. demands firm date for next round of elections in Haiti
Haiti must set a firm date for the next round of elections, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo says.
“That is the most important thing,” Pompeo said in an exclusive interview Thursday with the Miami Herald. “We need to have the elections. That is important.”
The Trump administration’s position comes as Haiti President Jovenel Moïse seeks to use his recently obtained power to rule by executive order to reform the country’s constitution, a controversial move that some fear could delay the holding of elections and plunge Haiti deeper into already protracted political crisis.
Moïse first called for constitutional reform during the Jan. 12 commemoration of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake. He soon followed up with a statement from his office. The statement said he was working on delivering a unity government that would be empowered to pass a budget, pass laws enabling elections and equally, would “propose constitutional changes to address flaws in the 1987 text, which have contributed to a decades-long cycle of political crises.”
He also said that political parties and international partners, in discussions, all agree “on the need to amend the 1987 constitution to enable our government to function.”
But some see the push for constitutional reform as a stalling tactic, and said the president will need to choose.
Pompeo, meanwhile, is adamant. He said the administration believes that “within the Haitian government, they have the capacity and the capability and the lawful right to do that.”
Pompeo said he raised the elections matter with Haitian Foreign Minister Bocchit Edmond on the sidelines of a round-table discussion this week in Jamaica with a select group of Caribbean ministers. “We urge them to set a timetable; set a firm date for those elections,” Pompeo said.
Moïse’s statement did not say how he planned to change the constitution. Some close to him have suggested by referendum, while others have said through a political agreement. Both avenues pose problems, even among those who support constitutional changes.
The constitution, itself, outlines when and how it can be modified and that window closed last year when the president of the Lower Chamber of Deputies, Gary Bodeau, and the presidential palace, failed to approve recommendations by a legislative special commission in charge of constitutional reform that had spent two years working on proposed amendments. Proposed amendments to the constitution would have had to be done at the close of the last regular session of the legislative year, which was Sept. 9.
“A constitutional reform should be part of a global political agreement where all political and civil society actors agree on a road map containing key objectives leading to elections. It can’t be a separate project,” said Jerry Tardieu, the ex-lawmaker who chaired the special constitutional reform commission.
“Changing the constitution requires a large consensus among Haiti’s political and civil society forces. We are far from there,” he added. “He can’t even find a consensus to form a government let alone touch the constitution.”
Haiti has been without a legal government since the lower chamber fired Prime Minister Jean Henry Céant in March. Attempts by Moïse to ratify two other choices were blocked in the Senate where he controlled a majority, but a small group of opposition lawmakers used various tactics to block the hearings.
Some question whether Haiti can hold elections in the current security and political environment. Though the protests that paralyzed the country last year have dissipated and life has returned somewhat to normal, the issues that triggered the economic and political crises remain, observers stress.
The country is seeing a worrying resurgence in kidnappings with Haiti police registering 15 since the beginning of this year. There is also a rise in gang-related insecurity. On Wednesday, residents and merchants not too far from the Parliament building, along with government workers assigned there, were forced to flee amid a gang-on-gang shootout.
Parliamentary and local elections in Haiti were due in October. The country’s failure to hold them meant that Parliament became dysfunctional on Jan. 13, ushering in Moïse’s one-man rule.
He announced the end of Parliament in an early morning post on Twitter, saying that the legislative terms of the entire 119-member Lower Chamber of Deputies had expired along with that of two-thirds — 19 out of 29 — of the Senate. The tweet ended speculation about whether 10 or 19 senators would be dismissed, but triggered a new controversy.
Six of the 19 senators are contesting their dismissal and are accusing the president of violating the constitution and the 2015 electoral law under which they ran. Their six-year mandate, they argue, began in January 2016 and runs until the second Monday of January 2022.
The group has filed a grievance with the provisional elections body, and sent a letter addressed to nine international parliamentarian associations, pleading for help. Representatives of the public relations firm Mercury, which represents Moïse, did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment on the criteria used by the president to dismiss the senators, or their accusations against him.
In the letter, the ex-senators, which include the only elected female and a supporter of Moïse, accuse the president of trying to be a dictator. They note that on Jan. 14, they were blocked by Haitian police from accessing their offices at the Parliament.
“In the face of the threat, which we are the object of on the part of the President...who wants to establish a dictatorship,“ they said, “we deem it imperative to bring these facts to the attention of the enlarged community of parliamentarians and to therefore call for your urgent intervention in order to help restore the democratic rights of the Haitian people.”
This story was originally published January 23, 2020 at 5:03 PM.
