Haiti's Dysfunctional Political System

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

As President Michel Martelly of Haiti left office on Feb. 7, due to term limits, his people were worse off than before the January 2010 earthquake that devastated the country.

The transition to a new chief executive has been anything but smooth. A presidential election held last Oct. 25 saw Jovenel Moise leading with 32.8 per cent of the vote, and Jude Célestin second, with 25.2 per cent. Other candidates took the rest.

With no one obtaining a majority, a second round of balloting was necessary.

But there were allegations that the first round was marred by rampant fraud favoring Moise. Célestin condemned the results as a “ridiculous farce” and refused to campaign further.

As thousands of Célestin’s supporters took to the streets, the run-off was cancelled.

Haitian leaders finally installed an interim president, Jocelerme Privert, on Feb. 14, to oversee new elections April 24.

Situated on the western third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, Haiti became the second independent country in the Western Hemisphere, established in 1804 as the result of a successful slave revolt against its French plantation overlords.

But its 10.6 million people remain the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, mired in poverty, poor education and health care. Nearly half are illiterate, and only one in four has access to proper sanitation.

The country remains unable to house the 60,000 people still stuck in camps in appalling conditions.

Inflation has risen by six percentage points since last April to 12 per cent and Haiti’s currency, the gourde, has lost a quarter of its value in the past year.

The United Nations Human Development Index, a composite statistic that measures life expectancy, education, and income in a nation, places Haiti in the “low” category, at 163rd of 188 countries.

Since 1986, when president-for-life Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier fled a revolt, Haiti has struggled repeatedly to hold credible elections.

In 1990 and again in 2000, a left-wing priest and reformer, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, won the presidential election. But he didn’t last long either time, forced out of office through violence.

Martelly, a singer known as “Sweet Mickey” before entering the political arena, has been accused of enriching himself while in office.

Cronyism, a chronic problem in post-Duvalier Haiti, reached new heights. One official at the Interior Ministry admitted that she was encouraged to add ten per cent to each contract to allow for graft.

Another employee of the Interior Ministry, with a salary of about fifteen hundred dollars a month, had six cars and seven bank accounts.

Given all of this, Haiti is effectively a ward of the international community. The army was disbanded in 1995 and a UN Stabilization Mission, today comprising some 5,000 troops and police, now keeps the peace.

Many normal governmental functions are handled by NGOs funded from abroad; they are the only organizations that perform properly. The private sector, for example, runs eighty per cent of Haiti’s schools.

Martelly complained that, due to the foreign presence in Haiti, he actually wielded little power. Though billions of dollars poured into the country after the earthquake, Haiti had little say in how they were spent.