Breaking Haiti Free from the Cycle of Corruption

The real fight begins before the scandal, in the very architecture of the State. Serving the Haitian State has become a paradoxical act. You are called to serve. You are criticized if you refuse. You are suspected as soon as you accept. And sometimes, no matter what you do, you end up guilty; not for what you have committed, but for having been there. I am not talking here about professional corruptors. I am not talking about those who organize, embezzle, manipulate, and prosper in the shadow of institutions. They must answer for their actions, without ambiguity. I am talking about a deeper, broader, more disturbing phenomenon: that of a State whose rules are outdated, procedures opaque, financial channels historically informal, and practices too often inherited from another era without ever having been truly modernized. In such an environment, entering to serve means entering an already fractured architecture. Even if you refuse corruption. Even if you try to reform. Even if you cause disruption. You remain exposed. Because when corruption becomes systemic, individual innocence is no longer enough to protect you. Worse still, politics itself adds an extra fragility. Mandates are short. Waves of replacement are constant. Transitions are often brutal. The person who comes after you can unearth an administrative irregularity whose existence you were unaware of, a procedure put in place before you, a channel you didn't have time to reform, an act signed in a context that no one had properly documented. And suddenly, suspicion becomes a weapon. Who will emerge innocent in such an environment? This is where reflection must mature. We have ended up building a State where reputational risk is attached to the function itself. Serving becomes a gamble. A risk. An exposure. And yet, without public servants, there is no State. This is the paradox. We need women and men to run institutions, but we have also created a climate where entering these institutions sometimes means accepting to one day be suspected simply by proximity to a sick system. This is also why many prefer to criticize from the outside rather than enter the arena. From the outside, one appears pure. Inside, one becomes vulnerable. But there is something even more troubling: popular justice. The day an administrative report is released, whether from a control institution, an investigative body, or an audit, everyone chooses their 'corrupt one.' People comment. They condemn. They defend their own. They attack others. Social networks become a court. Private conversations become a verdict. Rumor becomes proof. And almost all of us fall into this ease. Because it is simpler to accuse than to understand a system. Simpler to be indignant than to analyze. Simpler to choose a side than to ask the real questions. Then comes the day when it's your turn. Or someone you know's turn. And often, those who accused yesterday discover today the violence of suspicion. In a weakened, slow judicial system, vulnerable to political pressures and institutional weaknesses, this emotional justice complicates everything. It polarizes. It oversimplifies often complex cases. It transforms administrative irregularities into definitive moral condemnations even before the facts are fully established. It replaces the demand for truth with the speed of the verdict. Meanwhile, the system itself does not change. Yet the same causes will produce the same effects. If the rules remain vague, if procedures remain archaic, if financial channels are not traceable, if responsibilities are not clearly defined, if control institutions are not modernized, we will continue to produce the same scenes: reports, accusations, replacements, scandals, and then more scandals. In a word: cycles. And that is precisely where the heart of the debate lies. This is not an apology for corruption. It is a call to distinguish the corrupt act from the corrupt environment. Confusing the two prevents any serious reform. Because the fight against corruption cannot be limited to punishment. It must also transform the environment that makes corruption structurally possible. Punishing downstream without reforming upstream is an illusion. The real fight begins before the offense. It begins in the architecture. In the quality of the rules. In the clarity of procedures. In the traceability of decisions. In the digitalization of flows. In the definition of responsibilities. In the protection of those who reform. In the strengthening of an independent, credible, and technically competent justice system. This, fundamentally, is the architecture of trust. A State worthy of the name is not just a State that punishes after the fact. It is a State that, by its very design, reduces the space left for arbitrariness, opacity, informality, and impunity. As long as we do not rebuild this architecture, serving will remain a risk, innocence will remain fragile, and reputation will too often depend on the political context of the moment. So, here is the 'pinga'. To those who observe from afar and judge with certainty: it takes courage to serve in an imperfect system. It is always more comfortable to remain at a distance than to enter the arena. But the system you criticize today is the same one you will enter tomorrow if you ever agree to participate in it. And you will then discover, perhaps to your detriment, that this trap spares no one. It recycles accusations. It produces cycles. It sometimes crushes those very people who thought they could escape it. The question is therefore no longer just about who is corrupt. The real question is this: how do we collectively escape a system where suspicion has become the norm? The answer will not come from further indignation. It will not come from a new media tribunal. It will not come from a momentary rage that exhausts itself after a few days of noise. It will come from a lucid, methodical, and courageous refoundation. For ultimately, the question remains suspended above all of us: Who will emerge innocent when the system itself is sick? The only serious answer is this: No one, as long as we do not reform the architecture.