Haiti for Sale: The Republic Delivered to Power Merchants

This is not done to a country. Even less so to a country like Haiti. The Nation which, in 1804, defied the world order by proclaiming the freedom and dignity of a formerly enslaved people, is today reduced to a distressing spectacle. Through blindness, mediocre ambitions, and dubious arrangements, a part of our elites has transformed the State into a fragile, almost fictitious structure, where improvisation serves as governance and incompetence wears the mask of expertise. The last government, stemming from a supposed political agreement awkwardly named the national pact and signed in a park, tragically illustrates this drift. What should have been a solemn moment of national refoundation has transformed into an improvised political arrangement, revealing a culture of power where positions are negotiated rather than earned. For several years, political agreements have followed one another without ever rebuilding the State. They primarily serve to distribute positions, satisfy clan interests, and prolong the privileges of a minority of political actors and business opportunists. The failure of the government led by former Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the confusion of the Transitional Presidential Council should have served as a lesson. They have evidently only served to prepare a new episode of the same political comedy. Today, the country seems to be administered like a market. Former ministers whose inefficiency is already known are recycled, and new officials whose inexperience is concerning are promoted. The rare competencies are not enough to mask the impression of a hastily cobbled-together government. Even more seriously, certain confidences from former circles of power suggest that the current struggles for State control could also serve to reward certain actors or accomplices of the system that led to the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. If this were true, the Haitian political crisis would not only be institutional: it would be profoundly moral. But the most worrying aspect may be elsewhere. A part of civil society, the political class, and even certain sectors of the press seem to accommodate this drift, sometimes out of opportunism, sometimes out of calculation. National interest then disappears behind the logic of the highest bidder.
Thus, behind the scenes of power, a cynical phrase circulates that summarizes the state of the Republic:
« ministries and general directorates for sale ». This is the tragedy. For a country is not a commodity, a State is not spoils, and a nation is not governed like a market.
And if some persist in selling the Republic piece by piece, history will not forget their names. Professor Pierre Josué Agénor Cadet
E-mail: pijac02@yahoo.fr