International Crisis Group

Haiti — a state of political dysfunction | Miami Herald

By Mark L. Schneider, Crisis Group’s Senior Vice President

Three years after an earthquake devastated Haiti, its elites seem poised to produce their own man-made disaster of instability and polarization. Unless the nation’s leaders pursue a national governability accord to organize long-delayed elections, halt unconstitutional appointments and address basic needs, Haiti could become a permanent failed state.

The International Crisis Group report published last week: “Governing Haiti: Time for National Consensus” tracks the failure of will across a broad spectrum of Haiti’s national leaders to seek agreement on national challenges.

The most recent triumph of partisan over national interest has been the failure of President Michel Martelly, parliamentary leaders and the business community to implement the governance agreement signed on Christmas Eve with the support of an ad hoc ecumenical body, Religions for Peace.

The pact would have side-stepped the Catch-22 situation where the absence of a third of the senators stymied the legislature’s naming its three members to the nine-member Permanent Electoral Commission (CEP) which was supposed to organize the partial senate elections which should have been held in November 2011.

The agreement provided for a new consensual Transitory Electoral College (TEC). That also would have enabled the removal of the other widely-criticized CEP members who had been named by or were seen as partial to the president.

FULL ARTICLE (Miami Herald)

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