Democracy under siege

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour.

Preparations are underway in Haiti for its first elections in ten years. Last week marked the deadline for registering a political party to run.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Haiti is currently wracked with gang violence, and over half of its population lives in poverty. The country has been operating with an interim government since the last president was assassinated in 2021.

Even so, some say the country isn’t ready to hold a vote.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: Junior Luckner Buisson has lived in Haiti his whole life. He’s 33 now, and says he doesn’t trust the government to run the elections. And he has some good reasons.

BUISSON: We have several governments that came in different prime ministers, and different like seven Presidents, I think seven or nine we've had in the past government. And they, they have not been able to do anything, any change, like nothing at all.

The current interim government is made up of the same people who were in power when former President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in 2021.

BUISSON: I have a feeling that the people that are leading are, I mean, they they're just there because they couldn't find anyone else.

Many of them will soon be called to testify in the trial of Moise’s assassins. Jury selection started in Florida last week. 

Meanwhile, more than half of the population is facing food insecurity. Gangs control about 90 percent of the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and some reports say the violence is spreading.

BUISSON: I don't see how some people, like in different parts of the country, would be able to get to the polls.

Port-au-Prince was the economic hub of the country, but the gang problem has frustrated even the hope of economic development.

ROBERT FATTON: It's not surprising that you have violence and gangs, because that to some extent, if you are very poor, you don't have any alternative.

Robert Fatton is a Haitian and a former professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia.

The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that about half of all gang members are children.

FATTON: Giving guns and weapons to people of that age is a calamity, and even if things unfold well, you have to disarm them. Then what do you do with them? Because the trauma that exists is significant.

Any new leader will need to address these issues, or at least have a plan to.

More than 300 political parties have registered in the election. Many of them will not meet the requirements considered to be a party. But still, that’s a record in Haiti. 

In the last election, there were a little less than 200.

The government gives a stipend to political parties that’s supposed to go to things like campaign ads or visiting constituents, so Fatton suspects that this uptick may be because of some promised financial support.

FATTON: Given the level of corruption that we have in the political system, that a lot of that money is going to go to the people, or the very small group of people who form that political party.

The election is supposed to take place in August, but the current Prime Minister says it may be as late as the end of the year.

FATTON: I don't think it's a very serious thing to consider elections at that point, although the current government and the international community want the elections.

Fatton worries that whenever the elections happen, no one will trust the results. He points to the last election in 2016—when President Moise came to power.

FATTON: Something like only 15% of the population participated in those elections. The results were continuously contested, and that meant that Moise himself was a very contested leader and quite an unpopular leader, although, when he was killed, his popularity with his death increased.

He says there haven’t been many stable, trustworthy elections in the country ever, but people were at least able to walk the streets. Until 2010.

FATTON: With the catastrophic earthquake, things fell apart again.

Haitians had been leaving the country for years, but after the earthquake, the U.S. granted them Temporary Protected Status. As of 2024, almost a million Haitians live in the U.S.

It’s unclear whether those living outside Haiti will be able to vote.

FATTON: The government has said that it would have voting stations in the United States, in Canada, in France, but I seriously doubt it, because to generate that is very complicated, and I don't think the government has the money or the logistical support to do so.

Fatton says the first step to free and fair elections will be to remove the gangs. The government plans to bring in a “gang suppression force” from Chad. But it’s tried similar tactics before without success.

FATTON: You need political stability, you need a certain degree of equity, and you need economic development. How you do that, given the current situation, is really an immense, immense task and problem for any government, even if you have the best government, the situation is dire.

Back in Haiti, Bussion is not optimistic that any of the 300 parties will have the will or ability to help the country.

BUSSION: We need people to really think about the situation. You know, about what you know, what's good for the country. But they, you know, they just want you to vote. They just want…that power grab they're about to do.

For now, Bussion just hopes that the elections don’t bring more chaos, even if they don’t bring the needed change.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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