They don’t have a deal, but Haitian leaders leave Jamaica with promise to keep talking

Three days of high-stake negotiations between interim Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry and a cross-section of Haitian political and civic leaders have ended without a resolution to their country’s multifaceted crisis, but with an agreement to continue talking back in Port-au-Prince.

Those discussions are to involve not just the 50 Haitians who eventually made it to Jamaica’s capital this week, but also the three former Caribbean prime ministers — Perry Christie of The Bahamas, Bruce Golding of Jamaica and Kenny Anthony of St. Lucia — who facilitated the tense political negotiations aimed at getting Haitians to compromise.

The former leaders and elder statesmen have agreed to travel to Haiti in the coming days to meet with members of a transition council whose job it is to prepare the volatile country for long-overdue elections. The council currently consists of three members and is headed by Mirlande Manigat, a constitutional law expert and former first lady and presidential candidate.

Manigat had declined the invitation to travel to Jamaica to discuss Haiti’s crisis, saying the council had held a similar effort in Port-au-Prince and that such discussions should take place in Haiti, not Jamaica.

The hope was that by meeting in a neutral place to talk among themselves, Haitian political and civic leaders could arrive at a broad political consensus, after nearly two years of failed efforts by others in the international community, toward elections and improved security.

But as with previous negotiations, the unresolved core issue in closed-door discussions, which at times became heated, remained: How, in the absence of a president or a parliament, should Haiti be governed?

Haiti hasn’t had an elected representative since January, when the last of its parliamentarians, 10 senators, left office after their terms expired. The country has not presidential elections following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on July 7, 2021.

Henry, who emerged as prime minister after a three-way power struggle, has governed the country since late July 2021. Although he has signed two political accords with parties and civil society groups, and installed the transition council to advise him, he’s accused of amassing power. He pushed back against that accusation repeatedly in Kingston, where after declining to attend the first day of negotiations he participated in the last two days.

“It’s a match and this was the first half,” architect and former presidential candidate Leslie Voltaire said. Voltaire accompanied Dr. Maryse Narcisse to Kingston on behalf of Fanmi Lavalas, the political party headed by former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Before returning to Haiti on Wednesday with the others, Voltaire said that despite the lack of a concrete deal, he believes progress was made.

For one, the number of political voices was enlarged to include others, not just the coalition of civil society groups and political parties known as the Montana Accord, which has been vocal in their criticism of Henry and have been pushing their own transition plan. As a result, some parties have decided to create a bloc to further push for an opening, said Katia Bonté. with the Struggling People’s Organization, OPL.

Second, Haitians got a chance to talk among themselves and express their dissatisfaction with the eroding situation at home. Their comments were directed at not only at Henry, but at others in the room who had been part of the government of Moïse and former President Michel Martelly, who had handpicked Moïse to succeed him.

In his conversation with Henry, Voltaire said he implored the prime minister to compromise.

“I told him if you have all of the power than you have all of the pressures. Why don’t you distribute the pressure?” Voltaire said.

Upon returning to Port-au-Prince Wednesday, Henry addressed his visit to Jamaica saying during a press conference that the trip “was an occasion to renew contact and engage in dialogue that was frank and sincere.” He regretted the decision by those who opted not attend and said agreed with Voltaire that this was a step.

“We will continue to talk,” he said, adding that in the two years since he came into office, “we have been trying to find a consensus and spoken to everyone in order to find an agreement so we can advance.”

Then, he added, the current intermediary period has gone on for far too long and it’s time for Haiti to head to elections, to allow the population to freely choose the men and women of its choosing to represent them in office.

“We say we are democrats. Then we can agree that one of the principle missions of a transition government is to organize good elections,” Henry said, adding that improving the security environment by securing outside assistance for the Haiti National Police remains a priority and an urgency.

In principle, Henry has agreed to include a broader representation in his government by creating a unity government; he also agreed to expand the number of people on the transition council and both he and the others agreed to work toward creating a Provisional Electoral Council.

“The government and [the transition council] remains flexible to modify certain structures in the government and governance and agree to make changes in the government so we can become more inclusive,” Henry said, adding that making modifications to the constitution is something he also believes they can do given that nearly everyone in Kingston agreed it required changes.

But the stumbling blocks that have dogged previous tentative agreements persist: how much power should the council have? Will it be able to fire the prime minister? Will he be able to fire the council?

Members of the Montana Accord, who are now willing to have Henry remain in office, want the transition council to have presidential authority so that Haiti, in the spirit of its constitution, has a two-tier governmental structure: a prime minister and a president.

“We are in an autocracy and it’s dangerous,” said Magali Comeau Denis, who leads the Montana coalition.

Two years after the assassination of Moïse, Denis said there is “chaos” in Haiti and at the head of the government. “Chaos cannot solve chaos,” she said. “You need to have some order.”

Jacques Ted Saint-Dic, who joined Denis in Jamaica, said they came to the talks with the idea that it was possible to arrive at a political consensus to create an opening and to discuss the future of the country.

“The question of the personal power of Ariel for us is an important problem,” he said. “We are always saying we are a democracy. Unfortunately no institutions are functioning and the power is personal.”

Though the talks are the initiative of the 15-member Caribbean Community, they were heavily supported and financed by the United States and Canada.

Ahead of the visit, diplomats in Haiti and in Washington met with several of the invitees, emboldening some participants at the negotiating table but arousing suspicious in others about whether the outcome was pre-decided, even though no foreign diplomats were allowed in the room during the talks.

“In this perspective, we must negotiate directly with the Americans,” Saint-Dic said. “Because when speaking to Ariel Henry, we speak directly to the United States of America. We’ve been saying to the Americans to ‘free Ariel,’ to allow him to negotiate promptly and frankly, so we can know where he is, what he wants and where he wants to go.”

Politicians on both sides of the issue accused both Henry and members of the Montana Group of being under the influence of foreign governments, accusations they all deny.

Sorel Jacinthe, a former senator and supporter of Henry, said he the negotiators are returning to Port-au-Prince the same way they left: empty handed and without a deal.

“We did not resolve anything,” he said.

Jacinthe accused the Montana group of not backing down from its insistence that there be a president appointed in Haiti, even through there have been no elections and there has been some opposition in the international community, given that the head of the Supreme Court was dead and the parliament was not functional.

“They know clearly that as long as we do not have elections, there cannot be a president,” Jacinthe said of the Montana coalition. “There cannot be an executive at the head, and yet they insist on maintaining the same position after two years even though it’s not possible.”

Jacinthe noted that prior to the Jamaica talks, the transition council held a forum in Port-au-Prince and many of the groups represented in Jamaica refused to show up.

“They preferred to come to Jamaica but not one went to the forum,” Jacinthe said. “Now they are returning to Haiti with nothing being resolved.”