Haiti mourns another death: Former president, chief justice Boniface Alexandre is gone

Former Haitian President Boniface Alexandre, who led Haiti during one of country’s most challenging transitional periods, has died. He was 87.

Alexandre, a former Haitian Supreme Court Justice who led the transitional government in 2004-06, died Friday morning at his home in the Delmas 75 neighborhood of Haiti’s capital, his son-in-law, former Haiti justice minister Michel Brunache, confirmed to the Miami Herald. Brunache said his father-in-law’s death was due to natural causes after years of declining health.

“He was a fighter,” said Brunache, who is married to Alexandre’s only daughter, Marjorie, and served as chief of staff for Alexandre during his presidency.

Born on July 31, 1936 in Ganthier, a rural town just east of Port-au-Prince, Alexandre was head of Haiti’s highest court when then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted from power on Feb. 29, 2004, in a bloody revolt, and U.S. Marines landed in the country’s bullet-pocked capital as the vanguard of a Untied Nations peacekeeping force to calm the violence.

Though a provision in the Haiti Constitution at the time called for Alexandre to be approved by Parliament to fill the vacancy in the presidency, he did so without approval because the legislature had been disbanded two months earlier. He would be the last chief justice to fill a vacant presidency following changes in Haiti’s constitution.

During a news conference after his swearing-in, Alexandre said that he assumed the office “because the constitution indicates it.”

He then called on Haitians to unite and refrain from further violence. He acknowledged that taking charge of a chaotic Haiti would not be an easy task, warning that Haitians were collectively all in the same boat and “if it sinks, we all sink together.”

“Haiti is in crisis,” he said. “It needs all its sons and daughters. No one should take justice into their own hands.”

Alexandre went on to govern alongside Prime Minister Gérard Latortue, a former U.N. negotiator and South Florida TV host who was selected from a field of contenders by a seven-member council that included current Prime Minister Ariel Henry. The more boisterous and vocal of the two, Latortue preceded Alexandre in death by nearly four months. He died on March 7 at his home in Boca Raton.

The two governed during a chaotic period in Haiti where the rise of armed gangs, human rights abuses and prison deaths led the headlines. The two left office on May 14, 2006, when René Préval was sworn in as president for a second time after winning the February 2006 presidential election.

In a statement shared on social media, Henry said Alexandre’s death saddened him deeply. Haiti, he said, “is losing a great servant of the state, a brilliant lawyer and jurist, an eminent professor of civil law and civil procedure.”

“Boniface was a man of integrity, of great morality who made republican values his own. With rigor and modesty, he had devoted almost an entire life to serving the litigants and justice in his country,” said Henry.

Alexandre’s passing comes on the heels of several other high profile deaths in Haiti. Respected journalist and press freedom advocate Liliane Pierre-Paul died on Monday from a heart attack; former Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Jacques Honorat died on July 26 at the age of 92. An author, thinker and agronomist who had opposed Aristide’s policies during the latter’s first presidency, Honorat served as prime minister between October 1991-June 1992 after Aristide was overthrown by a military coup led by Gen. Raoul Cédras,

The passing of three highly respected figures in a short period serve as a reminder of Haiti’s troubled history and those who sought to make a difference in the country only to see history continue to repeat itself.

Brunache said despite the obstacles, Alexandre, a father of four, believed that Haitians had the ability to change the course of their nation.

“His dream for the country was one where everyone could get a good education, everyone could live normally. A dream where there would never again be a dictator because in his youth, he suffered as a result of the dictatorship,” Brunache said, noting that at one point Alexandre left Port-au-Prince for Ganthier to escape the secret police, the Tonton Macoute, of the Duvalier dictatorship.

Brunache said Alexandre’s demeanor could be attributed to his own personal philosophy as someone who didn’t like to put himself at the forefront. As provisional president, he believed he needed to stay true to the 1987 Haitian Constitution, which views the president as a minor and gives the responsibility of governance to the prime minister.

Iin recent years, Alexandre had begun to view the country’s constitution differently. In 2020, he agreed to head a constitution revision commission put in place by President Jovenel Moïse. On Sept. 8, 2021, two months after Moïse’s assassination, Alexandre, as chair of the Independent Advisory Committee, handed over the draft of a new Constitution to Henry.

Though the document was the result of consultations with various individuals ,the re-write of Haiti’s Constitution was controversial and opposed by people even in Moïse’s own political party.

“He iwas totally devoted in everything he did,” Brunache said of Alexandre. “Hee never wanted anyone to reproach him, whether it was in his personal undertakings or his professional life or in his short political career.

“As a lawyer, law professor, president of the Republic and as a father, he was carried himself the same way,” Brunahce added, describing Alexandre as someone who remained modest “regardless of what level he reached in society.”

A respected figure, Alexandre began working from an early age, taking on the responsibility of financially supporting his siblings and their children before starting his own family. While he didn’t too much believe in Haitians’ ability to organize themselves, he did believe in their individual responsibility, said his son-in-law.

“He believed if everyone did what they were supposed to do the country would advance,” Brunache said. “He believed in individual change and if we could create critical mass with this, we would have a different country.

Like most of Haiti’s nearly 12 million people, Brunache said his father-in-law was affected by the country’s deteriorating situation. The gang violence and rampant kidnappings that have caused the displacement of thousands of Haitians, had also made him a prisoner in his own home, keeping him teaching his law courses at universities around the country.