Haiti after the Elections: Préval’s 100-Day Challenges

Port au-Prince/Brussels, 11 May 2006: Haiti may finally overcome its troubled past, but only if the incoming president tackles longstanding security, social and economic challenges during his first 100 days.

Haiti after the Elections: Challenges for Préval’s First 100 Days,* lays out an agenda for President René Préval, who is to be inaugurated on 14 May, which would allow Haiti to put years of instability, violence and economic decline behind it. The 7 February and 21 April elections yielded relatively high turnout and little violence and give Préval the chance to move the country beyond its traditional polarisation. To do so, he must reach out to the sectors that opposed him as well as his supporters and take advantage of a rare moment of optimism in the much suffering country.

“Deep structural challenges still threaten what may be Haiti’s last chance to extricate itself from chaos and despair, and action in the first 100 days is vital”, says Mark L. Schneider, Crisis Group Sr. Vice President, “but then the UN and donors must make at least a ten-year commitment to help Haiti deal with security, justice, and economic growth, prioritising rural development and poverty reduction”.

For decades, large sections of society have been left out of the decision-making process. If the new government is to address its challenges effectively, civil society, peasant organisations and groups representing the rural and urban poor must be given a stake in the country’s future.

Preval’s first order of business should be to capitalise on the improved security situation by addressing the underlying causes of violence and crime, including mending political divisions. This has to include disarming and demobilising gangs in the city and ex-military in the countryside. The Haitian National Police (HNP) must be professionalised, strengthened and purged of corrupt officers. The judicial system must be overhauled, beginning with establishing a joint international and national judicial panel to review the cases of political prisoners detained without trial.

The most cost-effective investment now for the UN, OAS and its member states is to help ensure stabilisation and security in the country.

Alain Deletroz, Crisis Group’s Latin America Program Director, says, “Haitians have high expectations that the new government will quickly improve their standard of living, and they must see from Préval that a new chapter has indeed opened in their history. Otherwise, Haiti could become the hemisphere’s first permanent failed state”.