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Shortly after the Haitian president was shot and killed by assassins who broke into his home, the country’s acting prime minister announced that he had declared a “state of siege” – a state of siege.
For many people around the world who watch events unfold in Haiti with concern, the term was unfamiliar, even baffling.
But things cleared up a bit when Acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph published details of the ordinance in the government’s official newspaper, Le Moniteur.
Haiti is now mostly under martial law. For 15 days, members of the police and security can enter homes, control traffic and take special security measures and “all general measures that allow the arrest of assassins” of President Jovenel Moïse. It also prohibits meetings intended to excite or prepare for disorder.
There is a wrinkle. Or two, really.
Only Parliament has the power to declare a state of siege, said Georges Michel, Haitian historian and constitutionalist. experts say. But Haiti at the moment does not have a functioning Parliament. The mandates of the entire lower house expired over a year ago and only 10 of Haiti’s 30 Senate seats are currently filled.
“Legally, he can’t do that,” Michel said. “We are in a state of necessity.
There are actually a few other wrinkles.
Mr Joseph’s term as interim prime minister is about to end and, in fact, President Moïse had already appointed a replacement, his sixth since taking office.
“We are in total confusion,” said Jacky Lumarque, rector of Quisqueya University, a large private university in Port-au-Prince. “We have two prime ministers. We cannot say which one is more legitimate than the other.
It’s getting worse.
Haiti also appears to have two constitutions, and the dueling documents say a different thing about what to do if a president dies in office.
the version 1987 – published in the two national languages, Creole and French – believes that if the presidency is vacant for any reason, the oldest judge in the country should intervene.
In 2012, however, the Constitution was modified, and the new one ordered that the president be replaced by a council of ministers, under the direction of the prime minister. Unless, as was Mr. Moïse’s situation, the president was in his fourth year in office. In this case, Parliament would vote for a provisional president. If, of course, he have been a Parliament.
Unfortunately, this Constitution was amended in French, but not in Creole. Thus, at the present time, the country has two Constitutions.
“Things are not clear,” said Michel, who helped draft the 1987 Constitution. “It is a very serious situation.
Mr. Lumarque deplored the state of his country.
“This is the first time that we see the state is so weak,” he said. “There is no Parliament. A dysfunctional Senate. The President of the Supreme Court has just died.
“Jovenel Moïse was the last legitimate power in the governance of the country.
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