Head of Haiti President Jovenel Moise’s party slams his constitutional referendum

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IF THE REFERENDUM WERE HELD TODAY, TET KALE WOULD HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO VOTE AGAINST IT. Liné Balthazar

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s plans to reshape the way his Caribbean nation is governed by giving the presidency greater powers in a new constitution is running into more opposition.

And this time it’s from within his own political party.

Liné Balthazar, the head of the Haitian Tèt Kale Party that Moïse ran under, said Friday that neither he nor the political party supports the president’s proposed June 27 referendum to overhaul the country’s constitution.

Balthazar said the party’s position is based on three factors: the government’s inability to deliver new identification cards, which also double as voting cards, in time for the vote based on information provided by the Office of National Identification; the lack of political consensus around the referendum and the authoritarian model of the draft Magna Carta created by a commission unilaterally appointed by Moïse.

“If the referendum were held today, Tet Kale would have no choice but to vote against it,” Balthazar said in an interview on Magik 9. “PHTK/Tet Kale is not interested in doing a constitution for one group of people against another group of people and repeat what we have been doing in this country for many years.”

Many Haitians, including opposition and human rights activists, have accused Moïse of trying to pave the way for his allies and Tet Kale political camp to retain power indefinitely.

Balthazar described the draft constitution as a reproduction of an authoritarian model of the Haitian constitution introduced in 1935 by president Sténio Joseph Vincent. Balthazar called the proposed changes in the draft as “irritants and freedomkilling” that the party wants no part of.

It is unclear if the position of the party, which remains close to former President Michel Martelly, is a reflection of a schism among Moïse’s allies, or part of a larger effort to help Moïse find an exit before June.

In recent days, some close to the president and foreign diplomats have become increasingly worried that the referendum, which Balthazar described as “an irritant,” could derail legislative and presidential elections later this year.

“I’ve always told the president that this government doesn’t have the capacity to organize three elections in six months,” he said, referring to the June referendum, followed by legislative and presidential elections in September and municipal and local elections in November. He added that other supporters of the president hold a similar view.

The constitutional effort has escalated political tensions in Haiti, which is seeing its six prime minister, Claude Joseph, this week after former prime minister Joseph Jouthe resigned on Wednesday.

Moïse, who has been ruling by decree for more than a year, faces not just a deepening political crisis but a bitter dispute over his legitimacy with some Haitians arguing his term expired on Feb. 7. He has demonstrated an inability to curb a surge in insecurity led by for-ransom kidnappings and killings by armed groups.

Moïse, who insists his term ends next year, has repeatedly said that giving Haiti a new constitution before leaving office would be one of the greatest achievements of his presidency. As the country underwent another shutdown on Thursday to protest kidnappings, the president acknowledged the security concerns.

He called on Haiti’s National Police to do what it needs to in order to secure the June referendum and upcoming elections.

“The mandate of President Jovenel is not to organize a referendum to change the constitution,” Balthazar said. “The mandate of President Jovenel is to assure the functioning of institutions under the 1987 constitution, and he has an obligation to transfer power to an elected president on the 7th of February 2022.”

Moïse has faced resistance from the moment he entered office in 2017, and his blamed his rocky presidency on the current constitution, which gives more power to parliament than the president. That has made Haiti ungovernable, Moïse has said, arguing change is necessary.

Critics, however, charge that he is simply trying to consolidate power. Increasingly, they have been taking to the streets in renewed protests accusing him of trying to reintroduce a dictatorship in Haiti and demanding his departure.

Moïse’s administration has invested millions of dollars on billboards, and outreach to push the project. On Tuesday, a government minister and electoral commission member appealed to the Haitian diaspora for support with the referendum and elections by hosting a two-hour livestreamed town hall on Facebook.

The event was sponsored by Haiti’s embassy in Washington, which this week expanded its network of U.S.-based lobbyists with two firms to help it reach out to the State Department and Congress on behalf of the Haitian government. The firms have also been charged with getting the government’s message out in the international press.

In the last few years, Haiti has spent thousands on lobbyists, and continues to do so, according to lobbying filings.

In 2018, the cashstrapped government hired the global public relations firm Mercury, through its United Kingdom office, to soften its image with the Trump administration. Among those working on the Haiti account is former Democratic lawmaker Joe Garcia. In a February 2018 filing, the firm listed a project fee of $10,000 and said it would be paid on a month-to-month basis after December. It is unclear how much the firm is paid.

Last month, Ralph Patino, who worked on the Biden presidential campaign agreed to represent Haiti. He said in his filing that he was to be paid $37,000 a month by the Haitian government, which is more than some large U.S. counties pay for Washington lobbyists.

The country is also represented by Miami-based Latin America Advisory Group, which recently brought on Carlos Suarez of Continental Strategy of Coral Gables and Democratic fundraiser and celebrity adviser Ron Baldwin to assist with lobbying efforts on behalf of Haiti. Suarez’s partner is former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States Carlos Trujillo, who led an OAS delegation to Haiti in 2019 amid the deepening crisis. He is not involved on the account, sources say. Suarez and Baldwin are each getting $7,000 a month.

Latin America Advisory Group, which signed a contract last year with the Haitian government, is getting paid $25,000.

The same day of the embassy diaspora event, however, one of the referendum’s leading backers, the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti publicly expressed reservations about the constitutional process. The U.N. said “at this stage, the process is not sufficiently inclusive, participatory or transparent.”

“It is clear that the support from the international community is slowly but surely crumbling,” said former Justice Minister Bernard Gousse, who called the process “messed up.”

He noted that recent statements from the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince, and the Core Group, the name given to a group of countries in Haiti, do not mention the constitutional reform and only speak of the need for the country to hold legislative elections.

“After the complete standstill of the country yesterday in protest of the incompetence and insecurity due to the kidnapping epidemic, the distancing of the U.N. representative from constitutional reform, the condemnation of the constitutional draft by the head of the president’s own party, Mr. Moïse should stop and mediate on his fate and legitimacy,” Gousse said.

Gousse added that Biden administration, which announced this week that it had nominated current U.S. Ambassador Michele Sison to a new job at the State Department, should take advantage of the upcoming vacancy “to look at the issues with different eyes, mainly by reaching out to others in civil society that were not listened to before.”

Gousse is among those who have argued that the referendum is illegal because the current constitution forbids it.

Others have raised alarm over the proposed changes saying they are “a serious danger” to Haiti’s fragile democracy, and remove many of the safeguards and rights.

Among some of the eyebrow raising changes in the proposed magna carta that takes Haiti from a parliamentary regime to a presidential one are: a unicameral parliament that eliminates the Senate and residency requirements for lawmakers; a one-round winner takes all election process and the inability to impeach a president or prosecute him even after he has left office for corruption or “acts related to his duties.”

Similar to the 1935 Vincent constitution, the draft does not prohibit the nationalization, confiscation of personal property and buildings for political reasons. The current constitution does even if not always followed.

Even a right that the government has touted as being a positive, the ability of Haitians living abroad to run for office, has a caveat. There is no guarantee for diaspora voting in the current text, which will be subject to the whims of who is president and an electoral law.

“Its contents are a serious danger to our fragile democracy as they risk weakening institutions and exposing Haitian society to the dangers of a monarchpresident, generating ongoing tensions and chronic political instability,” said Jerry Tardieu, who chaired a recent constitutional commission in the Lower Chamber of Deputies.

On Thursday, Haiti’s private sector and trade unions joined the Catholic Church in its call to close all businesses in protest of the country’s deteriorating security climate. During a two-hour Mass at the Church of St. Peter in Pétion-Ville, Monsignor Launay Saturné, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Haiti and archbishop of Cap-Haïtien, told Haitians they must assume their responsibilities to change the country’s situation because the rash of kidnappings had become too much. The service, however, was later marred by violence and chaos after police fired tear gas at crowds outside. The service was later marred by violence and chaos after police fired tear gas at crowds outside.

“Moïse has gone after judges and members of parliament for months, but for the authorities to attack a church during Mass? Haiti’s spiral into authoritarianism continues rapidly,” U.S. Rep Andy Levin, D-MI, tweeted on Friday. “The U.S. must make it clear that these actions are completely unacceptable.”

With the Catholic priests and nuns still being held hostage, fellow priests and nuns in the Cap-Haïtien diocese, joined colleagues in the city of Les Cayes, Friday and appealed to Haitians to extend Thursday’s a shutdown of the country launched by the Catholic Church and joined by trade unions and the private sector. They asked that all businesses as well as Catholic schools and universities remain closed continue until all kidnapped individuals are released without ransom.