Haiti at the Time of Assessment: The Messages of Jocelerme Privert and Jean-Henry Céant

Port-au-Prince, Tuesday, December 23, 2025 — As the end of 2025 approaches, two major figures in Haitian political life, Jocelerme Privert, former provisional president of the Republic, and Jean-Henry Céant, former Prime Minister, have delivered public messages to the nation. Although formulated in different registers, one political and programmatic, the other poetic and memorial, their remarks converge around the same observation: the depth of the crisis the country is experiencing and the urgency of a collective awakening. Jocelerme Privert: a political wish focused on crisis resolution and elections In his year-end message, former provisional president Jocelerme Privert first paints a grim picture of the national situation. He recalls that “the end of 2025, like previous years, has not been kind to the people,” evoking a population forced to live “in fear, misery, and despair.” This introduction places his remarks in a continuity of unresolved crises, marked by insecurity and precariousness. Looking to the future, Jocelerme Privert expresses a clear wish for the coming year: “the year 2026 should announce the end of all the calamities and sufferings we have endured.” He associates this hope with the end of a transition he deems unproductive, stating that “the transition that has brought no improvement for the people should come to an end.” At the heart of his message is the importance of the electoral process. He insists on the indispensable nature of the announced elections, which he describes as a “cornerstone in the reconstruction of our country.” According to him, these elections must be “free, credible, and accepted by all,” because they offer the Haitian people “the opportunity to rebuild themselves and chart their path towards a more promising future.” Finally, Jocelerme Privert calls for moving beyond words to concrete action, unequivocally stating: “the time for speeches is over; it is time for visible commitments that yield measurable results.” He concludes by recalling a roadmap focused on security, education, youth, economic recovery, public morality, as well as the mobilization of the entire nation, including the diaspora. Jean-Henry Céant: a poetic and memorial reading of the Haitian crisis For his part, former Prime Minister Jean-Henry Céant chose a literary form to deliver his year-end message, through a text titled “At the Turn of My Memory.” From the first lines, he highlights the dissonance between the calendar and the national reality: “Christmas has arrived, the New Year remains in limbo. We did not see Christmas coming.” His text paints a picture marked by violence and uprooting, evoking “bullets and exiles,” “displaced persons’ camps,” “wounded dignity,” “state silences and abandonments,” concluding that “the Holiday arrived without Peace or Bread.” He inscribes this suffering into the daily lives of Haitians, stating that “everything is misery and poverty for a people groaning […] caught between death and life.” Jean-Henry Céant also insists on the loss of collective bearings, writing bluntly: “Haiti walks without a compass,” before describing flight as a generalized reflex: “people flee neighborhoods, people flee the country, people even flee the hope that denies us.” For him, “migration is no longer an option, it is an urgency,” while those who govern “cultivate indifference.” Despite the gravity of the observation, the text concludes with a call for collective responsibility. The former head of government asks: “Do we have a last breath left, a last responsibility?” before answering: “Yes: to stand together, brothers and sisters, accomplices of our beautiful history, facing the future and memory.” Two messages, one diagnosis While Jocelerme Privert favors an institutional approach oriented towards elections as a way out of the crisis, Jean-Henry Céant adopts an introspective and symbolic stance, centered on memory, dignity, and moral resistance. Both, however, describe a nation in distress, facing insecurity, poverty, and the absence of immediate prospects. These two statements, published at the end of 2025, reflect a common concern for the country’s future and, each in their own way, pose the same essential question: how to transform the current ordeal into a starting point for national renewal. Jean Wesley Pierre/Le Relief