!!! HAITI IN CRISIS !!!
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince
· 5 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
*When the oligopoly seizes everything
Referring to the Nouvelliste article, I offer my in-depth analysis concerning the political aspect and the total control of oligarchs over political power.^ It is no longer a question, in Haiti, of a simple economic lockdown or market imbalance as exists in many countries of the South. What we are witnessing, relentlessly, is the completion of a historical process: the complete confiscation of the State by a family-based, business-oriented, organized minority, now possessing full economic, institutional, security, and soon electoral powers. This takeover is neither fortuitous nor accidental. It is the culmination of a well-thought-out project, executed methodically, benefiting from general passivity and both internal and international complicities. For a long time, it was believed that these families were content to dominate imports, the banking sector, insurance, infrastructure, trade, and real estate. It was wrongly believed that their power was economic, that their influence on the State operated behind the scenes, in the shadows, and that the Republic retained areas of sovereignty. But with the reconfiguration of the political landscape initiated by the Transitional Presidential Council (CPT), it becomes clear that these families want everything: the economy, justice, the police, politics, and even the ballot box. The imminent arrival of Laurent Saint-Cyr at the head of the Presidential Council is the ultimate stage of this process. Himself from business circles close to major oligarchic groups, his appointment as president of the CPT, tasked with organizing general elections, simply means that the oligopoly will organize the "democratic transition" itself, in its own image and to its advantage. It is no longer merely the financialization of the State. It is the privatization of popular sovereignty. The Presidential Council, in its current configuration, in no way represents the interests of the silent majority, much less those of the left-behind in the informal economy, marginalized areas, idle youth, or the patriotic diaspora. It has become a structure for legitimizing an oligarchic project, dressed in a democratic veneer to satisfy appearances in the eyes of chanceries, but totally disconnected from the realities of the people. Prime Minister Garry Conille, placed there as a figurehead, has neither room for maneuver nor an autonomous vision. He embodies technocratic continuity serving the economic status quo.
But what makes this moment particularly dangerous is that the lockdown is now total: economic, institutional, and security-related. Security forces, infiltrated at all levels by private interests, no longer act as guarantors of national security, but as enforcers of selective stability. They protect areas of economic interest, the enclaves of the powerful, while popular neighborhoods sink into chaos or are handed over to gangs, which have become instruments of indirect territorial control. It must be said clearly: the oligopoly also controls the gangs. Not officially or bureaucratically, of course, but through arrangements, informal pacts, chains of complicity and silence. The gangs serve to deter any popular revolt, to keep the population in fear, to fracture social movements, to neutralize grassroots leaders, to keep the masses in chronic insecurity to prevent any form of collective organization. The oligarchy does not need to send the police to suppress the people: it lets the gangs do it, then justifies the permanent state of exception to better lock down control. This system is sophisticated, brutal, cynical. It will not survive the light, public denunciation, or lucid mobilization. But it is even more dangerous because it is reaching its final phase: the capture of formal political power. Once Laurent Saint-Cyr is in place, the next elections will not be a return to democracy: they will be the ultimate consecration of a class dictatorship, without uniform, without a military coup, but infinitely more perverse because legalized by controlled ballot boxes. So what is to be done? How can this model be overthrown, so deeply rooted, so protected by internal elites and international partners obsessed with stability, even if it is mafia-like? The answer will not come from within the system. It will come from a shock. Either a structured, strategically organized popular uprising capable of disobeying, of saying no to the sham, of refusing rigged elections and demanding a change of regime, not just of government. Or a profound recomposition of international alliances, with partners more concerned with development than with stability at all costs. Or, more probably, a combination of the two, provoked by a major crisis, an unpredictable event, a failure of the system itself. What is certain is that the current transition, in its current form, will lead to nothing beneficial for the nation. It will bring neither lasting peace, nor security, nor social justice. It will only serve to consolidate a mafia-like power with clean hands, but a rotten soul. Haiti is today at a crossroads. Either it accepts the rule of a handful of families who dictate everything: prices, laws, taxes, army, elections, and renounces its republican ideal. Or it breaks away, not in blind violence, but in strategic clarity, in the patient construction of a legitimate, structured popular counter-power, carried by a new youth, an enlightened diaspora, an uninhibited intelligentsia, and ethical leaders. This break will not be spontaneous. It must be thought out, organized, planned. Because on the other side, the adversaries of Haitian democracy have already completed their plan. Control is total. The power is theirs. And what they are preparing is not elections: it is the burial of the Republic. But history is never over. Even the most powerful oligarchies have eventually fallen. Provided that a people awakens, and decides, once and for all, to no longer live on their knees. Joseph Georges DUPERVAL
General Coordinator
BATON JENÈS LA
Referring to the Nouvelliste article, I offer my in-depth analysis concerning the political aspect and the total control of oligarchs over political power.^ It is no longer a question, in Haiti, of a simple economic lockdown or market imbalance as exists in many countries of the South. What we are witnessing, relentlessly, is the completion of a historical process: the complete confiscation of the State by a family-based, business-oriented, organized minority, now possessing full economic, institutional, security, and soon electoral powers. This takeover is neither fortuitous nor accidental. It is the culmination of a well-thought-out project, executed methodically, benefiting from general passivity and both internal and international complicities. For a long time, it was believed that these families were content to dominate imports, the banking sector, insurance, infrastructure, trade, and real estate. It was wrongly believed that their power was economic, that their influence on the State operated behind the scenes, in the shadows, and that the Republic retained areas of sovereignty. But with the reconfiguration of the political landscape initiated by the Transitional Presidential Council (CPT), it becomes clear that these families want everything: the economy, justice, the police, politics, and even the ballot box. The imminent arrival of Laurent Saint-Cyr at the head of the Presidential Council is the ultimate stage of this process. Himself from business circles close to major oligarchic groups, his appointment as president of the CPT, tasked with organizing general elections, simply means that the oligopoly will organize the "democratic transition" itself, in its own image and to its advantage. It is no longer merely the financialization of the State. It is the privatization of popular sovereignty. The Presidential Council, in its current configuration, in no way represents the interests of the silent majority, much less those of the left-behind in the informal economy, marginalized areas, idle youth, or the patriotic diaspora. It has become a structure for legitimizing an oligarchic project, dressed in a democratic veneer to satisfy appearances in the eyes of chanceries, but totally disconnected from the realities of the people. Prime Minister Garry Conille, placed there as a figurehead, has neither room for maneuver nor an autonomous vision. He embodies technocratic continuity serving the economic status quo.
But what makes this moment particularly dangerous is that the lockdown is now total: economic, institutional, and security-related. Security forces, infiltrated at all levels by private interests, no longer act as guarantors of national security, but as enforcers of selective stability. They protect areas of economic interest, the enclaves of the powerful, while popular neighborhoods sink into chaos or are handed over to gangs, which have become instruments of indirect territorial control. It must be said clearly: the oligopoly also controls the gangs. Not officially or bureaucratically, of course, but through arrangements, informal pacts, chains of complicity and silence. The gangs serve to deter any popular revolt, to keep the population in fear, to fracture social movements, to neutralize grassroots leaders, to keep the masses in chronic insecurity to prevent any form of collective organization. The oligarchy does not need to send the police to suppress the people: it lets the gangs do it, then justifies the permanent state of exception to better lock down control. This system is sophisticated, brutal, cynical. It will not survive the light, public denunciation, or lucid mobilization. But it is even more dangerous because it is reaching its final phase: the capture of formal political power. Once Laurent Saint-Cyr is in place, the next elections will not be a return to democracy: they will be the ultimate consecration of a class dictatorship, without uniform, without a military coup, but infinitely more perverse because legalized by controlled ballot boxes. So what is to be done? How can this model be overthrown, so deeply rooted, so protected by internal elites and international partners obsessed with stability, even if it is mafia-like? The answer will not come from within the system. It will come from a shock. Either a structured, strategically organized popular uprising capable of disobeying, of saying no to the sham, of refusing rigged elections and demanding a change of regime, not just of government. Or a profound recomposition of international alliances, with partners more concerned with development than with stability at all costs. Or, more probably, a combination of the two, provoked by a major crisis, an unpredictable event, a failure of the system itself. What is certain is that the current transition, in its current form, will lead to nothing beneficial for the nation. It will bring neither lasting peace, nor security, nor social justice. It will only serve to consolidate a mafia-like power with clean hands, but a rotten soul. Haiti is today at a crossroads. Either it accepts the rule of a handful of families who dictate everything: prices, laws, taxes, army, elections, and renounces its republican ideal. Or it breaks away, not in blind violence, but in strategic clarity, in the patient construction of a legitimate, structured popular counter-power, carried by a new youth, an enlightened diaspora, an uninhibited intelligentsia, and ethical leaders. This break will not be spontaneous. It must be thought out, organized, planned. Because on the other side, the adversaries of Haitian democracy have already completed their plan. Control is total. The power is theirs. And what they are preparing is not elections: it is the burial of the Republic. But history is never over. Even the most powerful oligarchies have eventually fallen. Provided that a people awakens, and decides, once and for all, to no longer live on their knees. Joseph Georges DUPERVAL
General Coordinator
BATON JENÈS LA
