Haiti: When Leaders' Egos Humiliate the Nation

There is something indecent about observing the current Haitian political scene. While the country sinks into insecurity, hunger, and territorial dislocation, its leaders — or those who claim the title — seem more concerned with preserving their positions than with the survival of the state. The transition, meant to be a moment of exceptional responsibility, has become a theater of ego, intrigue, and short-sighted calculations.

Meetings multiply, statements follow one another, alliances form and break, but nothing, absolutely nothing, changes for the population. Behind the discourses on sovereignty and legitimacy, the same logic dominates: to endure, to reposition oneself, to survive politically. No matter the surrounding chaos. No matter that entire neighborhoods escape the authority of the state. No matter that the country increasingly resembles an unpiloted territory.

Some suddenly discover institutional principles they ignored for years. Others, silent yesterday in the face of arbitrariness, today present themselves as scrupulous guardians of legality. The same ones who denounced illegitimacy yesterday now cling to transitional mechanisms that have become, by force of habit, comfortable refuges. The transition is no longer a passage; it is an installation.

The Transitional Presidential Council, meant to embody a minimum of collegiality and a break from the past, perfectly illustrates this drift. Instead of a stabilizing body, it has become a space of internal rivalries, where every decision is an opportunity for a power struggle, every crisis a pretext to test power dynamics. Governing is no longer the objective; controlling the tempo has become it.

This political immaturity has a serious and deeply humiliating consequence: it forces the international community to abandon its diplomatic reserve. When foreign chanceries feel obliged to issue public warnings to Haitian officials, it is not an attack on sovereignty; it is a symptom of the collapse of internal moral authority. A respected state is not called to order; it is consulted.

The paradox is cruel. Those who shout loudest against interference are often the same whose irresponsibility makes it inevitable. They denounce external pressures while offering, through their inconsistency, the spectacle of an ungovernable country. They invoke national dignity while selling it off in personal struggles of no historical significance.

Meanwhile, the international community advances its pawns, conditions its aid, adjusts its language. Not out of pleasure, but out of necessity. For in the face of leaders incapable of imposing minimal discipline on themselves, a political vacuum always calls for external regulation. This is not a conspiracy: it is an implacable law of international relations.

The diaspora, for its part, watches with a mixture of anger and weariness. It finances, advocates, alerts, but constantly runs up against the same political class, frozen in its reflexes, incapable of rising to the occasion. This country does not lack intelligence or human resources. It lacks leaders willing to sacrifice their ambitions on the altar of national interest.