The letter from CP Smith Augustin to the CPT coordinator, Laurent Saint-Cyr, is a literary and diplomatic masterpiece

Smith Augustin is not a friend. But I have known him since the late nineties, within the Cercle Espace Génie of the Haitian Library of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit (BHPSE), under the benevolent gaze of the writer Jean Euphel Milcé. Smith and I were not yet twenty.

It was through poetry that our paths crossed. At that age, Philoctète, Castera, and a few others already circulated among us like a common language. Literature was not a posture. It structured within us a way of thinking, of reading the world, and of measuring the weight of words before uttering them.

Years have passed. Smith Augustin now sits on the Transitional Presidential Council (CPT). This position is part of a continuity. His relationship with writing has not changed. The letter he addresses to the CPT coordinator is not ordinary political communication. It proceeds from a restrained, attentive language that refuses verbal escalation and unnecessary exposure. It goes straight to its object.

The process is underway. A majority has formed. A resolution has been adopted. It concerns the dismissal of Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. Smith Augustin belongs to this majority. He assumes the decision taken. The sequence is known: the resolution must be transmitted, by order of the coordinator, to the official gazette Le Moniteur.

The main purpose of the letter is to bring this process to its conclusion within a controlled framework. It proposes an internal meeting to reach, among the Council members, a minimal agreement on how to complete what has already been decided. The wording is explicit: « this — this meeting — would allow us to seek and reach among ourselves a minimal consensus on the modalities for finalizing the process initiated by the majority ». Nothing in this sentence touches on the substance of the decision. Everything concerns its conclusion.

This precision constitutes the diplomatic heart of the text. The letter affirms the majority resolution while calling for internal coherence at a moment when the political act is about to become a legal act. It is situated in this sensitive interval where a poorly calibrated gesture can harden positions and weaken the institution more than it stabilizes it.

The literary quality of the text lies in this restraint. Each sentence is contained. No word is delivered by chance. The writing proceeds without dramatization, without moral posturing, without overbidding. It assumes an attentive reader, capable of hearing what is said without the need to hammer it home.

This letter is not written for the surface. It is not intended for clamor. It belongs to a rare language in contemporary Haitian political life: a language of the State, which does not seek to triumph, but to conclude. It reminds us that power is exercised not only in the decision, but in the manner of assuming its outcome.