What Awaits Us After February 7, 2026, with Didier Fils-Aimé?
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince · · 7 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
This Saturday, February 7, 2026, without elections, a transfer of power took place at the Villa d'Accueil between the Transitional Presidential Council (CPT) and Didier Fils-Aimé, in accordance with the injunctions of the United States, after the political agreement that created this executive body was deemed null and void. A new governance is established by delegation from Washington, now the master builder of our domestic policy.
Rallying around the new strongman should not be long in coming, as the dominant actor — the one who controls everything — has decided. There is no turning back. It's settled!
American ships present in the harbor of Port-au-Prince would be a show of force intended to deter potential political troublemakers, whom the United States says it wants to suppress with the utmost rigor. Behind this show of force, in a country where the army and police are already under control, what does this gunboat diplomacy hide? Why compel or threaten someone who is already in a state of permanent submission?
The arrival — the return, or the retention — of Didier Fils-Aimé, who now holds total power, without checks and balances or control, marks the inevitable end of a political class relegated to the museum of the past.
The die is cast!
Forty years after the departure of the Duvaliers, reality speaks louder than any narrative. We are facing a declaration of bankruptcy and the end of a cycle. The die is cast, and the future is already written: the next elections will give birth to another political class. The old one is deemed ineffective and proves incapable of renewing itself. The CPT leaves with its tail between its legs, leaving behind a new two-headed monster, exercising both the powers of the President of the Republic and those of the Prime Minister. Will Fils-Aimé surprise us? In any case, it is a fact that the exercise of such power — like that held by Dr. Ariel Henry, detained in the United States since his revocation — cannot be complex or complicated. For all monstrous power, without limit, is associated with excess. Power is never wise: its characteristic is immoderation. To contain its original violence, a system of checks and balances is needed. This is the only way to avoid excess and arbitrariness, what Montesquieu calls an intelligence of relations, in order to guarantee the stability of the State. We are in a situation where, in the absence of safeguards, all independent institutions will be subject to the authority of the Prime Minister. In reality, his only controlling power will be the US administration, the ultimate, unconditional authority at the helm of Haiti. Alix Didier Fils-Aimé will govern everything and will depend solely on the will of the American government. This is the new reality, marked by a political takeover of Haiti by the United States of America. The CPT thus leaves the Prime Minister alone at the helm of the State. Yet, the legal patchwork from which this executive emerged had foreseen a two-headed governance. The acceptance of such an imbalanced situation, imposed by the power dynamic, ultimately forced the coordinator of the Transitional Presidential Council, Laurent Cyr — timid at first, a monster in the end, to quote a colleague — to transfer the entirety of executive power to Didier Alix Fils-Aimé, his subordinate. Nothing surprising: we recall that this Presidential Council had been appointed by decree, signed by Mr. Boisvert, who served as acting Prime Minister. Let's adjust our strategy now!
In both cases, the law is not present. Should we not recognize this situation of dependence in order to adjust our strategy? This power dynamic must be rationalized: either by organizing for the conquest of power through the ballot box, or by agreeing to cooperate with this imposed governance, while seeking to make it more humane.
The function of Prime Minister was created to serve as a counterweight to the president. The presidency-primature pairing responded to a need for balancing and moderating presidential power: a system where one cannot advance without the other. Without a President of the Republic, Alix Fils-Aimé will exercise not only the entirety of executive power but also prerogatives normally vested in Parliament. He will govern by decrees issued by the Council of Ministers on matters of general interest. Institutions — army, police, justice, as well as diplomacy — will be placed under his authority. He will be both head of state and head of government. Such a competence was attributed to the President of the Republic in the — aborted — draft new Constitution presented by the CPT. We are therefore witnessing a return to a form of authoritarian presidentialism, without effective political responsibility, since the legislative power is dysfunctional. As for justice, unlike the French model, in Haiti it constitutes a power whose function is part of national sovereignty and shares its unity with the other two powers. Sovereignty is not solely a legal concept: it is first political, then framed by constitutional law. To say, like Dr. Guichard Doré, that political functions belong to politicians and judicial functions to judges, is to misunderstand the 1987 Constitution, often misinterpreted. Judges do not participate in active politics, but they exercise functions with political scope. Through the Court of Cassation, judicial power is established as a balancing power: it corrects acts of Parliament through constitutional review and controls those of the administration by verifying their regularity. Indeed, decisions of the Superior Court of Accounts and Administrative Disputes (CSCCA) can be appealed to the Court of Cassation. Thus, the true balancing power instituted by the Constitution is justice, which benefits, like the other two powers, from democratic and popular legitimacy: a delegated, consented power. The political instability in which we have lived for four decades does not stem from the weakness of the founding text of 1987, but from the fact that the actors who claim to govern us misunderstand it. The more the crisis sets in, the more the mediocrity of the elites is revealed. « An elite mired in illegality and trafficking of all kinds », writes Pierre-Raymond Dumas, a renowned professor and journalist, in an article published in Le Nouvelliste « Leslie Manigat's diagnosis thirty years later ». Rereading Leslie Manigat for our collective salvation: this is a major intellectual confession, from a distinguished pen — that of a man who, better than many others, has examined the last forty years, dominated by a transition that has become circular, profitable to profiteers and criminals of all kinds. Whether we admit it or not, a new reality was born on February 7, 2026. The personal power that Fils-Aimé assumes today is, in reality, a gift. It must be acknowledged: it is not he who produced this situation, but the political class, through its incompetence. Once again, the nation awakens with a man who was not elected by the citizens, but who finds himself in a position to dominate the State and the political scene thanks to decisive external support. He benefits from a preeminence that is framed neither by law nor by political agreement. He may not even need it, since the American position rules in his favor. His schedule will be dedicated, some analyses emphasize, to the execution of an already pre-established agenda. Are we facing a form of colonization by the elites, or will the two-headed monster surprise us? Will he become, as a new shrewd leader, a triumpher of the CPT–primature conflict, a leader combining competence and integrity? Or will he be the monster of another order that revalues everything? For my part, it is time to step back: to let the computer keyboard rest, to catch my breath, and to regain intellectual and civic energy by rereading Leslie Manigat's « La crise haïtienne contemporaine » — a work that Pierre-Raymond Dumas deems rich enough to fully illuminate the current crisis. Echoing his last article on Manigat's work, I would ask him a question: how to read Manigat, and especially how to make his conclusions accepted, in this unhealthy Haitian universe, in full regression, dominated by hollow, sterile, and mediocre thoughts? Sonet Saint-Louis av
Professor of Constitutional Law and Advanced Legal Research Methodology
Professor of Philosophy
Université du Québec à Montréal
Montreal, February 7, 2026.
Forty years after the departure of the Duvaliers, reality speaks louder than any narrative. We are facing a declaration of bankruptcy and the end of a cycle. The die is cast, and the future is already written: the next elections will give birth to another political class. The old one is deemed ineffective and proves incapable of renewing itself. The CPT leaves with its tail between its legs, leaving behind a new two-headed monster, exercising both the powers of the President of the Republic and those of the Prime Minister. Will Fils-Aimé surprise us? In any case, it is a fact that the exercise of such power — like that held by Dr. Ariel Henry, detained in the United States since his revocation — cannot be complex or complicated. For all monstrous power, without limit, is associated with excess. Power is never wise: its characteristic is immoderation. To contain its original violence, a system of checks and balances is needed. This is the only way to avoid excess and arbitrariness, what Montesquieu calls an intelligence of relations, in order to guarantee the stability of the State. We are in a situation where, in the absence of safeguards, all independent institutions will be subject to the authority of the Prime Minister. In reality, his only controlling power will be the US administration, the ultimate, unconditional authority at the helm of Haiti. Alix Didier Fils-Aimé will govern everything and will depend solely on the will of the American government. This is the new reality, marked by a political takeover of Haiti by the United States of America. The CPT thus leaves the Prime Minister alone at the helm of the State. Yet, the legal patchwork from which this executive emerged had foreseen a two-headed governance. The acceptance of such an imbalanced situation, imposed by the power dynamic, ultimately forced the coordinator of the Transitional Presidential Council, Laurent Cyr — timid at first, a monster in the end, to quote a colleague — to transfer the entirety of executive power to Didier Alix Fils-Aimé, his subordinate. Nothing surprising: we recall that this Presidential Council had been appointed by decree, signed by Mr. Boisvert, who served as acting Prime Minister. Let's adjust our strategy now!
In both cases, the law is not present. Should we not recognize this situation of dependence in order to adjust our strategy? This power dynamic must be rationalized: either by organizing for the conquest of power through the ballot box, or by agreeing to cooperate with this imposed governance, while seeking to make it more humane.
The function of Prime Minister was created to serve as a counterweight to the president. The presidency-primature pairing responded to a need for balancing and moderating presidential power: a system where one cannot advance without the other. Without a President of the Republic, Alix Fils-Aimé will exercise not only the entirety of executive power but also prerogatives normally vested in Parliament. He will govern by decrees issued by the Council of Ministers on matters of general interest. Institutions — army, police, justice, as well as diplomacy — will be placed under his authority. He will be both head of state and head of government. Such a competence was attributed to the President of the Republic in the — aborted — draft new Constitution presented by the CPT. We are therefore witnessing a return to a form of authoritarian presidentialism, without effective political responsibility, since the legislative power is dysfunctional. As for justice, unlike the French model, in Haiti it constitutes a power whose function is part of national sovereignty and shares its unity with the other two powers. Sovereignty is not solely a legal concept: it is first political, then framed by constitutional law. To say, like Dr. Guichard Doré, that political functions belong to politicians and judicial functions to judges, is to misunderstand the 1987 Constitution, often misinterpreted. Judges do not participate in active politics, but they exercise functions with political scope. Through the Court of Cassation, judicial power is established as a balancing power: it corrects acts of Parliament through constitutional review and controls those of the administration by verifying their regularity. Indeed, decisions of the Superior Court of Accounts and Administrative Disputes (CSCCA) can be appealed to the Court of Cassation. Thus, the true balancing power instituted by the Constitution is justice, which benefits, like the other two powers, from democratic and popular legitimacy: a delegated, consented power. The political instability in which we have lived for four decades does not stem from the weakness of the founding text of 1987, but from the fact that the actors who claim to govern us misunderstand it. The more the crisis sets in, the more the mediocrity of the elites is revealed. « An elite mired in illegality and trafficking of all kinds », writes Pierre-Raymond Dumas, a renowned professor and journalist, in an article published in Le Nouvelliste « Leslie Manigat's diagnosis thirty years later ». Rereading Leslie Manigat for our collective salvation: this is a major intellectual confession, from a distinguished pen — that of a man who, better than many others, has examined the last forty years, dominated by a transition that has become circular, profitable to profiteers and criminals of all kinds. Whether we admit it or not, a new reality was born on February 7, 2026. The personal power that Fils-Aimé assumes today is, in reality, a gift. It must be acknowledged: it is not he who produced this situation, but the political class, through its incompetence. Once again, the nation awakens with a man who was not elected by the citizens, but who finds himself in a position to dominate the State and the political scene thanks to decisive external support. He benefits from a preeminence that is framed neither by law nor by political agreement. He may not even need it, since the American position rules in his favor. His schedule will be dedicated, some analyses emphasize, to the execution of an already pre-established agenda. Are we facing a form of colonization by the elites, or will the two-headed monster surprise us? Will he become, as a new shrewd leader, a triumpher of the CPT–primature conflict, a leader combining competence and integrity? Or will he be the monster of another order that revalues everything? For my part, it is time to step back: to let the computer keyboard rest, to catch my breath, and to regain intellectual and civic energy by rereading Leslie Manigat's « La crise haïtienne contemporaine » — a work that Pierre-Raymond Dumas deems rich enough to fully illuminate the current crisis. Echoing his last article on Manigat's work, I would ask him a question: how to read Manigat, and especially how to make his conclusions accepted, in this unhealthy Haitian universe, in full regression, dominated by hollow, sterile, and mediocre thoughts? Sonet Saint-Louis av
Professor of Constitutional Law and Advanced Legal Research Methodology
Professor of Philosophy
Université du Québec à Montréal
Montreal, February 7, 2026.
