Caribbean leaders agree Haiti needs elections. The debate is on how soon they can happen

Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald on Feb 21, 2025

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BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — As the sounds of automatic gunfire in a central working-class Port-au-Prince neighborhood once more sent desperate residents fleeing for refuge on Thursday, hundreds of miles away in this surf-swept eastern island, Caribbean leaders were debating a key question:

Can Haiti hold elections by Nov. 15, as the head of the country’s Transitional Presidential Council recently declared?

A year ago, the Caribbean leaders, meeting in Guyana for the annual meeting of the regional organization known as CARICOM, pressured Ariel Henry, at the time Haiti’s prime minister, to work toward holding elections.

But now Haiti is much worse off. More than a million people have been forced to flee their homes. Gangs that once acted separately have joined forces into a coalition, Viv Ansanm, that twice last year closed down the main international airport, burned and pillaged hospitals, shuttered schools and provoked one of the region’s worst humanitarian crises.

Gangs now control as much as 90% of Haiti’s capital and large chunks of the lower Artibonite region, despite the presence of an armed international security mission created to bring them under control.

While Caribbean leaders mulled over the election question behind closed doors Thursday with one of the members of Haiti’s presidential council, Laurent Saint-Cyr, gangs pressed their attack on communities in the mountains above Port-au-Prince and sowing chaos below in the neighborhoods of Carrefour Feuilles.

“I believe that there is full support for elections,” said Roosevelt Skerrit, the prime minister of Dominica, which like Haiti was once a French colony. “What we’re saying is... what about the other elements of the road map?”

Elections “will not solve all of Haiti’s problems,” Skerrit added. “ It will not end the gangs; it may strengthen the gangs because they have tremendous influence on the elections; and who will get elected?”

Skeritt acknowledged there’s disagreement among his fellow leaders about Haiti, including whether the United Nations should establish a formal a peacekeeping operation to break the stranglehold of the gangs, replacing the current Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission.

The main issues, Guyana President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, said “continue to be that of security, mobilizing the international support to bring the situation under control that will facilitate not only elections, but elections that can be as smooth as possible, and elections that can be credible.”

St. Kitts and Nevis Foreign Minister Denzil Douglas said “Haiti deserves to have proper democratic representation of the country and of its people,” adding, “the time has come for us to seriously look at the Haitian situation, work with the international community and bring about a lasting democratic change to the betterment of the people of Haiti. The way it is, it cannot continue, it is not sustainable.”

Douglas said Haiti was both a subject in a meeting of regional foreign ministers, and again in the opening session on Thursday.

“This is a critical matter that hampers to some extent the progress of the entire Caribbean community,” he said, adding that he believes elections are possible despite the challenges.

Haiti last held elections in 2016. Today the country doesn’t have any elected officials and is being led by a nine-member transitional council and a government that at times have been at odds over appointments, security and foreign policy. While tensions are not as deep as they were when the council ousted Prime Minister Garry Conille in November, they are brewing in the ranks of the security apparatus. Haitian police have issued wanted ads for certain politicians even as they have failed to beat back the gangs.

Last year, gang-violence was responsible for the deaths of more than 5,600 people, including hundreds killed in four different massacres. Thousands more were raped, while gangs recruited and armed children as young as eight years old, according to the U.N.

Despite the setbacks, some Caribbean leaders believe elections are not impossible.

“Unless you stabilize the political situation and you have a government that is elected by the people and one that has the legitimacy of the people, it will always create the opportunity for gangs to thrive, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne said. “I see the establishment of a legitimate government as a prerequisite to peace and stability.”

Browne acknowledged that he is among the CARICOM leaders who welcomes the Nov. 15 date that was announced by Transitional Council President Leslie Voltaire, even though the date has yet to be agreed on by Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council.

A year ago, Caribbean governments, at both the urging of Canada and the Biden administration, took the lead on mediating the crisis in Haiti and pushing for the funding and deployment of a multinational security mission to fight the gangs. But despite deploying 31 police officers and soldiers from Jamaica, Belize and The Bahamas, the Caribbean leaders have fallen short on their own promises.

Jamaica has yet to deploy additional officers after announcing an advanced team was headed to Port-au-Prince, and Barbados’ foreign minister recently announced that the situation was too dangerous to send its defense-force members.

Browne, the Antigua and Barbuda leader, said the U.S., France and other developed countries could make a difference, not just with money but with the deployment of troops. But neither is a likely option. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, a guest at the CARICOM meeting, said he is working on getting around Chinese and Russian opposition to transforming the security mission into a U.N. peacekeeping operation.

On the opening day of the summit, a report by the International Crisis Group advised against pressuring Haiti to hold elections. The report cited the ongoing escalation in violence as well as the lack of trust in the fragile transition, which has been engulfed in a corruption scandal that has eroded public trust.

Despite the misgivings, some Caribbean leaders believe in the adage of former Dominica Prime Minister Eugenia Charles, who after the 1986 fall of Haiti’s Duvalier dictatorship, when opinions differed about whether free and fair elections could be held under the ruling Haitian military, said: “Bad elections are better than no elections.”

But history has also shown that after repeated bad elections, Haiti has only fallen deeper into chaos. Despite that, some of the Caribbeal leaders believe elections are a must.

“We have to set…a deadline,” said Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. “ You must have something you have to work towards, and with good efforts, with all the peace building efforts, it’s possible to have one.”