By Sir Ronald Sanders
February 7 matters in Haiti—not because it promises relief, but because it marks the end of an illusion. On that date, the mandate of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council expires. From its inception, the council was never embraced by the Haitian people. It was widely seen as a nine-headed contraption—unwieldy, inward-looking, and vulnerable to rivalry, corruption, and personal ambition. Haitians warned that it would fail. They were right.
The council has failed on every element of its own mandate. Security has not been brought under effective control. Daily life for Haitians has not improved. Elections to restore constitutional governance are nowhere in sight.
There are, to be fair, limited signs of improvement on the security front. Haitian police operations, supported by international partners, have registered some tactical gains against gangs. But these tactical improvements do not redeem strategic failure. Security advances cannot substitute for constitutional legitimacy or political coherence. They are necessary—but far from sufficient.
Political disunity—Haiti’s most enduring affliction—reasserted itself even as the country slid deeper into violence and humanitarian despair. The result is now unmistakable: there is wide convergence—both inside Haiti and among international partners—that the Council’s mandate ends on February 7 and must not be extended by manoeuvre or political improvisation.
Caribbean leaders have warned repeatedly against last-minute destabilisation and the manufacture of fresh crises at the moment of expiry. The United Nations Security Council, in renewing its political mission in Haiti, has underscored the centrality of national dialogue, accountability, and elections.
A February 2 consultative meeting convened by Albert Ramdin, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, involving two CARICOM foreign ministers and representatives of the United Nations, Canada and the United States, produced a common position—despite reported differences of view. While participation in the consultation was limited, the expectation conveyed was broadly shared: predictable governance, credible security, timely elections, and—still hoped for—a Haitian-led solution.
This strips away a familiar alibi. The failure of the Transitional Council is not the product of foreign imposition. It is the consequence of internal conduct.
That reality was articulated with moral authority by Edmonde Supplice Beauzile, a former parliamentarian, party leader, and serious contender for Haiti’s presidency in 2016. Speaking not as a factional actor but as a committed citizen, she warned that Haiti suffers less from a lack of diagnosis than from a collective refusal to accept treatment. Her appeal was not for another council or political document, but for civic courage—for leaders willing, even briefly, to place the country above personal ambition.
As February 7 approached, fears arose that some council members might resist departure, heightened by the appearance of US warships offshore. Publicly, the deployment was framed within a broader counter-trafficking and regional security operation; politically, it carried deterrent symbolism. Yet informed voices inside Haiti—including former senior officials and civil-society leaders—are confident that no constituency will mobilise to preserve the Council or provoke US intervention.
That assessment is reinforced by Pierre Esperance, executive director of Haiti’s leading human-rights organisation. Esperance expects all members of the Transitional Council to leave office on February 7. In the absence of an agreed replacement framework, he observes that the prime minister should remain in place solely to manage routine administration—an outcome that would amount to a third consecutive transition rather than a resolution of the crisis.
Crucially, Esperance is explicit that continuity must not slide into rule by decree. Any interim arrangement must be bounded by a defined roadmap for governance, security, and elections, and constrained by independent oversight in the absence of a legislature. That oversight—drawn from Haiti’s own audit, financial-intelligence, and anti-corruption institutions—would review public expenditures, test legality, and publicly flag abuse. Its function would be supervisory, not executive: to constrain discretion, deter misuse, and preserve the temporary character of authority.
February 7 closes the council’s mandate. It also closes the benefit of the doubt. Transitions are judged by outcomes, not intentions. On security, governance, unity, and elections, the Transitional Presidential Council did not deliver. In law and in fact, its authority ends. It must go.
But it cannot reasonably be expected that all governing authority should rest in the prime minister alone. However able or committed he may be to Haiti’s recovery, there must be a governing structure that aligns more closely with Haiti’s constitutional order.
A more defensible course exists. Haiti’s Constitution locates executive authority not in the prime minister acting alone, but in the government acting collectively through the cabinet, which the prime minister chairs (Articles 155–158). That structure—long understood within Haiti—serves as a constitutional check on rule by decree and provides the lawful basis for interim collective governance pending elections. It is an important consideration seldom acknowledged by external actors who influence Haiti’s political arrangements.
Authority vested in the cabinet, exercised for a strictly limited period, subject to oversight by civil society and the private sector, and anchored to an irreversible commitment to elections, would tie power to collective responsibility. Civil-society oversight would provide review of proposed decisions and prevent unchecked discretion. It is not elegant—but neither was the Transitional Council, nor would governance by prime-ministerial decree be. Collective Cabinet authority, with independent review, is proportionate to this moment in Haiti’s history.
Haitian actors must now govern with restraint and accountability. At the same time, the international community—led by the United Nations, working in concert with CARICOM and key bilateral partners—must match political expectations with operational support.
What next for Haiti must mean sustained action on security, and timely resources to begin addressing the nation’s long-neglected social and economic needs: basic services, livelihoods, food security, and institutional capacity. Without that parallel commitment, interim governance will be asked to carry burdens no transition can bear—and the cycle of failure will simply resume under a different name.
