Leadership Crisis in Haiti

As I write, Haiti is once again facing a leadership crisis. Short re-cap: protests the began on April 3 to air greivances about the rising cost of living turned violent, bringing upheaval to the capital and third largest city, Les Cayes. Receiving the brunt of the criticism is Prime Minister Alexis, who has been the face and mouthpiece of the government in the past few months regarding the cost of living crisis. Of particular concern for Hatians is the rising cost of staple foods - rice, beans, and cooking oil have seen up to 50% price increases in the past few months. This is no small matter in a country where most of the population struggles to get by on less than $2 per day. Although the violence that broke out during the protests is thought to be instigated by individuals with political and criminal agendas (rather than out of concern for the price of rice), and that violence has captutred recent headlines, this should not overshadow the primacy of the orginal message of the protests. Namely that Haitians are hungry, and the government has done nothing to help them.

As I write, PM Alexis is facing the prospect of either accepting the Senate's request for his resignation, or face a vote of no-confidence in the Senate, scheduled f0r 11:00 Saturday. There's a good chance that by the afternoon Alexis will be out - if if he does not resign, enough Senators necessary to vote him out have signed a letter stating that they would. The question remains, however, whether this coalition will remain disciplined enough to do so.

My intent is not a discussion of the news from Haiti, but rather to present another Latin American case of crisis of leadership in the absence of strong government. As is often the case in developing democracies, the benefit of kicking out an underperforming leader must be weighed against the damage done to the process of institutionalizing the legitmacy of leadership positions. On the one hand, it is certainly a good idea to toss out poor leaders, but that should not be the default action taken in hard times. Although the Haitian Senate is acting within the Constitution to call Alexis in for a vote, it will likely be disruptive to any number of other policies/programs in the works. Elections to renew 1/3 of the Senate have been delayed since November, and still have yet to be scheduled, and the government is scheduled to host a high profile International Donors Conference at the end of the month - these important events can only suffer with a government shake-up.

In other words, the removal of Alexis may do no more than buy President Preval a bit of time to try to come up with a fix to the food crisis, but this may come at the cost of other forward-looking initatives. Bravo to the Haitians for going out and protesting their legitimate concerns, but it is unfortunate that the political answer to the crisis may serve to set back other much-needed concerns.