The Electoral Trap

The (peaceful and regularly scheduled) transfer of power constitutes, in Haiti, the major limitation of our country, and always has. The nonexistence of a Permanent Electoral Council, after forty years of lamentable democratic process, is a reminder that stability is achieved first and foremost through the application of laws, norms, and principles—not through the rejection of legality and constitutional transgression. Hence the inefficiency and the astonishingly deficient nature of the electoral institution, sporadically headed by Cou