With no parliament and a president with a one-year extension, the country complicates the road to recovery
The global economic and health crisis has affected all countries, but in Haiti the impasse at status has also aggravated a long-standing political crisis. With a president who has refused to leave position and renew the Parliament and who has called a constitutional referendum to give himself more power, Haiti is in a destructive spiral from which the international financial aid is unable to pull it out. The neighboring Dominican Republic has announced the construction of a border fence to control entrance of Haitians.
article / Christian Santana
07.06.2021
The coronavirus pandemic has aggravated the already difficult economic situation of Haiti status and has also contributed to accentuate the institutional collapse that the country has been experiencing for the last five years, by somehow protecting the exceptional occurrence of electoral postponements. In subject health the impact of Covid-19 has not been particularly high, at least from agreement with the official figures (14,258 affected and 307 deaths until the end of May 2021, well below the figures of the neighboring Dominican Republic: 291,910 and 3,628, respectively), although the deficient national health system may lead to assume a higher incidence: in fact, it is the last American country to begin to vaccinate its inhabitants.
In a country with a low level of economic activity, where GDP declines are frequent, the global downturn in 2020 was logically modest, while the recovery in 2021 is barely perceptible. Thus, Haiti's GDP fell by 3.7% in 2020 and will grow by only 1% in 2021, according to IMF estimates. The economic damage and its social consequences can be seen especially in the inflation rate, which last year approached 23% and this year will remain above 22%. Moreover, in just two years, Haiti's public debt increased by almost ten points, from 38.3% of GDP in 2017 to 47% in 2019.
As early as April 2020, when the global recession began, the IMF warned of the damage being caused by political paralysis. "Due to popular frustration with high levels of corruption and inequality, Haiti has been experiencing a prolonged political crisis and social unrest that has at times paralyzed most of the country's economic activity," said report, and stated that "absent sustained implementation of good policies and comprehensive reforms, the outlook remains bleak."
In the following months, the pandemic has worsened Haiti's already weak economic outlook. An expected sharp drop in remittance flows, reduced textile exports and falling foreign direct investment will put significant pressure on the balance of payments. Additional social and health expenditures, together with a further fall in tax revenues, will increase the fiscal deficit and financing needs. To address this emergency, the IMF approved in April 2020 the disbursement of $111.6 million. The amount was intended to alleviate the impact of the crisis on the population, such as paying the salaries of some teachers and workers, providing cash transfers and food rations to households, and providing subsidies to the transportation and sanitation sectors.
At the beginning of this 2021 the Haitian government introduced a post Covid-19 (Precop) economic recovery plan, with the goal to achieve an average growth of 3% over the next three years, the gradual reduction of inflation to 10% and the creation of 50,000 jobs. According to the Haitian government, in 2020, the incomes of 95% of households fell drastically and unemployment rose by 10%.
Political blockade
In any case, Haiti lacks the political stability required for a rigorous implementation of the recovery plan. Since the first round of the 2015 presidential elections, the country has been experiencing its last long period of instability. Allegations of irregularities delayed the second round until November 2016. The triumph went to Jovenel Moïse, with 55.6% of the vote and a very leave turnout. Moïse was sworn in in February 2017, a year later than would have been normal had the two rounds not been so far apart.
The committee High Court of Justice estimated at the beginning of 2021 that the five-year term was due to expire on February 7, but Moïse has remained at position, amid violent protests, claiming that his term actually ends on February 7, 2022. Although the judges appointed an interim president, Moïse has continued to rule, pushing aside politicians and magistrates who have questioned his authority and whom he accuses of orchestrating a coup d'état (he went so far as to arrest 23 people for that reason). He has the support of the Armed Forces, an institution he himself created anew in 2017 after two decades of having been disbanded by Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Moreover, Moïse has postponed the legislative elections that should have been held in October 2019, so that since January 2020, when the Parliament to be elected was to be constituted, he has been ruling by decree. He now promises legislative and presidential elections for September and November 2021, but before that he wants to proceed with a reform of the Constitution that should give him more power. The constitutional referendum has been called for June 27, in order to revalidate a new Constitution drafted by a commission of five persons all appointed by Moïse. The new text foresees the elimination of the Senate, turning the system into a unicameral one, and the preservation of former presidents from any legal action for corruption or other crimes. The 1987 Constitution prohibits constitutional reforms by referendum, but Moïse claims that his initiative does not prove an amendment but a new Constitution.
The international community has reacted to the violence and corruption in Haiti, but has not been able to bring it back on track status. The UN has expressed its complaints against impunity and the United States has applied sanctions against leaders who have violated human rights. However, these bodies have had to accept the reality of Moïse's permanence in power and have gone on to demand that he maintain the announced electoral calendar, as has the Biden Administration and the European Union (although they reject the constitutional change).
Relationship with the Dominican Republic
The conditions under which the pandemic has developed in the world have given the Dominican Republic the opportunity to propose a border with Haiti that can be hermetically sealed when convenient and that would allow a greater obstacle to smuggling, drug trafficking and illegal immigration. In his last report to congress on 27 February this year, Dominican President Luis Abinader announced the construction of a fence along the 400 kilometer line separating the two countries on the island of Hispaniola. The dividing line will combine physical and technological means and will include "a double perimeter fence in the most conflictive stretches and a single fence in the rest, as well as movement sensors, facial recognition cameras, radars and infrared ray systems". By May, 23 kilometers of fence, four meters high and topped with hawthorns, had already been built.
Abinader, of the center-left, compensated for this harsh policy with a promise to give identity documents to Haitians living in the Dominican Republic (an estimated 500,000, or 5% of the Dominican census, although the figure is probably higher). He also announced the concession to Haiti of various types of financial aid, such as the supply of surplus Dominican electricity and the contribution to the construction of hospitals, for use as maternity hospitals and with international financing, on the Haitian side of the border. Precisely the temporary migration of Haitian women to the Dominican Republic in order to give birth there under the public health system, despite in many cases their illegal status, is one of the most common arguments in the national discussion on migration from Haiti.
The Dominican Republic was affected at the beginning of the pandemic by the decline in exports and then by the paralysis of tourism, but this 2021 is experiencing a rapid recovery, with an estimated growth for the year as a whole of 6.2% (after a drop of 6.7% in 2020), a figure that is close to the growth of up to 7% that it had experienced in recent years.
