Haiti had not seen the assassination of a president of the republic in more than a century, when Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was slain in July 1915.
The recent execution of President Jovenel Moïse revives a painful past. After the fall of the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in February 1986, Haiti chose to follow a democratic process, even if that choice proved difficult at times.
The new constitution of 1987, an important symbol of Haiti’s new start, established a five-year renewable mandate for the presidency. Jovenel Moïse came to power on February 7, 2017, as the sixth president of the republic, elected with a constitutional term of five years.
I worked as a civil servant in the Haitian public administration for eight years and am now a doctoral student at the École nationale d’administration publique in Québec City. Jean-François Savard, my co-author, taught public policy design and implementation in Haiti as part of a Canadian federal government project to build…