To everyone his priorities.
Which justifies the gridlock.
Certain ministers don?t want to leave, they fuss and campaign.
Certain people insist that they leave (which would open up some posts). They fuss, they campaign.
The political groups want the posts. They fuss, they campaign.
The members of parliament (when they are not building structures over the public way) want power and influence, they threaten, press, and deal.
As for President Préval (his silence during the elections becomes more understandable) he seems to have found at once an enemy and a mission: to blame the constitution and find reasons to tamper with it. With the complicity of the ?international community.?
However, it was not the constitution that voted in the bellicose legislators and those more interested in defending the interests of a clan or of themselves than those of their constituents. This certainly does not apply to all of the legislators, but does the nation have the time to find the rare pearl?
Even less did the constitution name the members of an executive branch that the majority of citizens find ineffective.
Even less did the constitution elect President Préval. The people elected him. And they did not elect him to use a text as a scapegoat. They elected him within the terms of the constitution to run a country. For more efficient state services. For a little more food on the table, for the right to live in peace, for the easing of social divisions.
It was according to the terms of the constitution that he took the oath of office, that he was photographed donning the presidential sash. The constitution was good enough for electing him but not good enough for governing with.
In this squalid imbroglio between the executive and the parliament, the constitution is only an unhappy instrument that one or the other of them uses so as not to do what the nation is paying them to do. And fool is he who would change it to gain some advantage. All of them find in any passage grounds for neglect, bad faith, and desire for power. And with the same text, others could find another story.
What the Haitian nation is suffering from right now is not the vagaries of an imperfect text but the choice of its voters and its inability to force the Haitian politicians and the international community to prioritize its interests.
Undoubtedly the time will come to touch this imperfect text. But the text that emerges from the rewriting will not be perfect. And the time for a new imperfection has not come. The endless gridlock among the rulers driven by their priorities has in no case entitled them to hide behind the constitution.
The nation is not convinced that President Préval has done all that he was supposed to do for it. It is not convinced that parliament has done all that it was supposed to do. It is not convinced that the political parties did all they were supposed to do. But it is convinced of their expertise in the matter of creating gridlock. In this context, anyone who exerts himself to find in some text the reason for his failure is the most knavish of knaves. This is not the way for anyone to take who wants to live a quiet old age.
Before seeking excuses in a written text, all concerned (the executive, the parliament, the international community) should seek to convince the Haitian nation of their good faith.
But because of the gridlock, the struggles for power, they cannot do this. And if one cannot convince the Haitians of one?s good faith, how can one hope to convince them that some changes, erasures or amendments of the constitution could possibly serve their interest?
Serve whom?
Evidently, oneself.
Doesn?t all of this gridlock have one goal? To find a pretext to gain more power? In indifference to the problems of the population.