Boulos campaigning for the senate, 2005

On July 15 and 16, the distinguished former Haitian senator Rudolph Boulos will be visiting Washington to discuss U.S. policy toward Haiti’s upcoming elections.

The elections were badly overdue, and last year the State Department put its weight behind Haitian negotiations to finally schedule them. It then vetoed the appointment of an impartial election administrator in favor of one who had acted at the behest of former president René Préval. Since then, the resulting election commission has consistently admitted as candidates criminals and assassins from Préval's faction while excluding nonviolent, high-profile candidates from the other faction. Last month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed an amendment requiring the administration to report on “any attempts to disqualify candidates for political office in Haiti for political reasons.” Nevertheless, the administration continues to insist that all is well.

Senator Boulos was elected by the Nord-Est Department in 2006. Since then, he has led three Haiti Democracy Project senatorial delegations to Washington. He now figures among the many candidates disqualified by the electoral commission for thinly-disguised political reasons. He was a prohibitive favorite for the 2015 race.

He aims in his visit to hear the views of Washington policy-makers and others who follow Haiti, and impress on them the long-term costs of a vitiated election, which may be imposed on Haitians but will never be accepted.

Profile of Sen. Rudolph H. Boulos. Founding member of Haiti Democracy Project. Leading businessman who has participated in reformist politics since 2005. Before that, he devoted himself to NGOs in health and education in Cité Soleil and the Northeast. Elected senator for six years in 2006, elected vice-president of the senate in 2008. In 2007, he earned President Préval's enmity by refusing to endorse his bid to change the constitution to stay in power for a third presidential term. In revenge, Préval got the senate to expel Boulos in 2008 on a false allegation of U.S. citizenship. Boulos had to stay out of the country until 2010. In 1996, his pharmaceutical company produced a medication from falsely-labeled imported ingredients that caused the death of eighty-seven children.