Yearbook 2009
Haiti. The ruling party Lespwa won big in the second round of elections to the Senate on June 21, but failed to get its own majority. According to countryaah, President René Préval’s plans to enforce substantial constitutional changes must therefore be subject to a great deal of cow trading within Congress. See ABBREVIATIONFINDER for abbreviation HT which stands for the nation of Haiti.
| Land area | 27,750 km² |
| Total population | 11,067,777 |
| Population density (per km²） | 398.8 |
| Capital | Port-au-Prince |
| Official language | French, Creole |
| Income per capita | 1,800 USD |
| Currency | Gourde |
| ISO 3166 code | HT |
| Internet TLD | .ht |
| License plate | RH |
| Telephone code | +509 |
| Time zone UTC | – 5th |
| Geographic coordinates | 19 00 N, 72 25 W. |
However, the election also made it clear that the Haitians do not have much confidence in the political community as a whole; turnout was woefully low, even lower than in the first round of the Senate elections on April 26, when no more than 11 percent of voters voted. In part, the lack of interest in the election was due to the fact that former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s popular party Fanmi Lavalas was not allowed to participate in either the first or second round. The Election Commission stated as a reason that the party did not provide the necessary documentation to prepare, but many judges, both in Haiti and abroad, indicated that the decision was influenced by President Préval and that the already low confidence in the democratic process in the country could be further weakened.
During the year, the United Nations appointed former US President Bill Clinton as a special UN envoy in Haiti. His job is to assist the government in the economic development of the country to achieve political stability. Clinton is very popular in Haiti since he, as US President in 1994, opened the way for the then recently deposed and elected President Aristide’s return to power.
At the same time, the Security Council voted to extend the UN force MINUSTAH’s mission in Haiti by another year. Political stability appeared to be at risk when the Senate voted unanimously in late October to dismiss Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis. She was replaced by Jean-Max Bellerive.
History. – Consolidated his personal power, F. Duvalier, known as Papa Doc for his “paternalism”, surrounded himself with a special militia, the tonton – macoutes, thugs who terrorized the country by pushing the intelligentsia on the road to exile. In 1961 the parliament was dissolved and replaced by a semblance of a congress made up of loyalists. In the same year, Duvalier was unsuccessfully re-elected (there were two years before his mandate expired) and in June 1964 he wanted to be appointed president for life. Following religious persecutions and the expulsion of bishops and priests, Duvalier was excommunicated by the pope.
Relations with the neighboring Dominican Republic broke down due to the numerous Haitian refugees who disturbed the tyrant from that asylum. In April 1963 – after the tonton – Macoutes had infringed Dominican embassy – the war between the two countries seemed inevitable, but the intervention of the OAS was able to curb the contenders, without prevent incidents in the border area. In the spring of 1966 the Ethiopian emperor Hāyla Sellāsē visited Duvalier who received him with great pomp, in stark contrast to the misery of the country, in the clear search for an identification with African nationalism. This explains Haiti’s official recognition of the secessionist Biafra (March 25, 1969).
Duvalier’s death, announced in Port-au-Prince on April 22, 1971, produced a dangerous power vacuum. In fact, he was the absolute lord of the country: president of the Republic, head of the government, commander of the army, high priest of the Afro-Haitian voodoo rite. But a constitutional amendment, made a few months before his death, allowed the accession to the presidency of his twenty-year-old son Jean-Claude Duvalier, who hastened to promise radical changes. However, the repressions have continued and it does not seem that there are any significant changes in the small Caribbean republic. At the end of July 1973, the French Tourism Minister Olivier Guichard visited Port-au-Prince. Since the proclamation of independence in 1804, no French politician has ever set foot in Haiti.