(Tribune News Service) — The head of Haiti’s embattled presidential council says he believes that both a reform of the country’s constitution and general elections to put a legitimate government back in charge can take place before the end of the year.

Haiti last held elections in 2016, and hasn’t had an elected president since the July 2021 assassination of Jovenel Moïse.

Leslie Voltaire, the head of the Transitional Presidential Council, is envisioning a vote to restore democracy to Haiti with elections for a president, parliament and local mayors on Nov. 15.

Voltaire made the declaration during interviews Wednesday with TV Monde 5 and France 24/Radio France Internationale while on a European tour, during which he met President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and Pope Francis at the Vatican.

Voltaire said he hopes to have a constitutional referendum voted on by April, and envisions the first round of general elections around Nov. 15. Runoffs, he said, would take place around mid-January of 2026 “so that finally on February 7 there could be a legitimate government.”

Under that election plan, the nine-member Provisional Electoral Council, responsible for organizing elections in Haiti, would prioritize voting in the regional departments currently not under the control of armed criminal groups.

“I think that we will have elections in eight departments that are free of gangs; we will have the elections in the Artibonite, which is a quarter controlled by the gangs; we will have elections in half of Port-au-Prince,” Voltaire said.

He acknowledged the plan, amid Haiti’s turbulent gang violence and worsening humanitarian crisis, may be overly ambitious.

“It is very quick,” he told France 24 when journalists questioned the timetable. When the journalists raised the issue of continuing gang violence, Voltaire said “the security situation is mainly in the metropolitan area.”

A source on the electoral board told the Miami Herald that on Dec. 30 they forwarded a calendar proposing May 11 for the constitutional referendum and a budget. While they envision holding elections in November, they have yet to propose a specific date. Asked about whether any vote can take place in the current security environment, the electoral adviser said: “Technically we will do all we need to do, but the security is in the hands of the government.”

Voltaire’s assessment of Haiti’s ability to pull off a vote this year is in contrast to the view of the United Nations, which last week cast doubt on the nine-member presidential council being able to stage elections in time to restore democracy by February 2026. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council that political setbacks, fueled by corruption allegations involving three of Voltaire’s colleagues on the council, had opened the door to escalating gang violence and was endangering the election timeline.

“Simply put, the goal of restoring democratic institutions by February 2026 is in jeopardy,” Guterres said in a report.

During his interview with France 24, Voltaire dodged a question about the corruption allegations. The matter, he said, was before the justice system and he lacked the power to do anything about the three council members caught up in a bank bribery scandal. The accused council members, Smith Augustin, Louis Gérald Gilles and Emmanuel Vertilaire, have insisted on their innocence but have refused to respond to a summons from an investigative judge.

Gangs’ ongoing attacks

In November, Voltaire led the effort to oust the prime minister after taking over the council’s rotating presidency. The new government, led by Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, has shown some progress in the filling of government positions, including naming a former head of police as secretary of state for public security. But authorities continue to struggle on the security and humanitarian fronts. Armed gangs prompted a Federal Aviation Administration ban on U.S. flights to Port-au-Prince after opening fire on three jetliners in November; they’ve also shot up a U.S. Embassy van.

This week, gangs attacked downtown Port-au-Prince and farming communities in the mountains above the capital, cutting off the last remaining access to the south. The attacks left a trail of dead livestock and forced farmers to flee their burning homes in the Kenscoff area.

Voltaire told France 24 that the gangs are “retreating on certain fronts,” thanks to the efforts of the Haiti National Police, the country’s fledgling army and the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission. The government, he said, is “lobbying” to increase the number of mission cops and soldiers, which now stands at less than 800.

Voltaire’s announcement about elections and his take on the security situation got immediate push-back in Port-au-Prince, where other politicians cast doubt on the possibility of holding a vote when the capital is still overrun by gangs.

‘Another world’

“Mr. Voltaire, you are in another world, your own world,” lawyer André Michel, a member of the political coalition known as December 21 said on X.

He accused Voltaire of lying to France 24 and TV5 Mode when he said that armed gangs had retreated from Delmas 2, the stronghold of warlord Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, and the Lower Artibonite region, the site of two massacres last year.

“The GANGS have rather gained ground in Haiti. They have conquered more territories than before,” Michel said. “The failure is total!”

Michel and other political and civil society leaders have been insisting on a reconfiguration of the presidential council because of the corruption allegations and the escalating gang violence.

Earlier this week, members of December 21 and EDE, the party led by former Prime Minister Claude Joseph, asked that Chérizier’s powerful Viv Ansanm gang coalition be designated as a terrorist organization by the Trump administration.

The request, sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, came after the two leaders and the head of former President Michel Martelly’s PHTK political party ignited a political firestorm after they included the gang coalition in a proposal to the 15-member Caribbean Community, CARICOM, on how to solve the ongoing political crisis. The letter listed Viv Ansanm as one of the groups that supports revamping the transition to replace council members.

The inclusion of the gang coalition was seen as an endorsement of giving gangs a voice in the political discussions, which Michel has denied.

Haiti is in the fourth year of a transition since Moïse’s killing plunged the nation into an unprecedented wave of gang violence, and pressure to hold elections are expected to grow.

“Beyond the overwhelming security concerns, there are steep logistical, and human resource challenges, for the government running the elections, the political parties campaigning and the voters. Elections will be extremely difficult this year,” said Brian Concannon, executive director of the Boston-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. “But Haiti does need to have elections as soon as possible.

“When people say there is not enough security to hold elections, I often bring up the U.S.’s 1864 election,” he said. “The Civil War’s violence surpassed Haiti’s current violence by far, and much of the U.S. was not under government control. Many argued the election should be postponed. But Lincoln, although he initially thought he would lose, insisted that we needed to put the security question up to the voters. The election ended up being a referendum on the war, and the structure of the country after the war.”

Haiti’s last population census was 22 years ago in 2003, and though Voltaire says the electoral roll has about 7 million voters, no one can say with certainty where they are. The rampant gang violence has forced more than a million Haitians to flee their homes, and hundreds of thousands have also fled for the United States, Canada and elsewhere.

Once accounting for 60% of the electorate, the West regional department, where Port-au-Prince is located, and the Artibonite area are now flooded with gangs wielding military-grade weapons who control access in and out of neighborhoods and major highways.

Voltaire noted that in the last elections in 2016, Moïse became president with 500,000 votes— a figure that put his legitimacy in question and triggered an electoral crisis. If a new election is able to surpass that number, Voltaire said, then those elected “will be much more legitimate than the presidential council,” he said.

Robert Fatton, a retired political scientist from University of Virginia, said if Haiti were able to pull off any vote this year, it would be surprising.

“Armed groups have now gained autonomy from the powerful political and private actors who had initially funded and controlled them,” said Fatton, speaking earlier in the day during a webinar on Haiti co-sponsored by the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University in Miami.

Fatton said the presidential council “has been unable to re-establish state authority and is facing a crisis of legitimacy that endangers its very survival. Moreover, the incapacity of the (Kenya-led mission) to contain, let alone defeat, the gangs, has compounded the crisis.”

As gangs continue to expand their domination of the metropolitan area, everyone is watching to see if the latest siege on Kenscoff will lead to a full-scale takeover of Port-au-Prince.

“Haitians are increasingly doubtful that the (international mission), with its little force and inadequate arms, can create the conditions in which the council promises can be fulfilled,” Fatton said.

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