There are more than sixty-seven political parties in a country of approximately eight and a half million souls. This is a staggering number that tends to grow daily. Though successfully organized, the last presidential election in Haiti proved the weakness of the political parties to compete. Among 34 candidates running for the office of the presidency in February 2006, 33 of them ranked on the bottom 13% of the vote tallied. What this is suggesting is that a win for President Preval could very well be a loss for Haiti, that is to say, in the absence of a strong political process, the winner is deemed to be irrelevant. Because of so many candidates, the political process becomes a joke and, quite frankly, most Haitians are not willing to laugh at Haiti’s sadness; and so they would stay home and not participate in the electoral process. As such, the legitimacy of the vote will always be questioned. Whereas, has there been a three to four political party system, the electorates would have had a greater influence in choosing the highest authority figure of the land.

As Haiti tries to get back on track, with the new elected government of Preval/Alexis, there isn’t a better time to challenge the political party system of Haiti. This government should make political party reform one of its priorities in order for political stability to take place in Haiti. Sadly, in Haiti, if one disagrees with all of the existing political parties, he will gather a few friends, sometimes reactionaries, and form his political party. This practice is unacceptable and it must be stopped. Most of Haiti’s political parties are frankly what is known to be organization of peers and associates rather than political parties. We must set a clear difference between a political party and an organization of gangsters. A political party entails broad wisdom instead of the savoir-faire of a few narrow minded individuals whose sole purposes are trying to earn a living and winning a presidential election. When engaging in politics is no longer viewed as a way of earning a living, the number of Haiti’s political parties will be dramatically declined. What I’m suggesting here is that, when life becomes unbearable in Haiti, one forms a political party as a way of dealing with the hardship of life. This practice cannot be continued for it will ruin the country to the point of no return and we must therefore call for a complete political party reform in Haiti.

An alternative could be a Three Grand National Political Party System. As I attempt to address the problem of Haiti’s political party system, I would suggest the following 3 parties as an alternative to the current brouhaha:

1- LAVALAS

2- CONVERGENCE DEMOCRATIC

3- INDEPENDENT (including the group of 184)

As the principle political actors of Haiti, both LAVALAS and the CONVERGENCE DEMOCRATIC have proven to be well known, competitive and dominant. What is left to do is naming an Independent party. I would further argue that the group of 184 is perfectly fit to become the Independent party of Haiti. With these changes in place, Haitian "leaders" would be forced to depersonalize the political parties and work together by putting forth concrete ideas to better their respective parties. It would be excited to see Haitian "leaders" competing with each others in primaries within their own parties, wouldn’t it? At one point, when the Convergence Democratic emerged, I have sensed a change in the direction of the political party system in Haiti; but the vision of this group was far from what I propose above for the idea behind it was not for the love of Haiti but the hatred of Aristide. Anyone who followed Haitian’s politics of the past decade would concur that these 3 political entities combined would easily claim about 85% of the Haitian electorates, thus any other parties would be seen as a lesser figure in Haitian politics.

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