A Culture of Denunciation is Not Political Culture By Jean Venel Casséus

In Haiti, one of the most effective ways to access the highest levels of the state, whether through elected positions or appointments, is to accumulate public denunciations against those in power. Denunciation functions as a political resource in its own right, a symbolic capital built by the repeated exposure of real or supposed faults of those governing. This practice is neither accidental nor recent. It has spanned at least the last four decades of Haitian political life and has progressively established itself as a central mode of public legitimation.

Between criticism that enlightens the public sphere and denunciation elevated to a method of conquest, the difference is not a matter of intensity but of nature. *In any democratic society, revealing abuses, exercising citizen or journalistic vigilance, and challenging authorities are part of the normal functioning of public life.* These practices help limit arbitrariness and fuel collective debate. They *become problematic when denunciation ceases to be a moment of debate and settles in as its permanent horizon.* It then no longer aims to enlighten public action, but to establish a logic of systematic and automatic disqualification of the authorities in place. *Politics is reduced to a succession of accusations where every authority is presumed illegitimate and corrupt, regardless of its choices, constraints, or results.*

This drift is rooted in a persistent inability to structure durable political parties, capable of training cadres, developing programs, and transmitting a culture of governance. Lacking these mediations, politics has been emptied of its instruments, leaving resentment to occupy the place of organization. The political field has reordered itself around moral postures rather than structured projects. *By political culture, we mean a collective learning of power, based on organization, responsibility, the production of projects, and the mastery of the state's real constraints.*

Systematic denunciation has filled this void. It allows entry into the arena without passing through the test of competence, without learning public management, without confronting the complexity of the state. It confers immediate recognition, often based on simplistic solutions, formulated as self-evident truths, even though the problems stem from deep structures and long temporalities.

This mechanism creates a paradox that is now well-established. Those who aspire to power build their credibility on the supposed failure of the incumbent rulers, while keeping their distance from the test of governance. Denunciation functions as a strategic shortcut, allowing one to remain above the state while claiming to lead it. It protects from error, but also from responsibility. Challenging power cannot be reduced to a posture of permanent indignation detached from any obligation to the national interest. Political opposition, when it claims to embody a credible alternative, also assumes a responsibility: that of thinking about the state, anticipating the effects of institutional destabilization, and measuring the impact of its words on the collective capacity to govern. The denouncer who dispenses with this requirement transforms criticism into an exercise of political disengagement and contributes, through accumulation, to permanently weakening the very conditions of governability.