Laurent Saint-Cyr: The Great Traveler of the Presidential Council

In this Haiti, once nicknamed the Pearl of the Antilles and now, alas, the sorrow of the Antilles, the political scene now resembles a theater of shadows where actors seem to perform without script or conscience. Since April 25, 2024 (in accordance with the agreement of April 3, 2024), nine individuals share power: eight men and one woman (seven with voting rights and two observers). Their mission: to restore security, organize a constitutional referendum, and general elections to extricate the country from over four years of illegality and instability.

But beneath this institutional veneer, the reality is quite different. The Transitional Presidential Council (CPT), meant to embody collective responsibility, quickly transformed into a laboratory of inefficiency and waste. In less than two years, the coordinator position has become a veritable game of musical chairs: Edgar Leblanc Fils, Leslie Voltaire, Fritz Alphonse Jean, and then Laurent Saint-Cyr have successively held the role, with none managing to steer the drifting ship back on course.

While the population sinks deeper into fear and misery, the CPT descends into a routine of scandals. Corruption, an old companion of the State since 1804, has never been so rampant. It is openly displayed, without embarrassment, without restraint, without shame.

And in this already bleak picture, one name persistently reappears: Laurent Saint-Cyr, representative of the business sector. Not for bold reforms or courageous initiatives, but for his incessant travels abroad, always at the expense of a crumbling State.

Never has a Haitian public official flown so much, often flanked by imposing delegations. According to several sources, he has spent nearly half of his mandate outside national territory. An unprecedented, almost insolent, performance in a country where every gourde spent should serve to save a life or build or rebuild a school.

The most ironic part of all this is that Laurent Saint-Cyr was already living in the United States as a student at the very moment he took on this role as presidential advisor. In other words, he continued to lead an existence halfway between campus and the official residence, between studies and travels to rarely participate in the various Council of Ministers meetings, while the country collapses into indifference.

But this permanent scandal seems to bother neither his colleagues on the Council nor those who placed him there. The silence of our elites thus becomes the most faithful accomplice to the national disaster.

And yet, Haiti is not a body without a soul. She is the mother of our freedom, wounded but not dead. A day will come when all those who have betrayed her will have to account, not through the judicial farces of consolidation trials or Timbres, but before the implacable tribunal of History and the memory of peoples.