Skin in the Game: Enex Jean-Charles and the Haitian Constitutional Tragedy

Yves Lafortune The theory of Skin in the Game, where risk underpins responsibility The concept of Skin in the Game, coined and popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, rests on a principle of almost brutal simplicity: no one should make decisions for others without themselves being exposed to the real consequences of their decisions (Taleb, 2018). To have skin in the game means to be accountable for one's actions to the very end, to accept that risk is not transferable, that error cannot be delegated to anonymous individuals, to the masses, to that abstract people invoked at the first platform but forgotten at the first crisis. Taleb adopts a perspective similar to Hannah Arendt's, according to which true politics requires the presence of man in the public sphere as a responsible subject, capable of accounting for his actions before others (Arendt, 1958). Political fault, as she implicitly indicates in The Human Condition, stems precisely from the divorce between action and responsibility, between power and the moral awareness of its consequences. Paul Ricoeur emphasizes that the legitimacy of an institution depends not only on its legal conformity but also on its ability to create a shared meaning, a common narrative with which citizens can identify (Ricoeur, 1990). Without concrete responsibility and assumed risks, the law is reduced to a mechanism, and the State becomes a cold fiction, disconnected from real experience. According to this triple lineage (Taleb, Arendt, Ricoeur), political responsibility is not limited to technical competence or noble intentions. It is also measured by real exposure: who bears the consequences of political failures? (Taleb, 2018; Arendt, 1958; Ricoeur, 1990) Who endures the effects of the collapse of texts? Who suffers institutional chaos, legal insecurity, or the paralysis of the State if not the ordinary citizen? As for the decision-maker, they withdraw, retrain, or disappear into the limbo of another commission, another decree, another public salary. In fragile societies, this theoretical convergence reveals a tragic truth: those who decide generally have nothing to lose. They are neither the passengers of the plane they pilot nor even the mechanics who maintain it. They are elsewhere, in an ivory tower of institutionalized irresponsibility, while the country, for its part, falls. It is in this light that the case of Enex Jean-Charles and the constitutional reform in Haiti should be understood. The constitution entrusted, delegated, dispossessed When Haitian authorities entrusted former Prime Minister Enex Jean-Charles with the responsibility of leading the constitutional amendment process, the stakes were enormous. It was not merely a legal adjustment but an act of refoundation, a rare moment when a nation seeks to revise its political contract, redefine the rules of living together, and repair the cracks in a text that had become ineffective, conflictual, and laden with contradictions. After consultations, sectoral meetings, forums, solemn declarations, and commitments for broader inclusion, the proposed result was a constitution that, according to many observers, was not only insufficient but worse than that of 1987, already heavily criticized for its inconsistencies, structural ambiguities, and chronic inability to ensure institutional stability. Instead of fostering healing, the text seemed to accentuate the fracture. Instead of modernizing the constitutional order, it reinforced its grey areas. Instead of clarifying power relations, it made them even more confusing. And when protests, criticisms, and disapprovals erupted from all sides—jurists, academics, civil society organizations, political forces—the response was the promise of a revision, a rewriting, a supposed readjustment. Then, suddenly, silence. The process stopped dead. No assessment. No accountability. No mea culpa. Only this bitter impression of a project swallowed by the quicksands of Haitian habit: starting over without ever finishing. Public money, public hope, collective shipwreck The constitutional process was not only a political failure; it also proved to be a financial abyss. Millions were spent to organize consultations, remunerate experts, draft documents, fund missions, rent rooms, and give the appearance of consensus. But what purpose did this public expenditure serve? To maintain an institutional illusion, to simulate a will for reform without real popular roots, and to produce a text that ultimately no one desires or takes responsibility for. According to a Skin in the Game logic, this situation reveals a fundamental error: the one in charge takes no risk. Whether they fail, succeed, confuse, or divert, they remain unharmed, while the country continues to bear the costs. Reforming a constitution is not comparable to a simple administrative formality. As Arendt emphasized, every political act has an essential ethical dimension, for it shapes a shared and irreversible world (Arendt, 1958). Modifying a nation's fundamental contract engages its credibility, its destiny, and even its political memory. Yet, Enex Jean-Charles never put his own head on the line. He was not merely a passenger on the constitutional plane, but its interchangeable administrative pilot.
The pilot and the plane: a necessary metaphor The pilot who knows their life depends on the quality of their flight will do everything to bring the aircraft safely to its destination. They will check, they will doubt, they will revise, they will listen, they will anticipate. Not out of heroism, but out of an instinct for survival. Shared risk underpins prudence, rigor, and responsibility. Conversely, one who pilots without risking their own fall can afford approximation, arrogance, and contempt for warning signals. They can say: it's not my fault, it's not yours, it's no one's fault. It's only the country's, the eternal scapegoat. The constitutional reform in Haiti was thus conducted like an experimental flight without a truly concerned pilot. Those who decided were not those who would suffer. Those who wrote were not those who would bear the consequences. And when the plane came to a halt on the tarmac, engine off, promise extinguished, no one returned to the console to explain the crash. Neither sole culprit, nor collective innocence Far from any witch hunt, it is essential to remember: it is not solely the fault of Enex Jean-Charles. Nor is it the fault of a single man. The problem is systemic. It is rooted in a political culture where function precedes responsibility, where position replaces commitment, where the State becomes a transit space rather than a place of sacrifice. But it is precisely here that the theory of Skin in the Game becomes valuable: it forces us to name the moral imbalance of a system where power is never risked, where decisions never cost the decision-maker, where fault dissolves into institutional anonymity. A country is not built on strategies without personal stakes. A nation is not rebuilt with managers who never sleep in the house they claim to erect for others.
Building a nation: a visceral requirement “Having skin in the game is above all what it takes to build a nation.” This phrase resonates as a warning, a lesson, perhaps even a plea. Building a nation requires an involvement from those who govern that goes beyond rhetoric. It demands a real proximity to risk, an assumed vulnerability, a concrete solidarity with the common destiny. Haiti does not lack intellectuals, technicians, or even good intentions. It lacks leaders willing to tie their own fate to that of the community. It lacks pilots aware that the plane is not a trophy, but a shared life. The constitutional reform was not merely a failed text; it was the symbol of a moral deficit: that of a detached, distant, technocratic leadership, without true existential roots in the national project. For a politics of shared risk It is time to rethink Haitian governance in light of this ethical requirement: no decision-maker should escape the weight of their decisions, for power has legitimacy only when it assumes the consequences of its actions before those it governs (Ricoeur, 1990; Arendt, 1958). No project of this magnitude should be led by those who have nothing to lose. The constitution is not just a legal document. It is the breath of a people, the fabric of their hopes, the architecture of their future. Entrusting its reform to hands without roots, without skin in the game, is to condemn any attempt at rebirth in advance. The case of former Prime Minister Enex Jean-Charles, far from being a mere episode, thus becomes a national metaphor: that of a country that entrusts its refoundation to unexposed actors, and then wonders at the failure. Conclusion: The courage to risk for reconstruction Haiti will not be able to rebuild itself solely through timid commissions, consultations devoid of truth, or reforms lacking responsibility. It will recover when those in power accept to share the country's fate, whether it is falling or rising. Building a nation is not simply signing a decree or writing a report. It is putting one's skin, name, memory, and destiny at stake in a collective adventure. As long as pilots fly without fear of dying in a crash, Haiti will continue to crash. The day they finally accept that their lives depend on the proper functioning of the national aircraft, then, perhaps, the sky will open again over the Republic. The Constitution of 1805, the founding act of possible modernity We have tried everything, discussed everything, rewritten everything. We have multiplied reforms, commissions, projects, adjustments, institutional tinkering, and simulations of refoundation. Yet, one truth persists, silent and stubborn: Dessalines already left us a founding act of exceptional power. The Constitution of 1805, with its historical radicalism, its symbolic and political weight, remains the sovereign basis of our national architecture. It is not about reproducing it as is, nor making it a relic frozen in the marble of the past, but about re-reading it as an anchor point, as an ethical and political foundation from which a modern, inclusive, and resolutely forward-looking constitution can be elaborated. Where so many subsequent texts have hesitated, compromised, or diluted the national project, 1805 affirms a vision, a verticality, a memory of freedom conquered in blood and dignity. To return to 1805 is not to retreat; it is to refound. It is to recognize that the country cannot rebuild itself without drawing from this primary source where politics was not management, but destiny. It is to accept that Haitian modernity will not be born from the servile imitation of exogenous models, but from the lucid reactivation of our institutional genealogy. Thus, beyond contemporary failures and wanderings, a path remains open: to produce a modern constitution, anchored in the spirit of 1805, tempered by history, enlightened by time, but faithful to that initial promise where Haiti already conceived itself as a sovereign nation, radically free and self-aware. References : Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hector, M. (2009). Histoire de la Constitution haïtienne : genèse et portée de la Constitution de 1805. Port-au-Prince : Éditions C3. Ricoeur, P. (1990). Soi-même comme un autre. Paris : Seuil. Taleb, N. N. (2018). Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life. New York: Random House. Trouillot, M.-R. (1995). Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press. Yves Lafortune, Miami