While speaking to the National Assembly, francophone leaders and the Quebec media, Jerry Tardieu says public security must be Haiti's number one priority.ROGER LEMOYNE/The Globe and Mail
If Jerry Tardieu runs to be the next president of Haiti, he will, by his own admission, be vying to take the reins of a “ghost state.”
The 58-year-old businessman and former congressman for the once-prosperous Port-au-Prince suburb of Pétion-Ville rattles off the disturbing statistics of national collapse: more than a million internally displaced people, six million without enough to eat, 85 per cent of the capital under the control of gangs, five years of severe economic contraction. The country’s last elections were in 2016; no elected officials remain in office.
“It’s a constitutional desert,” said Mr. Tardieu. “It’s a country to be rebuilt, not to say re-founded.”
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He was addressing an auditorium full of Haitian Canadians at the University of Montreal, part of a goodwill tour – and possibly a campaign warm-up – through Quebec. He had spoken at the National Assembly in Quebec City the day before during a regional meeting of francophone leaders and was set to appear on Radio-Canada in the coming days.
Mr. Tardieu was trying to drum up support for Haiti from the Canadian government, but above all to engage the Haitian diaspora in helping to turn the country around. There are more than 100,000 Montrealers of Haitian origin, one of the biggest such communities in the world, many of them the kind of trained professionals Haiti desperately needs.
“The greatest wealth of Haiti is here in the room – the diaspora,” said Mr. Tardieu. He then reminded them how easy it was to register to vote through the Haitian consulate in Montreal.
The veteran politician and Harvard public administration graduate plays coy when asked whether he will run for president in the country’s next elections. For one thing, it’s unclear when those elections will be.
The presidential contest is scheduled for February, 2026 – just five months away – when a transitional council is meant to cede power. But with brutal armed gangs still ruling over the vast majority of Port-au-Prince, most observers believe that deadline is unrealistic.
There’s no sense holding elections if the conditions aren’t in place for Haitians to consider them legitimate, said former U.S. special envoy Dan Foote. Those conditions would include a more effective and legitimate provisional government, the re-establishment of a justice system and other elements of state authority, and a basic level of public security, he said in an interview.
Unlocking the potential of half the population could transform Haiti, Jerry Tardieu says of the country where only three of 119 deputies in the national assembly before its dissolution were women.ROGER LEMOYNE/The Globe and Mail
“Don’t hold elections unless there’s a chance the Haitian people will accept them,” said Mr. Foote. “Don’t just do the kabuki theatre.”
Public security must be Haiti’s number one priority, Mr. Tardieu argued. More than 1,500 people were murdered in the country between April and June alone, according to a recent United Nations report. Gang rape remains a common weapon used by armed groups such as the sprawling coalition Viv Ansam, led by the former police officer Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier.
The threadbare remains of the Haitian state are unable to check the gangs’ power, let alone roll it back. There are only 5,000 police officers in the country, compared to 55,000 in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, with roughly the same population, said Mr. Tardieu.
A UN-backed force of about 1,000 Kenyan police has been deployed to the capital for the past year with little effect. The transitional council has taken to hiring American mercenaries, including the controversial company Blackwater, to provide some semblance of security.
Elsewhere, citizens have taken matters into their own hands. One public prosecutor in rural Miragoâne has executed dozens of alleged gang members without trial since 2022, while vigilante groups have committed scores of their own killings across the country.
Canada has already spent tens of millions of dollars training and arming Haiti’s national police force – itself plagued by accusations of corruption – but Mr. Tardieu believes the country’s leaders are wary of on-the-ground engagement because so many of the gang members are minors, effectively child soldiers.
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An audience at the University of Montreal listens to Jerry Tardieu speak on Sept. 12.ROGER LEMOYNE/The Globe and Mail
Still, says Mr. Tardieu, “We need all the help we can get.”
But the founder of En Avant (Forward), his political party launched in 2020, puts more stock in Haiti’s own people, inside the country and out. His faith in the country’s future is based on three groups: youth, women and the diaspora.
Haiti is a “macho” society, he says, where only three of 119 deputies in the national assembly before its dissolution were women. Unlocking the potential of half the country’s population could transform Haiti, he said.
The son of a wealthy businessman and a successful hotel entrepreneur himself, Mr. Tardieu is not entirely sheltered from the inequalities and suffering facing everyday Haitians, the kind worsened by gang violence.
Before dawn most days, female peasants from the mountains overlooking the capital get into trucks to sell vegetables at the market in Pétion-Ville, going past his house. One morning he heard a crash and a scream: Outside there was a truck flipped over and dead bodies in the street. Amidst the carnage, one woman with blood on her clothes was quietly picking up the spilled produce. When Mr. Tardieu expressed shock that she was worried about her vegetables at such a time, she replied, “Congressman, if I don’t get my crop to market, my kids won’t eat today.”
The politician was shaken; he couldn’t sleep that night. He says it strengthened his determination to improve Haiti’s future.
“I’m among those who think you have to dream in colour even if you’re living in black and white,” he said.