I am a candidate. My mother, who will learn about this in the news, may feel betrayed. My brothers and sister will say: “A young kid ventures into the dinosaur enclosure. What a waste!” I do not know what fate awaits me. Woeful or salutary. But I am a candidate. This was not my initial decision. I have been cheered by my voters. I cannot invoke either the principle of consent or that of free will. My relatives will think that I had a choice. The choice to say no. The choice to renounce this destiny that I did not choose.
My political party and my constituencies
I am a candidate. The official name of my political party is rather macabre. Movement of Victims of Regulatory Atrocities (VAR). In our country, there is a geopolitics of atrocities. It is permitted as long as you act within the controlled constituencies. Just like the wines for which we use the expression “Controlled Designation of Origin (AOC)”, here, we could also use the expression “Controlled Atrocity Origin (AOC)”. Each atrocity bears the imprint of the modus operandi of its executioners: grilling (“boukannen moun”), butchery (“rache moun, koupe tèt moun”), killings... Violence is a regulated, territorialized, pasteurized, packaged, labeled, segmented, negotiated, displayed and sold product.
With these elections, voters aim to officially institute a new code: the Code of Horror. Supporters show their adherence to this movement simply by mimicking with their index fingers the extermination square and giving a whistle. Case studies show that smugglers manage to codify their own methods, processes, and tax optimization strategies in a document called “tax code”. Thus, the executioners will likely succeed in entrenching their strategy of establishing a bureaucratic organization of violence and institutionalizing barbarism.
Far from being voters, citizens are candidates
Rather than a traditional voter, the citizen has become a candidate. He does not need to advocate a program or political options that have a strong potential to change lives; for fate has already taken charge of dictating his life. Therefore, he does not envision being a player in this situation of violence and great banditry, a symbol of the state’s failure and the loss of what Weber describes as the monopoly of legitimate violence.
The citizen is a sacrificial victim. He suffers everyday assaults. He is also an unwilling candidate for death, massacres, violence, killings, rapes, and atrocities. Here, our peculiarity lies in the fact that our voters (daily scourges) enjoy greater notoriety than the candidates (potential victims). Their names are mentioned in the high places of power, in public markets, in the intimacy of homes, in public squares, and even in meetings of the concert of nations. Simply citing their names haunts people in their sleep, lest they be struck by prohibition. Their ominous shadows whisper in children’s ears to the point of subjected them to teeth-grinding. They strike down and immolate newborns. They leave enough remnants to be immortalized in memories already rotting with fear.
In our elections, voters display a rather convincing record. They are fewer in number than the candidates. This observation is not sarcastic. It may defy understanding in normal countries. These latter speak of an electoral period, an election campaign, and an electoral program. They talk about elections in general, but here we add the adjectives “free”, “honest”, “democratic”, “transparent”, “credible”, “open”, and “republican”. Our elections have no chance of not collapsing literally under the weight of these qualifiers, symbols of the treachery of politicians.
Electoral race and prizes to win
I am a candidate. In Matissant. In La Saline. In Grande Ravine. In Cité Soleil. And now in Kenscoff. All swept by well-known scourges. Here, it feels like witnessing a race towards the abyss. The ranking does not matter. The prizes are imposed. An execution in the middle of the street at noon. A baptism of molten plastic during a kidnapping. A grilling of victims against the backdrop of Barbancourt clinking. Bodies thrown into a mass grave after being violated by rapists. Here, not all survivors are lucky. Some are forced to act like madmen to go unnoticed at toll booths where the smuggler collects the coins for the passage to the beyond. Others have become crazy enough to dull the fervor of the angels of death; they are the “Zo bouke chyen”. Perhaps not all of us will perish as long as we are crazy enough to stay in the country and live in the heart of danger.
The electoral permanence
Unlike normal countries, here there is no electoral period. Elections are our daily life. Our scourges bring out their official registers of candidates at every moment. Registration is permanent: a lightning assassination, sporadic shootings, a robbery, a kidnapping, a massacre.
In Haiti, there is no period to run for one of the highly coveted elective positions. Our daily life is death. We have grown accustomed to death. We often encounter corpses at every street corner, when they are not parading on our high-end smartphone screens. Here, it is the foul odors of mass graves that haunt stray dogs. We will have to rehabilitate the altered scent of our dogs when we become a normal country.
The schoolboy who braves the toll booths and the streets entirely controlled by bandits, some of whom are child soldiers, does everything to transform his future into something quite different from his daily life. A social shock: a child with his assault rifle slung over his shoulder; another with his school bag slung over his shoulder.
Before dusk falls, the Haitian child witnesses, near heaps of rubbish, the lynchings of his friends’ parents with whom he played in the morning. He flees from fires and kidnappings (when the bandits are merciful), or massacres (when they are less gracious). These children go from witnesses to victims. From tomorrow's voters to today's candidates. Candidates for death in the morning to the deceased by night. Rape has designated them as one designates the next player at Russian roulette. Here, it is the bullet that chooses the next candidate. We have no control over it. We await our turn, as we passed the cup at the last supper.
All candidates for the funeral symphony
In Haiti, we are all candidates for this funeral symphony that tries to harmonize the shrill register of the cries of these countless bereaved families with the grueling score of killings and kidnappings, mixed with the crackling of gunfire in the silence of the night.
I am a candidate. Not as it would be perceived in the health milieu of a normal country. Like a candidate for a kidney transplant. For a heart transplant. This candidate suffering from insufficiency hopes to improve his quality of life through an organ implant. In our context, the Haitian candidate may be the next name on the list of citizens to be decapitated live on social networks. The executioners will likely draw lots, amidst laughter, for the organs to take as loot. Eyeballs. Ears. The skull to get intoxicated on strong clairin at “asowosi”. Toes and fingers to make souvenir necklaces or a toy kit of little bones. The rest as fodder for the Chief’s pitbulls.
Our candidates at the polls
Our list of voters consists of rape, killings, massacres, great banditry, immolations, butcheries, carnages, lynchings, and kidnappings. When we talk about elections, we imagine ballots with thelikeness of the candidates, deposited in a ballot box by voters who are also individuals. Here, the ballot box has transformed into a funeral urn: our voters deposit the candidates for death of the past, who are no more. If we were to describe our candidates for a campaign poster, we would say they are six (6) feet under. Dead on vacation. Waiting for the ferryman. Having nails nice enough to hang a death label.
Here, when we talk about political instability, we see elected officials who do not complete their terms. Or personalities who have seized power without going through elections. Without a mandate from the people. We see faces that are no longer in power today but will return tomorrow as the only true chances of rescuing the Nation. We see positions changing faces. It may be this conception that foreigners or some Haitians might have of our political environment. In reality, our instability is experienced uniquely, every day. Anyone can be the unfortunate chosen one. From a well-known scourge.
Here, it is the voters who will court their candidates. Yesterday’s candidates or representatives are simply exterminated without any possibility of reinventing themselves unlike political actors. They are only spoken of in the past. The cycle of extermination is iterative. The faces of yesterday are now part of those remnants that pile up throughout lost territories.
Finally, we are all candidates. Our voters will knock on our doors. Not like the nice tax collector. Like the angel of death. They will sort us without having to account for the criteria, the processes, or the procedures. Without asking for our consent. No one will scream scandal like the impostors of the political sphere. Here, promises are made by the voters, not by the candidates. They will materialize sooner or later. Death, rapes, kidnappings, and carnages... The scourges will surely sweep over us. Over our mothers. Our fathers. Our children. Our newborns. Our brothers. Our sisters. Our friends. In the meantime, our authorities, the members of the diplomatic and consular corps, and international organizations organize another feast-forum to celebrate our resilience. Despite 5,700 people killed or injured from September 1 to 11, 2026, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Human rights! Just to remind you that we are still humans. And we have rights according to foreigners.
