Haiti is currently facing two crucial challenges: a complex and large-scale electoral process with presidential, legislative and local elections and the need to resume a comprehensive, long-term and constructive dialogue with the Dominican Republic. In this framework former Club de Madrid President and ex Prime Minister of The Netherlands, Wim Kok, lead the sixth mission of the EU-funded project “Promotion of dialogue for democratic reform in Haiti” on the 21-23 of September. According to Kok, ‘Haiti needs to culminate this process by holding the second and third rounds as scheduled, introducing the corrective measures drawn from the first round’. The former Prime Minister of The Netherlands also talked about the post electoral scenario as he pointed out that “after the elections, an agenda of political reform is needed as well as a plan to improve economic development and cohesion for haitian people”
The electoral process whose success is critical to consolidate the democratic and institutional order, has been dominated by technical and candidates selection issues, as well as security concerns. Until today, the campaign has not sufficiently focused on the candidates’ policy proposals regarding national priorities. In this context, Club de Madrid wishes to contribute to the debate by inviting candidates to consider policy proposals related to democratic governance, gathered in its document “Policy Recommendations on Democratic Governance”, such as: constitutional reform; institutionalization of the political party system; independence of democratic institutions and strengthening of the public administration; Improvement of the quality of public finance management and tax reform; strategic bi-national relations with the Dominican Republic.
This document, can be found here was shared throughout the bilateral meetings in the mission’s agenda which included key institutional authorities, such as President Martelly and the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), as well as private sector representatives and relevant international community actors.
The Haitian/Dominican Repulbic relations were also a key point of this mission. The Club de Madrid delegation met with the President of the Dominican Republic, Danilo Medina, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrés Navarro, and the Minister of Interior and Police, José Ramón Fadúl. Both parts agreed in the importance of resuming binational relations, as “reinvigorate high level Dominican/Haitian dialogue dialogue is of common interest” Wim Kok said.
