Carlos Lebon cannot be judge and party

Carlos Lebon wants to return to the Senate. The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) register lists him as a candidate for the Sud, under the Viktwa banner. The electoral decree requires any candidate who has managed public funds to produce a certificate of discharge. It also bars anyone under administrative investigation, and tasks the CEP with checking this with the Superior Court of Auditors (CSC/CA). He held the Senate's purse strings for years. Let us take him at his word: let him show his accounts.

Carlos Lebon was the Senate's quaestor in 2008 and 2009, then from 2012 to 2016, according to Le Nouvelliste and HaitiLibre. The quaestor commits spending and signs contracts. That is why the CSC/CA names him in its second report on the PetroCaribe fund, delivered to the Senate on 31 May 2019. In 2012 and 2013, the Senate received 50 million gourdes for five projects: an office in Miragoâne, a legislative research centre, administrative and archive buildings. Every contract bears the signature of Fritz Carlos Lebon, quaestor.

The Court's findings are severe. The contracts were awarded directly, without a call for tenders. The firms received 80 percent of the amount on signing, far beyond what the rules allow. No performance guarantee was required. The Court found no certificate of acceptance of the works. In Miragoâne, the building exists, but according to residents the auditors met, it has "no attendance." The Court concludes that "the interests of the State are not protected by the Senate's officials." It lists Carlos Lebon among the "first-level" responsible officials, along with the Senate president at the time, Dieuseul Simon Desras, and recommends an inquiry.

Yet the Senate had already cleared its quaestor. In November 2009, it granted him discharge, according to Radio Métropole. On 20 July 2016, it did so again for former president Andris Riché and the "quaestor in office, Carlos Lebon," on a report from its own accounts committee. Both men were then running for re-election. Le Nouvelliste called that discharge "whimsical." The Fondasyon Je Klere points out that this power belongs to the CSC/CA, not to the chambers. A sitting quaestor, discharged by his peers, three years before the Court published its findings: who was the judge, and who was the party?

One may argue that the quaestor never signs alone. That is true, and Dieuseul Simon Desras disputed the report in June 2019: according to him, the 50 million came from the Public Treasury, not PetroCaribe. But where the money came from changes nothing in the findings. A contract without competition remains a contract without competition. An 80 percent advance without a guarantee remains a risk taken with everyone's money. Sharing a responsibility is not a discharge.

Let us be fair. The CSC/CA does not accuse him of enriching himself; it states that such a judgment belongs to other institutions. We found no indictment, trial or sanction against him. He has also been a victim: in December 2010, his station, Radio Lebon FM, was ransacked in Les Cayes, apparently because he was an Inite Senate candidate, according to Reporters Without Borders. In 2018, a preliminary audit of the Senate's management, leaked to the press, faulted him for buying Toyota vehicles without a call for tenders. His camp disputed it, with documents, and no final version was ever published. We do not hold it against him. We did not, however, find any public response from him to the 2019 report.

Before the CEP validates his candidacy, Carlos Lebon must make public the certificate of discharge filed in his application: who issued it, and for which years. The CEP must say whether it consulted the CSC/CA, as the decree requires. The CSC/CA must publish its audit of the Senate's management for 2016 and 2017. Voters in the Sud, like the diaspora, must demand the same transparency from every candidate who has handled public money, whatever their party.

In 2014, Senator Lebon refused to let a man without a discharge become prime minister. In 2026, candidate Lebon must present his own, and it cannot come from his own colleagues.