Let's judge Jerry Tardieu by his deeds

What experience? Jerry Tardieu has never governed. He has never run a ministry, an administration or a public budget. His only elected office was deputy for Pétion-Ville, from 2016 to 2020. He won it under the banner of the Vérité party, with the best score in the country, as he likes to point out.

He tells the story of those four years best himself. In June 2020, he presented his book Dans l'enfer du Parlement ("In the Hell of Parliament") to Le Nouvelliste. In it, he says, he recounts "the fate of my many bills, which were systematically torpedoed." His bill on lease financing was already gathering dust in the Chamber's drawers in 2017. His proposal on nationality had received, according to Le Nouvelliste, "no follow-up." He wanted to lead the Chamber and ran into the pro-PHTK majority.

One can plead the excuse: a deputy without a majority cannot pass his bills. That is true, and that is exactly the problem. A president without a majority, without enough police and without a budget will face the same walls, only higher. A man who could not persuade his colleagues in the Chamber owes us an explanation of how he will persuade a Parliament, a police force, donors and gangs.

There is something more telling still. In the Chamber, Jerry Tardieu chaired the special commission charged with amending the 1987 Constitution. It was, in his own words, "one of the most important responsibilities" of that legislature. The Constitution was not amended. His biggest assignment ended the way his bills did: with nothing to show.

His 2026 platform rests on the same method. He promises to end insecurity in five years, to strengthen the Haitian National Police and the Armed Forces of Haiti, to create a national guard of young people and to make credit easier to get in every department. The diagnosis is right: more than 100,000 young people leave universities and training centers every year, and fewer than one in ten finds work. But the statement says nothing about how much the plan will cost, who will pay for it or how it will be carried out. Juno7 pointed that out.

The youth national guard deserves more than a sentence. Gangs recruit precisely these jobless young people. Arming young people without saying who trains them, who pays them and who commands them would be a dangerous gamble.

That leaves the entrepreneur, whom the candidate puts forward. His flagship project, the Royal Oasis hotel in Pétion-Ville, was completed after the earthquake thanks in part to $2 million from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. That fund had been created for reconstruction, at a time when hundreds of thousands of quake victims were still sleeping in tents. Nothing suggests the financing was improper, but it was criticized at the time. A candidate who makes credit his central promise would do well to explain how he got his own.

Let's be fair. We found no accusation of ties to gangs and no prosecution for embezzlement against Jerry Tardieu, which is no small thing in this campaign. In his 2019 "J'accuse!" letter, he bravely denounced the record of President Jovenel Moïse. He also sat on the commission that prepared the laws on the financial intelligence unit, UCREF, and on money laundering, both of which passed. He knows how to diagnose, to write and to denounce.

But Haiti does not need one more prosecutor or one more essayist. After five years of transition, the country needs someone who knows how to finish what he starts. Before the first round, Jerry Tardieu should publish a costed platform, a detailed record of his bills and the story of how the Oasis was financed. Voters, at home and in the diaspora, should demand this of him, as of every other candidate.

Jerry Tardieu wants to be judged by his actions. Haitians have read his books. They are still waiting for his deeds.