Jocelerme Privert, the president nobody elected, is standing

His arrival at the National Palace, in February 2016, was anything but ordinary. Michel Martelly's term was ending with no elected successor, and a multi-party agreement handed the National Assembly the task of designating a provisional president. On 13 February, in the first round, the senator for Nippes took 58 votes — thirteen in the Senate, forty-five in the Chamber — against 56 for Edgard Leblanc Fils, out of 115 cast: not enough. The next day, in the second round, he gathered 77 of 114. And so, by seventy-seven parliamentarians rather than by a popular vote, the former accountant from the General Tax Directorate, who had served as Secretary of State for Finance and then as Interior Minister under Jean-Bertrand Aristide, became head of state.

His remit fitted in a sentence: hold the election and hand power to an elected president within no more than 120 days — by 14 June 2016. Parliament took the first weeks off him. The general policy statement presented by his prime minister Fritz Jean was rejected by the Chamber of Deputies on 20 March; two days later he appointed by decree the administrative law professor Enex Jean-Charles, whose government was not installed until 28 March. Six weeks of the deadline had already gone.

Starting from zero

It is the next decision that defines his time in power. To settle the dispute over the first round of the presidential election of 25 October 2015 — won by Jovenel Moïse and denounced by several candidates — Privert set up an Independent Electoral Evaluation and Verification Commission: five members, one month of work.

Its conclusions were brutal. The commission examined 3,235 tally sheets, a quarter of the 12,939 in the election, and judged only 9% of the votes valid. The irregularities, it wrote, had been "systematic (well-organized)", with "intent to deceive". It recommended starting again from zero. In June 2016, the CEP annulled the presidential results.

But the report that erased a national election did not convince everyone. The head of the European Union observation mission found in it "many factual, legal, methodological and conceptual weaknesses". The Haiti Democracy Project accused the commission of alleging massive fraud without providing a single example. The Organization of American States mission confined itself to observing the work without endorsing it. Annulling a presidential election on a sample of a quarter of the tally sheets, contested by international observers, remains the heaviest act of his mandate — and the one voters will now judge directly.

A hundred and twenty days

On 14 June 2016 the deadline expired. There was no elected president and parliament could not agree what came next. Privert stayed. Asked by Reuters, he said he would remain in office until the following year, long enough to hand power to an elected successor.

His court record is older. He spent twenty-six months in detention before being released, without being tried over those events. He does not appear on the United Nations Security Council sanctions list for Haiti — checked on 17 October 2026 against the register of the committee created by resolution 2653, which holds nine individuals and two entities.

Then there is what we could not establish. Neither Privert nor Ayiti Transfòme has published a programme for this election, and the former provisional president has not spoken publicly about the criticism of the report that annulled the 2015 vote. The CEP, for its part, publishes only each candidate's name, sex, office, structure and locality: no date of birth, no photograph, no platform. Everything else has to be found elsewhere.