In its closing session this week, the 47th Haitian Legislature proposed amendments to the 1987 Haitian Constitution that would formally abolish the Haitian Army, lift restrictions on dual citizenship, and replace three-member mayoral cartels with a single mayor.

Haiti’s right-wing opposition, led by the Washington-supported Democratic Convergence front, vigorously denounced the proposals. Paul Denis, a Convergence spokesman, said that the parliament, dominated by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas Family party (FL), had neither the “legitimacy” nor the “technical quality” to propose amendments to the Constitution. Denis and his confederates argued that the FL parliamentarians made legal missteps in proposing the amendments.

“In reality, the right-wing is hiding behind procedural questions in their efforts to preserve the past,” said Ben Dupuy of the National Popular Party (PPN). “The 1987 Constitution, written during a military dictatorship of Gens. Namphy and Regala, was a social contract between the bourgeoisie and the landed oligarchy which was foisted on the Haitian people, and the opposition is trying to save this historic compromise.”

The Haitian Army, dissolved by a presidential decree in 1995, has never been officially disbanded by the parliament. In 2000, FL parliamentarians universally ran on the promise that they would start the process of abolishing the corps, which the U.S. Marines created as the Haitian Guard in the 1930s and which carried out numerous coups and fierce repression throughout its six-decade existence.

According to Haiti’s constitution, amendments are proposed by one legislature, and then adopted by the next, a safeguard the opposition has tried to obfuscate in its vitriolic attacks.

In its Sep. 3 session, the House of Deputies submitted a set of proposed amendments prepared by a commission under the direction of lower house president, Yves Cristalin. In addition to abolishing the Army and several other minor law changes, the deputies proposed repealing the law which restricts Haitian-born naturalized citizens of the United States, Canada, and Europe from voting in Haitian elections or holding office. Audiences throughout Haiti’s diaspora have clamored for this change since the advent of the country’s democratic governments in 1991.

The other major law change calls for a single mayor to head local governments. The 1987 Constitution’s formula of having three mayors run towns and cities has proved a recipe for rivalries, confusion, and gridlock.

Although these changes have been discussed by FL legislators for years, the deputies presented the text only last week because Art. 282-1 says that the proposals can be “made only in the course of the last Regular Session of the Legislative period.” The deputies asked the Senate to make a declaration of “adherence” to the proposals.

On Sep. 8, the Senate’s last session, two renegade FL senators, Prince Sonson Pierre and Dany Toussaint, refused to sit and “adhere,” leaving the Senate with only 17 senators, one short of a two-thirds quorum.

The upper house has only 19 sitting senators, instead of the prescribed 27. Seven senators voluntarily resigned on Jun. 13, 2001 in a futile goodwill gesture to convince Washington and the Convergence to drop their rejection of the FL’s 2000 electoral sweep. Then Sen. Yvon Nepture resigned when appointed Prime Minister in Nov. 2001.

Toussaint, a former colonel, said he could not support the proposed amendments until he heard the position of “the private sector, the opposition, the intellectual elite, and the commercial elite.” When asked if he was balking because of the call for the army’s abolition, he complained that his FL colleagues in the Senate “have never treated me as a Senator, they have always treated me as a soldier... So I am not a scorpion. I am not going to sting myself.”

Later, in an interview with conservative Radio Métropole, Toussaint rhetorically asked “Is the institution [of the army] no good? If so, we can go a step further. We can question all the institutions we have in the country, and then we’ll close down everything.”

Sonson also claimed there had been no debate about the proposed amendments. He said it was not clear whether they were “abolishing the indigenous army which made [Haiti’s independence in] 1804, who made [the battle of] Vertières, or the army of occupation which made the [1991] coup d’état.”

But since its formation, the FL has had abolition of the army and repeal of the restriction of dual citizenship as elements of its core platform. As FL members, shouldn’t the two senators know the priorities of the party in whose name they were elected to their posts? Furthermore, the debate question is diversionary. The issues have been widely and hotly debated for years, in the FL, in the Parliament, and in Haitian society as a whole, and they will certainly be debated more before the next parliament is in place.

Did the Senate have a quorum? Could the declaration of proposed amendments legally pass with just 17 senators? Again, the 1987 Constitution is unclear. It merely states that proposed constitutional amendments must be “supported by two-thirds of each of the two Houses.” It does not make clear if that is two-thirds of the “ideal” Senate or of the “actual” Senate.

The 47th Legislature asked its predecessor to recognize the exceptional nature of its functioning with only 19 Senators, instead of 27. It passed a resolution which “recommends to the 48th legislature that it take into consideration that there were effectively only 19 senators making up the Senate since the resignation of seven senators... The Senatorial Assembly asks the 48th Legislature to consider the signature of 17 senators at the bottom of the declaration of adhesion as sufficient to pursue the process of amending the constitution begun in the 47th legislature, according to article 282 of the 1987 Constitution.”

Opposition pundits have also tried to deform the proposed amendments, saying that they will only serve to extend Aristide’s term. However, nothing in the deputies’ text deals with the term limits of the chief of state.

“Proposing constitutional amendments is not a solution to Haiti’s structural problems, but it is a good step toward the better functioning of our institutions,” said Dupuy. “The opposition is made up of the same bourgeois and Macoute forces which drew up the Constitution in the first place, and that is why they oppose any changes.”