By Kettia JP Taylor, Haiti Info Pro, April 5, 2025
Haiti is sinking deeper into insecurity and poverty while the members of the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) and their spouses live lavishly at the public treasury's expense. For nearly a year, the country has been mired in a political transition under a "rotating presidency". The TPC is made up of nine members appointed by the country's main political and social sectors. It was supposed to embody the hope of democratic and administrative recovery. In many ways, it has become the symbol of an expensive, opaque, and ineffective state apparatus.
As the country faces endemic insecurity, institutional collapse, and rampant poverty, the nine members of the CPT enjoy a lifestyle that borders on the indecent. According to credible sources, each advisor receives between US$63,000 and US$65,000 per month, at the current rate, a net salary paid directly from state coffers. This represents more than half a million US dollars per month, exclusively for this presidential committee, in a country where the daily minimum wage is around two dollars.
The $63,000 to $65,000 per month that TPC members receive does not come from a single monthly salary, but from a set of combined allowances, carefully concealed under different budget headings.
Among these privileges is an envelope of 500,000 gourdes intended for the “spouse” of each councilor. None of the spouses of the TPC members hold public office. None work for the administration. Yet, each month, the state pays them the equivalent of more than 3,500 US dollars. The lack of clarity surrounding this allowance fuels suspicions of organized embezzlement.
Added to this is an additional 450,000 gourdes for a “second residence,” an unjustifiable premium in a country where thousands of families live in precarious camps or sleep in the open. These privileges are even granted to the Council’s two observers, even though they lack voting rights.
Finally, internal sources report that funds earmarked for state intelligence services are also being redistributed among TPC members, rather than being allocated to protecting the population. While the majority of citizens flounder in chronic social distress, a political elite without a legal popular mandate is monopolizing state resources, without producing the slightest progress.
The Silent Scandal of the Transition
This legal misappropriation of public funds by the TPC is not subject to any investigation, audit, or official questioning. Civil society remains muzzled, and judicial institutions are ineffective.
The TPC today embodies a painful paradox: power without legitimacy, means without results, privileges without justification. At a time when the country needs sober, courageous leadership focused on the general interest, it finds itself hostage to a political caste that confuses public mission with personal income.
Translated by CHIP editors
Posted April 12, 2025