(2012-06) Arrêté annulling the 3 June 2011 publication and re-issuing, for material errors, the Constitutional Law amending the 1987 Constitution as voted by the National Assembly on 9 May 2011
Summary — President Michel Martelly's arrêté of 19 June 2012, published as a special Le Moniteur issue, annuls the disputed 3 June 2011 correction and republishes what the National Assembly's Bureau certified as the authentic 2011 constitutional amendment text, following a year-long dispute over discrepancies between the version voted on 9 May 2011 and the version first printed on 13 May 2011. The reproduced amendment law overhauls large parts of the 1987 Constitution's preamble, nationality, citizenship, education, local-government and electoral provisions, and introduces a 30% gender quota.
Key Findings
- Documents a year-long institutional dispute over which text is the authentic 2011 constitutional amendment, resolved via a Cour de Cassation opinion citing Constitution Article 123.
- Introduces a 30% women's quota in public life and political parties (new Article 17.1 and 31.1.1).
- Sets a 25-percentage-point margin as sufficient for a first-round election win for deputies, senators and president (Articles 90.2, 94.3, 134bis).
- Standardizes elected terms: deputies 4 years, senators 6 years, local councils 4 years, all beginning the second Monday of January.
- Abrogates five nationality-related articles (12.1, 12.2, 13, 14, 15) and substantially rewrites citizenship and education chapters.
Full Description
This document records one of Haiti's most controversial legal episodes: the 2011-2012 constitutional amendment crisis. On 4 September 2009 the Executive asked the legislature to declare the 1987 Constitution amendable; the 48th Legislature proposed and the 49th Legislature, sitting as a Constituent Assembly, voted the amendment on 9 May 2011. However, the text published in Le Moniteur No. 58 (13 May 2011) did not faithfully reflect the version actually voted, and a first attempted correction (Arrêté of 3 June 2011, Le Moniteur No. 72) was itself disputed. Correspondence exchanged between the National Assembly's Bureau, the Corps Législatif, the Prime Minister and the President through December 2011 and June 2012, and a Cour de Cassation opinion invoking Constitution Article 123 (the President's duty to promulgate any law the legislature has voted absent a timely objection), led President Martelly to annul the 2011 correction and re-issue, 'for material errors,' the authentic text certified by the Assembly's Bureau on 22 December 2011. The reproduced Loi Constitutionnelle itself substantially rewrites the 1987 Constitution: it revises the preamble to add gender equity language; abrogates several nationality articles (12.1, 12.2, 13, 14, 15) and rewrites Articles 11-18 on citizenship; adds a 30% women's-representation quota (new Article 17.1) applicable to political parties and public life; expands education-rights articles (32-32.9) with State obligations on free schooling, vocational training, special-needs education and adult literacy; restructures local-government terms (communal-section councils, municipal councils, departmental councils all set at four years); reforms legislative-election rules, introducing a 25-point first-round win threshold (Articles 90.2, 94.3, 134bis) and standardizing deputy (4-year) and senator (6-year) terms with a fixed 'second Monday of January' inauguration date; and adjusts the National Assembly's powers (Article 98.3) and presidential-election procedures (Articles 134, 134.2, 135).