Law Amending the State of Emergency Law of 9 September 2008

The timing of this amendment is what makes it consequential. The state of emergency declared after the earthquake of 12 January 2010 was the legal basis for emergency procurement, for the reconstruction machinery and for the extraordinary powers exercised during that period, and this law reworks the 2008 statute under which it operated. The preamble reaches back through the instruments the emergency regime touches: the decree of 12 October 1977 granting the State the telecommunications monopoly, the law of 21 September 1983 creating the Pre-Disaster and Relief Organization (OPDES), and the decree of 20 October 1983 organizing the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communications, alongside constitutional articles 19, 36, 101, 105, 136, 159, 162, 163 and 269.1. Read against the corpus's post-earthquake reconstruction and public-finance material, this is the legal instrument that governed how those powers could be exercised. Published in Le Moniteur, 165th year, No. 29, Monday 19 April 2010, over the signature of René Préval.