Individuals, Institutions, and Haiti’s Search for a Credible Center
Individuals, Institutions, and Haiti’s Search for a Credible Center By Patrick Prézeau Stephenson* (Le Français suit) New York — In the noise-saturated arena of Haitian political advocacy—diaspora radio waves, digital pulpits, WhatsApp forums, improvised think tanks—two familiar figures continue to shape conversations far beyond the island’s shoreline: Rod Joseph, the ex-paratrooper turned U.S. congressional aspirant, and Dr. Jean Fils-Aimé, the theologian–public intellectual whose critiques of Haitian spiritual and social decay have built a transnational following. Their voices are assertive, mobilizing, unapologetically personal. They are, in many ways, archetypes of the Haitian and diasporic impulse toward heroic agency. But they now stand in increasingly sharp contrast with another approach emerging from within Haiti’s civic fabric: the “Congrès Patriotique de Sauvetage National / Kongrè Patriyotik pou Sovtaj Nasyonal” —a coalition-driven, multi-regional, p...