Historical Memory, Conscience, and the Cost of Staying Too Long

Before you stop reading, please remember one thing: leadership is not solely a matter of law. It is also a matter of conscience and memory.

In Haiti, decisions taken at the top never occur in a historical vacuum. They echo unresolved conflicts, unfinished transitions, and dates that carry more weight than any press release. Among those dates, February 7 stands apart. It marks not just constitutional timelines, but a moral boundary between stewardship and overstay.

In recent weeks, Haiti has once again crossed into dangerous terrain. A Prime Minister continues to govern after a formal dismissal, sustained by external pressure and procedural improvisation. Some argue this is necessary for stability. Others insist legality remains ambiguous. Both arguments miss a deeper point: leadership requires more than legal defensibility; it demands historical conscience.

We have been here before. Following the end of his constitutional term on February 7, 2021, Jovenel Moïse chose to remain in office, citing constitutional defects and unresolved ambiguities. His decision was defended by some as legally arguable and condemned by others as illegitimate. What is beyond dispute is that it placed the presidency in a prolonged state of contestation, fracturing elite consensus, inflaming public mistrust, and eroding the moral authority of the office.

President Moïse was assassinated in July 2021. This must be said clearly and without equivocation: political violence is never justified. Responsibility for assassination lies solely with those who plan and carry out such acts. To state this is not a legal caveat; it is a moral absolute.

But leadership demands the courage to learn from tragedy without exploiting it. The lesson of 2021 is not that constitutional disputes cause assassination. That would be reckless and false. The lesson is more sober and more demanding: when authority detaches itself from broadly accepted legitimacy, leaders enter a zone of heightened institutional fragility, political volatility, and personal risk.

In Haiti, staying in power after a widely contested endpoint, whether the end of a constitutional term or a formal dismissal, does not happen in neutral conditions. It unfolds amid armed actors, fragmented elites, and a political culture where ambiguity has repeatedly been weaponized. In such an environment, persistence can unintentionally amplify danger not only for the individual, but for the state itself.

Today’s situation bears troubling structural similarities. A Prime Minister governs after dismissal, without a constitutional arbiter, and amid intense external pressure. The institutions meant to resolve such contradictions are absent or expired. What remains is not stability, but suspension—authority exercised without settlement.

This is where conscience must intervene. Leadership is not only about asking Can I remain? It is about asking Should I remain—and at what cost?

Good conscience in leadership requires recognizing when persistence becomes repetition. And repetition, in Haiti’s history, has too often led to tragedy. It is time for us adopt a novel principle that stepping aside is not a sign of weakness. It can be an act of statecraft.

History offers many examples where leaders preserved the dignity of institutions—and sometimes their own lives—by recognizing when their continued presence did more harm than good. Departure, when timed with clarity and honesty, can expose broken systems rather than legitimize them. It can return responsibility to the nation instead of allowing illegality to be normalized in the name of continuity.

None of this guarantees safety. None of it promises immediate order. But it restores something essential that Haiti has lost too often: moral clarity.

Haiti’s crisis is not only institutional. It is ethical. It asks leaders to weigh law against legitimacy, power against memory, survival against responsibility. It asks them to remember that history does not only judge what leaders did, but what they failed to learn.

The hardest question in politics is rarely How do I stay? It is When must I go? For Haiti’s leaders, answering that question with conscience may be the most important act of leadership left.