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Haiti's Judicial and Executive Branches are both getting what they deserve this holiday season- each other. After 22 months of close collaboration to trample Haiti's Constitution and democracy, they have now turned their destructive energies on each other. The Cour de Cassation (Supreme Court) outraged Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue on December 8 by decreeing that Dumarsais Simeus was wrongfully disqualified from the upcoming Presidential elections. Latortue retaliated the next day by firing five of the Cour's justices, replacing them with henchmen. The judiciary went on strike, which has shut down the justice system for four weeks. It is a measure of how far Haiti has strayed from constitutional rule since the February 2004 coup d'etat that both sides in this dispute are wrong. The Cour de Cassation wrongly reinstated Simeus' illegal candidacy not once, but twice. Simeus cannot be President because the Constitution requires Presidential candidates to have lived in the country for the last five years, and to have never taken foreign citizenship. Mr. Simeus readily concedes in media interviews that he resides in Southlake Texas and has obtained U.S. citizenship. Prime Minister Latortue's objection to the Cour's decision is right, but he is the wrong man to make it. The same residency requirement applies to Presidents and Prime Ministers alike, and Mr. Latortue lived in Boca Raton Florida for years before being illegally installed as Prime Minister by the U.S. and Haitian elites in March 2004. The Constitution requires an interim government to hold elections within 90 days from taking office, but Latortue will have 700 days in office, at the very least. Latortue's response to the Cour's decision is equally wrong. As in the U.S., justices in Haiti can only be removed through specific procedures, for duly established wrongdoing or permanent physical or mental incapacity. Latortue did not even give lip service to any of these procedures, he just fired the justices. Later his aides claimed that the justices were old and needed to be retired, but the Constitution does not recognize that claim. Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, for example, was arrested without a warrant in October, 2004. When the government could produce no evidence against him, a courageous judge, Judge Fleury, ordered him released. The Minister of Justice then forced Judge Fleury off the bench, This "pre-trial" detention may be a death sentence- Fr. Jean-Juste has just been diagnosed with leukemia. The kind of leukemia he likely has can be treated, but not in Haiti's prisons. Amnesty International, the UN Human Rights Commission, 45 members of the U.S. Congress and human rights groups all over the world have criticized the injustice of Fr. Jean-Juste's persecution. Not one member of the Haitian judiciary has spoken against it, at least in public. Half Hour a Week for Haiti | Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
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