Despite numerous criticisms and denunciations from various personalities and organized groups in society, the Transitional Presidential Council is maintaining its course in its intention to change the country’s Constitution. “The members of the CPT swore to uphold and enforce the 1987 Constitution. The majority of the acts issued by the CPT and the government target the Constitution. Attempting to have a new Constitution adopted in this context would constitute, on the part of the current political authorities, a violation of their oath and of the 1987 Constitution. Such an act is classifiable as high treason under Article 21 of the 1987 Constitution and punishable by forced labor for life without commutation of sentence (Article 21-1),” castigated the commission of the Port-au-Prince Bar Association in its report on the draft Constitution.

In this report, the commission notes that an original constituent act occurs under particular circumstances such as the birth of the State or the rupture of the legal order during a revolution or a coup d’état. “A new Constitution therefore cannot be adopted without a rupture of the previous constitutional order. It involves replacing a prior Constitution, undoing one order to replace it with another,” the commission maintains.