Twenty people become enough to found a political party

A law published in Le Moniteur on 16 January 2014, under the Martelly government, allowed a political party in Haiti to be formed with twenty members. A decree of 1986, written in the weeks after the Duvalier dictatorship fell, had required twenty signatories and five thousand members. The result showed at the next election. One hundred and sixty six parties were certified for the voting eventually held in 2016, and more appeared afterwards as sitting deputies walked out of the parties that had elected them to start their own. A chamber made of private vehicles is hard to hold to any programme. Deputies in Haiti control the small sums that reach local government and spend them to buy loyalty at election time, which leaves the average mayor with almost nothing to administer. Cheap parties made that pattern cheaper to run, and it works against what the Constitution of 1987 asked for, which was a state whose power reached the communal sections.