Haiti's electoral council drops rule targeting candidates sanctioned by foreign countries

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Haitian political candidates will no longer need to show that their assets are free from sanctions by a foreign country under a decree by the council preparing for long-delayed elections , but politicians under U.N. sanctions will remain barred from running.

Well-known politicians sanctioned by the U.S., Canada and the European Union include former Haitian President Michel Martelly and former Haitian Senate President Youri Latortue . They have not publicly announced plans to run in the upcoming general elections, the first to be held in more than a decade.

Potential candidates are no longer required to submit a certificate from the Bank of the Republic of Haiti confirming that they are free from asset freezes and eligible to run, according to an official document made public on Thursday. They'll still need to submit other documents, including about any criminal record.

Those sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council remain ineligible. Nine Haitians have been sanctioned by the council, nearly all of them gang leaders, as well as Prophane Victor , a former lawmaker long accused of arming gangs.

Some critics say the latest rule changes by Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council remove safeguards and accountability measures that are important for the elections.

Michael Deibert, an author of books about Haiti, said the new rules show no effort to block candidates who have been “credibly linked” to wrongdoing. “We have seen from multiple iterations of these interim authorities in Haiti a desire of the political class to protect itself above everything,” Deibert said.

A new report submitted to the U.N. Security Council and made public this week details the deep ties between gangs and the country’s political and economic actors as it warned of a surge in violence leading up to the elections.

Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council has pushed back the deadline for candidates to register to Oct. 31, but it has not made any announcements about the general election date, still officially slated for Dec. 13.

Former Haitian Prime Minister Evans Paul criticized the latest change, warning Friday on X that “the country is sinking into an endless transition, where every new rule is perceived as a tool for partisan political control rather than a step toward democracy.”

“The government’s legal instability is killing the process,” he wrote. “By constantly altering the rules, the authorities have sabotaged the very process they claimed to be organizing.”

More than 784,000 voters have been enrolled so far in a country of more than 12 million people. Only 58,695 of them are registered in the Artibonite region, Haiti’s second-largest electoral district, and one that has seen an unprecedented surge in gang violence this year.

Thirteen presidential hopefuls have registered so far, along with 929 House candidates, 755 mayoral candidates and 282 Senate candidates, according to a preliminary online tally by the electoral council, although those numbers do not represent an official or definitive list.