Boniface Alexandre

Boniface Alexandre (; 31 July 1936 – 4 August 2023) was a Haitian lawyer and jurist who served as the president of the Supreme Court of Haiti from 2002 to 2004. After the 2004 coup d'état that removed Jean-Bertrand Aristide, he served as provisional president of Haiti until 2006.

Alexandre was born in Ganthier. After being trained as a lawyer, he worked at a law firm in Port-au-Prince for over two decades. He was appointed as a judge to the Court of Appeals in the late 1980s, and was named to the Supreme Court of Haiti in 1990. In 2002, he was appointed president of the Supreme Court by Aristide. While serving in that role, in 2004 Alexandre assumed the presidency, in accordance with the succession rules of the Haitian constitution. He had a largely symbolic role during his acting presidency and oversaw a transitional government that was tasked with organizing general elections. He stepped down as president after René Préval's victory in the presidential election, and later worked as a law professor. In 2020 the Jovenel Moïse administration made Alexandre the head of the Independent Advisory Committee to draft a new constitution.

Early life and career Boniface Alexandre was born in Ganthier, Ouest, Haiti, on 31 July 1936. He received his primary education at the National School of Ganthier, and secondary education at the Lycée Alexandre Pétion in Port-au-Prince. He was raised by his uncle, Martial Célestin, Haiti's first prime minister, and became a lawyer. Alexandre began working at a young age and took on the responsibility of financially supporting his siblings before starting his own family. At one point he left the city and returned to Ganthier to avoid the Tonton Macoute, the Duvalier dictatorship's secret police. and was made the president of the court in 2002 by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. That evening, Haiti's permanent representative to the United Nations submitted Alexandre's request for international assistance, which included authorization for foreign troops to enter the country. It was granted by Security Council Resolution 1529, establishing the Multinational Interim Force, which became the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) under Security Council Resolution 1542 on 30 April.

Alexandre and Neptune formed a government with assistance from the Caribbean Community. On 4 March, a Tripartite Council was formed with one representative each from Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas, the opposition Convergence Démocratique, and the international community. This group selected a seven-member Conseil des sages on 5 March, which included members from key sectors of Haitian society. During Alexandre's acting presidency, Amnesty International reported "excessive use of force by police officers", extrajudicial executions, a lack of investigations into these, escalation of "unlawful killings and kidnappings by illegal armed groups", failure of officials to prevent and punish violence against women, dysfunctionality of the justice system, and forty or more people imprisoned without charge or trial.

He and the transitional government organized the 2006 Haitian general election, which was originally planned to be held in late 2005 before being delayed. Alexandre called on the international community to support Haiti's elections at the 60th session of the UN General Assembly in September 2005, stating "We call upon the world not to leave Haiti alone and isolated; this way, on 7 February 2006, I will be able to hand over power to a newly and freely elected President and place Haiti, once and for all, within the community of democratic nations." Alexandre left office on 14 May 2006, when René Préval, winner of the presidential election, was sworn in as president.

Later career After stepping down as president, Alexandre taught law courses across Haiti. In October 2020 he became the head of the Independent Advisory Committee under President Jovenel Moïse to work on drafting a new constitution. During his time in office, he had considered the presidency to have a secondary role to the prime minister, but his view later changed. The draft that he proposed to acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry on 8 September 2021 became controversial. Alexandre stopped teaching due to the increasing violence during the gang war in Haiti, which caused him to stay at his home. Acting prime minister Ariel Henry called him "a great servant of the state, a brilliant lawyer and jurist, an eminent professor of civil law and civil procedure." Josué Pierre-Louis, secretary-general of the presidency, said that Alexandre had been "a true public servant having devoted more than half a century of his life to the judiciary and the teaching of civil law in Haiti."