On Monday, at the opening ceremony of the CARICOM Conference of Heads of State and Government, occured a State protocol incident, which failed to mention the Presidents of the two Houses of the Haitian Parliament. Following this incident, a correspondence signed by Joseph Lambert, President of the Senate and Gary Bodeau, President of the Chamber of Deputies, was sent to the Prime Minister.

Letter from the Presidents of both Houses :

"The Haitian Parliament, in its two branches, expresses by the voice of the Presidents of its Bureaux, its deep disappointment with the disregard of the rules displayed by the State Protocol Service during official ceremonies.

To convince you, he refers to the Opening Ceremony of the Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Caribbean of Monday, February 26, 2016. The presenter or master of ceremony totally ignored the presence of Presidents of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies. And if the President of Haiti and the Secretary General of CARICOM had not mentioned the titles of these politicians in their addresses, it would have seemed that they had refused to participate in the solemnity of the day.

Parliament asks you to kindly instruct and urge the State Protocol to pay more respect to persons who, without belonging to the Executive, remain eminent political and institutional figures to whom the Republican Protocol places a high rank in the hierarchy of powers.

In the absence of this recognition and the respect due to their rank, the dignitaries of Parliament would see themselves in the understandable obligation to abstain henceforth from any official ceremony.

The Presidents of the Bureaux of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies renew to you, Prime Minister, the assurances of their high considerations."

IH/ iciHaiti