PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The head of Haiti’s National Police told The Associated Press on Friday that authorities are still working on a plan to safely hold general elections this year as promised by the government, despite persistent gang violence.
André Jonas Vladimir Paraison, who became the department’s interim head in August, said he could not provide more details but would release more information soon.
“We have a plan for the election, but it’s still in the kitchen and has not finished cooking yet,” he said.
When asked if he felt Haiti would be ready to hold elections this year, Paraison side-stepped the question.
Haiti’s government has said it plans to hold general elections in late August and a runoff in early December. On Friday, the Provisional Electoral Council announced that it plans to open registration for political parties and their candidates starting March 2 until March 12.
It’s been more than a decade since Haiti last held a general election, and gang violence has only worsened since President Jovenel Moïse was killed in July 2021 at his private residence.
Paraison said Haiti’s situation has “exploded,” but that police officers are working to reestablish security so Haitians can resume their lives.
Gang violence has displaced a record 1.4 million people in a country of nearly 12 million inhabitants, with armed men controlling an estimated 90% of Port-au-Prince, the capital, and seizing swaths of territory in the country’s central region.
The violence also has forced thousands of businesses and hundreds of schools to close.
More than 5,900 people were reported killed last year and more than 2,700 injured, according to U.N. statistics.
Paraison said he hopes to boost the number of officers to better protect Haitians. He recently oversaw the gradation of nearly 900 cadets but said more are needed.
U.N. officials have said that Haiti in recent years had less than two officers per 1,000 inhabitants, well below the international standard.
Despite a depleted force, Paraison has overseen recent operations in the heart of gang-controlled territories, retaking areas including Carrefour-Aéroport, a key intersection.
Police also are issuing more statements about the number of suspected gang members killed during those operations.
Paraison noted that gangs are heavily armed and have a surplus of guns and ammunition. “Don’t forget, Haiti doesn’t make weapons. The weapons here come from somewhere else,” he said.
Experts have previously estimated that there could be as many as half a million small arms in Haiti, while a 2023 U.N. report found that increasingly sophisticated weapons including .50 caliber sniper rifles and even belt-fed machine guns are smuggled into Haiti mainly from the U.S., especially Florida.
Haiti’s National Police are working alongside a U.N.-backed mission led by Kenyan police that has remained underfunded and understaffed as it continues to fight gangs. A so-called gang suppression force is expected to replace the mission in upcoming months.
Associated Press reporter Dánica Coto in San José, Costa Rica contributed.
People watch police work a crime scene after a foiled attempted kidnapping in the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
Students walk past a police station that was set on fire by armed gangs in the Carrefour Aeoport area of the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
Haitian Police Chief Vladimir Paraison gives an interview at police headquarters in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
NEW YORK (AP) — Neil Sedaka, the hit-making singer-songwriter whose boyish soprano and bright melodies made him a top act in the early years of rock ‘n' roll and led to a second run of success in the 1970s, has died.
Sedaka, whose hits included “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” and “Laughter in the Rain,” died Friday at age 86.
“Our family is devastated by the sudden passing of our beloved husband, father and grandfather, Neil Sedaka,” his family said in a statement. “A true rock and roll legend, an inspiration to millions, but most importantly, at least to those of us who were lucky enough to know him, an incredible human being who will be deeply missed.”
No other details of his death were immediately available.
A key member of the Brill Building songwriting factory, Sedaka teamed with lyricist and boyhood neighbor Howard Greenfield on songs that reflected the teen innocence of the post-Elvis, pre-Beatles era of the late 1950 and early 1960s, including “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen,” “Calendar Girl” and “Oh! Carol,” a lament for his high school sweetheart, Carole King.
After a long dry spell, he reemerged with such smashes as “Laughter in the Rain” and “Bad Blood.” The Captain & Tennille's cover of his “Love Will Keep Us Together” was a chart-topper in 1975.
Short and dark-haired, with a big smile and high-pitched voice, he was a Juilliard-trained, Brooklyn-born son of a Jewish taxi driver who began performing as a teen and kept at it for decades.
Sedaka still played dozens of concerts a year well into his 80s. He retained the enthusiasm and broad vocal range of his youth and never tired of the standards he had sung hundreds of times.
“Past 70, Pavarotti told me the vocal cords are not what they used to be. I’m very fortunate that my voice has held,” he told The Associated Press in 2012. “It’s nice to be a legend, but it’s better to be a working legend.”
Sedaka’s songs sold millions worldwide and have been covered by a range of performers, from Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra to The 5th Dimension and Nickelback. Sedaka helped propel the career of Connie Francis with “Stupid Cupid” and “Where the Boys Are,” the latter for the soundtrack of the movie with the same name. The Captain & Tennille received a best-album Grammy thanks largely to “Love Will Keep Us Together” and included a nod to Sedaka at the end of the song, when Toni Tennille exclaimed “Sedaka’s back!”
Sedaka grew up in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood, pampered by his grandparents, aunts and mother in a two-bedroom apartment he shared with 11 relatives. He has a street there named in his honor, Neil Sedaka Way.
But his music compensated for his unpopularity as a kid, he once recalled. His talent was recognized by a second-grade teacher who urged his homemaker mother, Eleanor, to buy him a piano. She went to work in a department store to pay for a secondhand upright and managed his career for years, as did his wife, Leba.
Sedaka loved songwriting and never quit, but he craved performing.
“Once a performer, always a performer. It’s that adrenaline rush. It’s like a natural high when you’re in front of an audience, and if you get that standing ovation, it’s infectious,” he told the AP.
At 16, Sedaka was chosen by Arthur Rubenstein in a contest as the city’s best high school piano student and performed on a classical radio station as a prize. It was the same year he discovered rock ‘n’ roll, when he performed a song, “Mr. Moon,” he had written with Greenfield, his classmate at Abraham Lincoln High School.
“I sang it in the auditorium for a ballyhoo show and I remember there was a bit of a riot. The kids were jumping and screaming,” Sedaka said. “After that I was able to go into the sweet shop with the tough kids with the leather jackets.”
After high school, and then Julliard, Sedaka and Greenfield were signed to Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music, where they scored their first hit with Francis, “Stupid Cupid.”
In 1958, at age 19, Sedaka signed with RCA Victor Records and his first single, “The Diary,” enjoyed modest success. He began touring and promoting his songs through regular TV appearances on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” and “Shindig!”
At the Brill Building, Sedaka and Greenfield were joined by other up-and-coming writers and lyricists including King, Neil Diamond and Paul Simon.
From 1959 to 1962, Sedaka had 10 records in the Top 10, including “Calendar Girl,” “Oh! Carol,” “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen” and “Next Door to an Angel.” But in the mid-1960s, the Brill Building sound, influenced by the doo-wop groups of the New York City streets, was pushed off the charts by the Beatles -led British Invasion and the psychedelic and protest music that followed. Sedaka would endure 13 years “in the wilderness,” as he described it to the AP.
Sedaka was among the lucky, however, enjoying a renaissance that began in the mid-’70s thanks to the patronage of Elton John, whom he met at a party after Sedaka moved his wife and two kids to England to take advantage of his lingering popularity there. John signed him to his fledgling, U.S.-based Rocket Records label, providing him a chance at more hits with the album “Sedaka’s Back.”
At Rocket, Sedaka and a new writing partner, Philip Cody, topped charts with “Bad Blood” and the joyous “Laughter in the Rain.” He also achieved a rare feat with “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” His original up-tempo version went No. 1 in 1962. He rerecorded it as a slow ballad in 1975 and that, too, went No. 1.
He recorded five albums from 1972 to 1976. They included hits “Standing on the Inside,” “That’s Where the Music Takes Me” and “Our Last Song Together,” about his breakup with Greenfield, with whom he began writing songs when Sedaka was only 13 and Greenfield 16.
He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, but the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame eluded him despite a fan petition drive.
Sedaka married wife Leba in 1962. They had two children. Daughter Dara recorded a duet with dad in 1980, “Should’ve Never Let You Go.” It was a hit, but she never joined him in the music business. Son Marc is a film and television writer.
AP Entertainment Writers Mark Kennedy in New York and Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles contributed. Leanne Italie, the principal writer of this story, retired in January.
FILE - Composer Neil Sedaka, and his wife, Leba Sedaka, attend the New York City Ballet's gala opening night of Paul McCartney's "Ocean's Kingdom" on Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011 in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File)
FILE - Neil Sedaka poses for a portrait in New York, Monday, April 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, File)
FILE - Singer and song writer Neil Sedaka appears on the NBC "Today" television show in New York Thursday Oct. 25, 2007. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
FILE - Recording artist Neil Sedaka poses for a portrait Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010 in New York. (AP Photo/Jeff Christensen, File)
