The National Assembly (, ) is the bicameral legislature of the Republic of Haiti, consisting of the upper house as the Senate (Sénat) and the lower house as the Chamber of Deputies (Chambre des Députés). Both assemblies conduct legislative sessions at the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Since January 2023, every seat in each house is vacant as elections have been repeatedly delayed and the final elected legislators' terms expired on January 10. History The National Assembly was preceded by the Council of State, a legislative council appointed by the head of state, mostly from among generals. The Council of State was first formed by Jean-Jacques Dessalines under his 1804 imperial constitution. Following his 1806 assassination, his northern general and the new Chief of the Provisional Government Henri Christophe called a Constituent Assembly to meet in Port-au-Prince in November. However, a power struggle ensued between supporters of Christophe and his fellow general Alexandre Petion. Christophe had sought to ensure a majority of parishes from his power base in the Northern and Artibonite departments in the Assembly, but Petion authorized the election of deputies from parishes in the Western and Southern departments, counteracting Christophe. This resulted in a constitution which was more favorable to Petion's demands for a republican form of government. Under Petion's guidance, the constitution was approved, and the Assembly elected Christophe president and elected a powerful unicameral 24-member Senate. Christophe and Petion came to violent blows, with Christophe eventually retreating to Cap Francais (now Cap-Haitien) and forming an "Assembly of the mandatories of the people" which elected him President and adopted his own constitution in February 1807. The Senate, meanwhile, met in Port-au-Prince, and formally replaced Christophe with then-Senator Petion as president. This resulted in two separately-governed countries. Petion eventually tired of the 1806 constitution's limitations on his power, and he eventually drafted a major revision to the constitution in 1816, which established a bicameral parliament, consisting of the House of Representatives of the Communes and the Senate, as well as a separate judicial branch headed by the Tribunal of Cassation. The new parliament also elected Petion president for life, and allowed him to govern more or less by decree. This era, which continued under Petion's successor Jean-Pierre Boyer, ended in 1843, when Boyer resigned and went into exile. A new provisional government assembled a Constituent Assembly, which drafted a new constitution and restored much of parliament's former power