The power vacuum, earthquake and crime – Haiti sinks deeper into depression

Issued on: 09/16/2021 – 04:04 Modified: 09/16/2021 – 04:02

Port-au-Prince (AFP)

Haiti sank into confusion and fear on Wednesday, a day after the public prosecutor in Port-au-Prince was sacked over his request to indict the prime minister on suspicion of involvement in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise.

The country has been rudderless and has suffered a deepening humanitarian and political crisis since an armed assassination squad killed the president on July 7, a crisis that was exacerbated by a deadly earthquake a month later.

– The Prime Minister is in a hot seat –

Moyes’ last political act was to appoint Ariel Henry as Prime Minister as Prime Minister. But even before the funeral of the head of state, a confrontation erupted between Henry and his former temporary predecessor, Claude Joseph.

Amid pressure from various countries, tensions appeared to be easing, as politicians in Port-au-Prince unanimously demanded that those responsible for the president’s murder be brought to justice. Henry has solemnly pledged to do so.

But over the following weeks, the new prime minister proved unable to deliver on another promise: to create an atmosphere conducive to the organization of new elections.

Even worse, Henry is suspected of having had phone calls in the hours after the attack with one of the prime suspects in the president’s assassination. Henry denied the charge without any response, other than firing the attorney general who brought the charges against him.

– Vacuum Cleaner –

The sudden presidential vacuum since July 7 has been a fatal blow to democracy in Haiti. Moise has not held any elections since coming to power in 2017, and as a result, Haiti now has only 10 elected officials.

Members of Parliament left their seats in January 2020, leaving only a third of the Senate as the sole token guarantor of the legislature. But they lacked any ability to legislate or control the actions of a government whose legitimacy has been challenged.

Moyes, who was criticized by the opposition for his authoritarian overreach, also weakened the justice system by not appointing new judges to the higher ranks of the judiciary.

In February, after the conviction of an attempted coup, the late president illegally forced three appeals court judges into retirement. Lacking enough members to convene, the country’s highest court of justice is now paralyzed.

– No judgment in sight –

With a hollow political class in place, any interim administration for Haiti is now adrift.

After dozens of military coups, Haiti demobilized its army in 1995, but Moise reconstituted it in 2015. It still has only about 500 members, most of whom are engineers capable of handling more natural disasters than any foreign enemies.

The ranks of the national police force may have grown since its founding in 1995, but it still has fewer than 20,000 officers serving a crime-ridden nation of 10 million that has been shaken by internal conflicts.

The force has also seen its credibility undermined by the fact that no police officer protecting the president was injured during the assassination.

Over the past five years, the United Nations has steadily reduced its presence in the Caribbean country. The United Nations first withdrew its peacekeepers – sent in 2004 after the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide – in 2017, and then in 2019 ended their policing mission.

Modern Haiti’s problems come barely a decade after the 2010 earthquake that killed nearly 200,000 people and a subsequent cholera outbreak that killed another 10,000.

Foreign diplomats have observed all this very silently. Even if any informal exchanges with the Haitian political class have been organized, no official note on the crisis has been issued by the core group, made up of representatives of the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization of American States, as well as various embassies since July 17.

– Poverty, insecurity and earthquake –

At a time when most Haitians struggle to put food on the table, widespread insecurity is hampering any prospects for economic recovery.

Heavily armed gangs control several suburbs of the capital, carrying out kidnappings with impunity and regularly blocking any access to the country’s only oil ports.

Finally, a month after the earthquake that devastated southwestern Haiti and killed more than 2,200 people, some 650,000 Haitians, including 260,000 children and adolescents, still need emergency humanitarian aid, UNICEF said Tuesday.

© 2021 AFP

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