Bitter struggle for power in Haiti after the assassination of Jovenel Moïse as the country collapses

The race to fill Haiti’s political vacuum following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse turned into a high-stakes power game on Saturday, with rivals fighting for the nation’s leadership amid allegations of ” coup ”in progress.

The struggle for control of the country came as Acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph asked for help from the United States and UN troops. Meanwhile, what remains of the non-functioning Senate has attempted to appoint one of its own as the new president against the will of the interim government.

Infighting could complicate any international effort to help Haiti and prevent it from descending into violence.

Four men claimed the presidency or the post of prime minister, including Joseph, who has been widely recognized internationally but faces a serious challenge to his authority in the country. The struggle for power reveals the extreme fragility of the Haitian state, whose foundations were already on the verge of collapse before the first shots were fired early Wednesday at the Moïse complex in the heights of Port-au-Prince, the capital.

Since the murder Haiti has plunged into a complex crisis that threatens to create Somalia in the Caribbean: a failed state 1,200 km off the coast of Florida, plagued by violence, disease, inflation and growing hunger, and controlled by warring factions and weak nominal governments.

The Joseph administration’s request for troops, meanwhile, presents the Biden administration with its biggest foreign policy test in the Western Hemisphere. But in Haiti, the prospect of US forces also divides a nation laden with painful memories of foreign intervention.

“We have no answer to that in the Constitution,” said Bernard Gousse, former Minister of Justice and jurist. “We are in a constitutional desert.”

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Ariel Henry, the 71-year-old neurosurgeon who was appointed new prime minister by Moses two days before his assassinationor, he alleged in an interview with the Washington Post on Saturday that he is the nation’s rightful leader and that Joseph was in open “rebellion” against him.

He said he was informed that a high-level security meeting would be held without him. After that, he changed his safety gear and moved to a safe place for his protection.

“I started to think of a coup” against the authority that Moses had given him, he said. “I started to worry about my own safety.”

“I will speak with [Joseph], and maybe he will have to do something to convince him that he has to stop, “said Henry, saying only that he would resort to the use of an unspecified” lever “to take the control of Haiti. He also criticized Joseph’s call for foreign troops as premature.

“I don’t want to cause more difficulties in the country,” he said. “His way of acting could put the country in danger. We could have a lot of violence. I’m trying to prevent it. “

Joseph declined an interview. But Mathias Pierre, Haitian minister of elections and interparty relations, said it was Henry who was attempting a “coup” at a time when the nation was suffering.

“According to the Constitution, whoever runs the country will lead the country until the elections, and that is what we are doing,” he said. “Henry could try to launch a coup with the help of the senators. I say, by what law? With what constitution is he Prime Minister? He has no government ”.

Friday, Members of the country’s helpless Senate – it lacks the legal quorum due to the expiration of the electoral calendar – voted to have the body’s president, Joseph Lambert, was the country’s interim president.

One of the senators, Patrice Dumont, said he was strongly opposed to an interim government led by Joseph. But he also did not sign the resolution to appoint a new president, because such a decision “cannot be made in a small room. I ask for a special public hearing, so that they can explain their reasons ”.

A possible fourth candidate for power, Joseph Mécène Jean-Louis, was declared interim president by opposition parties earlier this year. Jean-Louis accepted the title, but remained silent after the murder.

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Since the African slaves of the island of Hispaniola got rid of the yoke of French rule over two centuries ago, Haiti has suffered like few other nations. The nation faces the legacy of colonialism and foreign debt. To this must be added: the occupations of the United States and the UN, brutal dictatorships and the seizure of internal power. Among the devastating natural disasters is the 2010 earthquake, in which around 250,000 people died.

The Biden administration said it was sending FBI and Department of Homeland Security personnel to Haiti to assess the country’s needs, but declined to agree to a troop deployment.

In a country that has suffered repeated foreign interventions – in 2016, the United Nations recognized that its peacekeepers played a role in a deadly cholera outbreak after the 2010 earthquake – the suggestion to send troops in the field aroused passions.

“We don’t want foreign troops in the country,” said Monique Clesca, a Haitian democracy advocate and former UN official. “We are traumatized by cholera. We don’t trust [Naciones Unidas]. We don’t trust the United States. We don’t trust Claude Joseph. The international community must listen to the Haitian people and respect our sovereignty ”.

Even while Moïse lived, the authority of the Haitian state was diluted, fragmented, and struggled to maintain order. A week before the murder, armed gangs ransacked the streets of Port-au-Prince, opening fire and killing at least 15 people. Gangs burned down houses, committed systematic rapes and murders, and grew into small empires based on networks of extortion and kidnapping.

According to some estimates, they now control between 30 and 60% of the national territory.

The response from the Haitian authorities is minimal.

The country has virtually no functioning institutions. Its police force is rife with rivalry and corruption. In February, Moïse claimed the government foiled a coup plot involving a Supreme Court judge, resulting in the arrest of at least 20 people.

There are even controversial versions of the Haitian Constitution.

Under the most recent constitution – which is not universally recognized – parliament must meet within 60 days to elect a new interim leader in case the presidency remains vacant for a fourth year in office, as it was. the case with Moses before his death. . But that cannot happen now, because Haiti does not have a functioning parliament. In theory, this forces a clause that would leave the prime minister in charge.

Joseph claimed he was still acting prime minister at the time of the president’s death and therefore should be the nation’s acting head. Henry insists he is the rightful prime minister, even though he did not officially take power at the time of the assassination.

An earlier version of the constitution first returns the chain of command to the chief justice. However, he died of the coronavirus last month.

“The only solution at the moment is for the actors to have a political dialogue,” said Laurent Weill, a Haitian expert from The Economist’s Intelligence Unit. “But given the climate of mistrust, this is extremely unlikely.”

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The United States urged Joseph to stay on track for the elections scheduled for September; a promise your government has kept. But a number of political actors argue that elections are indeed impossible as long as gangs continue to rule the streets.

It has made the struggle for power even more pressing now. Whoever controls the country can now remain head of state for an extended period, given the challenges of choosing a new legitimate ruler, analysts say.

“To me, it’s ridiculous that the State Department is talking about elections. Someone has just killed the president, ”said Ralph Chevry, member of the board of directors of the Center for Socio-Economic Policy of Haiti in Port-au-Prince. “There are four opposing factions of the police. There is no security. There are 100 gangs with guns. There is no way to organize an election. People are too afraid to vote ”.

The nature of the murder has raised more questions than answers so far.

The government presented the attackers as a squad of 28 former Colombian military personnel and their two Haitian-American interpreters. However, they apparently encountered virtually no resistance at the president’s home., and they had no escape plan. Most of them stayed for hours in areas close to the scene of the murder.

Investigators who interviewed the Americans, relatives of the Colombian men, suggested the men were unaware of a mission to kill the president – but possibly to arrest him.

On Saturday, it was reported that Moïse’s security chief Dimitri Hérard visited Colombia and Ecuador in May. The report, however, did not disclose details of his time in those countries. Hérard was summoned for questioning as part of the murder investigation.

The same media also published WhatsApp messages sent in April between a retired colonel and several former Colombian soldiers who participated in the operation in Haiti.

In Haiti, however, a lack of confidence in the police has led to widespread skepticism about the investigation, and civil society leaders have expressed relief at the involvement of the FBI and other international groups charged with the investigation. law enforcement.

“An international investigation is the only way to know what really happened to Jovenel Moïse”, Pierre Espérance, director of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights in Haiti.

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