BREAKING: Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in an attack at his private residence, the country's interim prime minister says (via AP) https://twitter.com/business/status/1412720459251060737 https://twitter.com/AP/status/1412721501997080578
March 1, 2021
After a Decade of Misrule, the People of Haiti Have Had Enough But apprentice dictator Jovenel Moïse won’t go as long as the Biden administration backs his violent, corrupt regime. A population with too much experience in the methods of dictatorship sees in President Jovenel Moïse an emerging strongman. In August 2020, a respected human rights group accused his government of outright collusion with the gangs in a Port-au-Prince shantytown, in a report ominously titled “Assassinations, Ambushes, Hostage-Takings, Rape, Arson, Home-Invasions.” Another much-feared gang, under the leadership of the strangely charismatic criminal Jimmy Cherizier (aka Barbecue), has staged marches honoring Moïse. Meanwhile, Moïse allowed the Haitian legislature to lapse, and has been ruling by decree for more than a year now. He is trying to amend Haiti’s constitution to permit consecutive presidential terms, which were outlawed in order to prevent the development of presidential cults of personality, as in the Duvalier era. Last month, Moïse, facing rising unrest, falsely accused opposition leaders of staging a coup against him and of planning to assassinate him, and rounded up 23 of them, many still languishing today in one of Haiti’s inexcusable prisons. Among them are health care workers and judges from Haiti’s Supreme Court. Because during this spate of arrests, Moïse also shut down the Supreme Court. Here’s what’s really going on, and it circles around disputed elections—an incendiary topic that we in the United States now understand more intimately than we used to. Moïse and his predecessor, pop musician Michel Martelly, were each elected in highly questionable votes. Martelly seemed to have lost his election in 2011, but the OAS—with the support of then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her husband, the UN’s special envoy to Haiti, as well as the French and Canadian governments—investigated the balloting and decided that Martelly had won enough votes to participate in the runoff voting. In this OAS-sanctioned runoff, Martelly emerged as the victor. A wide sector of the Haitian public did not believe in this election’s validity. >A wide sector of the Haitian public did not believe in this election’s validity. Five years later, Moïse, tapped by Martelly to run for president after Martelly’s term ended, was elected in balloting with very low turnout and vote-counting issues. That election was annulled, and an interim president installed until a new election could be held, which also suffered from low turnout and questions about the final count, but was eventually validated by the OAS. Along with the OAS, the same outsiders, known as “the international community” or the Core Group, continued to support the Martelly-Moïse relay of the presidential office, and continue to this day. That means they’ve supported a decade of rule by presidents chosen in highly suspect elections. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/haiti-moise-corruption-protest/
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HAITI
