I was quoted in this week's article about The Economist on the situation in Haiti.
Feb 27th 2021
Hoping against hope
Can Haiti rid itself of Jovenel Moïse?
The country needs a new leader. It is not clear when it will get one
The Economist
(Read the original article here)
NIXON BOUMBA
used to take morning jogs through the prosperous Pacot neighbourhood in
Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. The area has steep, tree-lined streets
and “gingerbread” houses. (These wooden-lattice structures, built in
the early 1900s, survived a devastating earthquake in 2010.) But Mr
Boumba does not jog any more. A surge of kidnappings and murders has
kept him indoors (see chart). The gangs responsible for those crimes
often have links to the police and politicians. The true number of
attacks is probably far higher than the reported one. “We are living in a
time of terror,” says Mr Boumba, a human-rights activist.
Terror
has not stopped him from joining protests against President Jovenel
Moïse. These have been going on for more than two years, provoked
initially by economic hardship and allegations of corruption. Since
January this year crime, and the fear that Mr Moïse is setting himself
up as a dictator, have sparked a new wave. The protesters contend that
his term ended on February 7th this year. They want his immediate
departure.
Terror has not stopped him from joining
protests against President Jovenel Moïse. These have been going on for
more than two years, provoked initially by economic hardship and
allegations of corruption. Since January this year crime, and the fear
that Mr Moïse is setting himself up as a dictator, have sparked a new
wave. The protesters contend that his term ended on February 7th this
year. They want his immediate departure.
Those
making that demand are divided into two broad groups. They are as much
at odds with each other as they are with the president. Pro-democracy
idealists like Mr Boumba are mainly activists, professionals and young
people. They have no political parties or elected officials. The
established opposition is led by former office-holders. Some have been
allies of Mr Moïse. They join the anti-Moïse agitation, but are regarded
by the idealists as being just as corrupt as the regime. They seem
interested only in taking power, says Rosy Auguste Ducena, a
human-rights lawyer. Haiti’s hope lies with the new generation. But the
three-way fight makes it harder to predict who will steer the country’s
future.
Mr Moïse, a former plantation manager who
calls himself “Banana Man”, exemplifies the failings of recent Haitian
presidents and has added to them. Popular anger flared in 2017 after
reports, which he denies, that he had stolen millions of dollars from
PetroCaribe, an aid programme paid for by Venezuela. These allegations,
plus fuel shortages and high inflation, provoked demonstrations in the
following year. In 2019 a peyi lock (internal blockade) closed
schools and businesses for months. This deepened a recession that had
already started. Today 35% of Haitians are suffering acute hunger,
according to the UN. In the pandemic’s first wave around 120,000 Haitians lost jobs in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, increasing the misery.
Mr
Moïse’s alleged use of violence against opponents and his flouting of
democratic norms remind some people of “Baby Doc” Duvalier, Haiti’s last
despot, who was overthrown in 1986. His foes accuse him of overseeing
Haiti’s “gangsterisation”. Politicians have long had links to criminals,
but Mr Moïse’s seem especially strong, his critics say. (He denies
these claims.) In January Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, a former police
officer and leader of G9 and Family, an alliance of
gangs, led a march in defence of Mr Moïse. Last year the United States
imposed sanctions on Mr Cherizier and on two senior officials in Mr
Moïse’s administration for planning a massacre by police of at least 71
people in 2018 in La Saline, in Port-au-Prince. The motives are unclear.
Many gangs are widely thought to have agreements with the government to
silence opposition neighbourhoods in exchange for impunity. Mr Moïse
disputes this, too.
Within the
government, it is Mr Moïse himself who enforces compliance. In the
absence of a functioning legislature, he has been ruling by decree since
January 2020. Legislative elections were not held on schedule because
parliament failed to pass an election law during the peyi lock.
Just ten members of the 30-seat Senate still hold electoral mandates
and none of the lower house’s 119 seats is occupied. There are no
serving mayors.
In November Mr Moïse
created an intelligence agency, answerable only to him, and widened the
definition of terrorism to include acts of dissent. In February this
year he forced three Supreme Court judges into early retirement and
ordered the arrest of a score of his most prominent detractors, accusing
them of plotting a coup.
Mr Moïse disputes the opposition’s claim
that his term is already up. He took office in 2017, after a re-run of a
flawed election held two years earlier. His five-year term thus expires
next February, he reasons. His foes doubt he will leave office even
then. In a referendum to be held in April, Mr Moïse plans to seek
approval for amendments he wants to make to the constitution. These
might include giving him the right to run for a second term. Under the
constitution, a president cannot exercise powers that he introduces into
it. Mr Moïse’s foes doubt that he will comply.
Beyond
a shared desire to remove him from power, the two currents of
opposition have little in common. Established opposition politicians are
as bad as the president, activists say. Youri Latortue, a former
senator who is one of the old opposition’s most prominent figures, was
once described in an American diplomatic cable as one of the most
“brazenly corrupt of leading politicians”. (He denies this
characterisation.) Some opposition leaders are backed by anti-government
gangs, which differ little from pro-government outfits.
The
new opposition aspires to reinvent politics. “This is about starting
something new, this is about respect of human rights, this is about
organising fair and credible elections,” says Emmanuela Douyon, a leader
of Nou Pap Dòmi (We Will Not Sleep), a social movement. She and her
allies know that will require ending the political instability that
began with Duvalier’s fall. Election results since then have nearly
always been disputed by the loser. The opposition almost invariably
demands the president’s resignation, says Michael Deibert, author of two
books on Haiti. In 2016 less than 20% of eligible voters turned out in
the election that Mr Moïse won. The constitution, adopted in 1987, has
never commanded broad respect. A Creole saying holds that “constitutions
are paper, but bayonets are steel”, says Robert Fatton of the
University of Virginia. The opposition acknowledges the need for
constitutional change, but does not want Mr Moïse leading it.
Civil-society
groups are planning to hold a huge march on February 28th. After that,
the route is uncertain. Most opposition forces want to install a
transitional government as a prelude to holding free elections. But they
disagree on how to do that. The old guard want a forcibly retired
judge, Joseph Mécène Jean-Louis, to be interim president. Activist
groups want someone outside the political elite in that job. That person
may be in power for a while. The interim authority would need to take
substantial time to prepare for credible elections, says Ms Douyon.
Meanwhile, she hopes, new politicians will offer themselves as
candidates, drawing new voters.
Unifying
opposition groups behind a single proposal will be difficult. Obtaining
Mr Moïse’s co-operation will be impossible. The United States, which is
home to 1m Haitians whose remittances sustain Haiti’s economy, fears
that his immediate removal would lead to chaos. On February 5th the
State Department backed Mr Moïse’s claim that his term ends in 2022, a
decision that outraged protesters, who remember with bitterness the
United States’ repeated military interventions in Haiti. It is “putting
their foot on the scales”, argues Brian Concannon, a long-time
Haiti-watcher. Many Haitians, including some in the diaspora, suspect
that the United States doubts that Haiti can handle democracy.
The
activists confronting Mr Moïse hope to prove that view wrong. Haiti’s
well-wishers are cautious. “Maybe we’ve reached the bottom, and the only
way is up,” speculates Mr Fatton, who was born in Haiti. But he has
thought that before. ■
