New protest amid demands that president resign
PORT-AU-PRINCE (AP):
DEMONSTRATORS SET fires ON Monday and chanted calls for Haiti’s president to resign as the opposition to Jovenel Moïse tried to increase pressure for him to leave office.
Schools, businesses and government offices were closed as protesters gathered chanting, “Down with Jovenel!”
“We can’t continue to live like this,” said 34-yearold Lestin Abelo as he poured gasolene on a pile of debris that quickly caught fire. “We have a government that’s not doing anything for the people.”
Opposition leaders and supporters say they are angry about public corruption, spiralling inflation, and a dwindling supply of gasolene that has forced many gas stations in the capital to close. Suppliers have demanded that the cash-strapped government pay them the more than $100 million owed.
Protesters are also demanding a more in-depth investigation into allegations that top officials in the previous government misused billions of dollars in proceeds from a Venezuela-subsidised oil plan meant to fund urgent social programmes.
Paule Èmile Demostine, a 40-year-old emergency medical technician, said he’s upset his children can’t go to school and worried at how expensive life has become.
“Ever since he became president, it’s been misery,” he said. “If the president doesn’t go, the country is going to burn to ashes.”
Moïse, who began his five-year term in 2017, has said he will not step down despite the unrest and, instead, called for calm, unity and dialogue during an address televised at 2 a.m. Wednesday. It was a rare appearance for the president since the new wave of protests began about three weeks ago.
INCREASING IMPASSE
Laurent Dubois, a Haiti expert and professor at Duke University, said he believes the country will face an increasing impasse unless the parties find a way to reach some kind of resolution.
“There’s a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety ... that things are going in a direction in Haiti that we haven’t seen in a while,” he said. “It seems like we’re going into some kind of new phase in Haitian history, but what it holds will be difficult to predict.”
Opposition leaders demanding Moïse’s resignation say they envision a transitional government after the chief justice of Haiti’s Supreme Court takes over, as dictated by law, if a president resigns.