Haiti: Dueling presidents and a democratic crisis
Haiti is once again spiraling into violence and political chaos, said Nicolas Bourcier in Le Monde (France). Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Port-au-Prince and other cities last week, lighting barricades of burning tires and demanding the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse. “Most of the population as well as jurists and civil society organizations” say that Moïse’s term ended on Feb. 7, five years after his predecessor left the presidency. But because the 2015–16 presidential election was so chaotic, Moïse wasn’t actually sworn into office until Feb. 7, 2017. That yearlong delay, the president says, means his five-year term expires in 2022. The United Nations and the U.S.—Haiti’s most important backer—support his claim. What complicates matters is that there is currently no national legislature. Moïse’s administration failed to hold the legislative elections that were due in 2019, and he has been ruling by decree for a year. Claiming a coup was being organized against him, Moïse last week announced the arrest of 23 alleged plotters and the forced retirement of three Supreme Court justices. Now the opposition has named one of the fired justices, Joseph Mécène Jean-Louis, as interim president, but the military and police remain loyal to Moïse.
Madness has enveloped our country, said Frantz Duval in Le Nouvelliste (Haiti). Protesters have thrown rocks at security forces, and police have blasted demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets, killing at least one person. Backers of Moïse should remember that he does not have the power to fire a Supreme Court justice or to rule as a dictator. And supporters of Jean-Louis must concede that nowhere in our constitution does it provide for a Supreme Court justice to assume the presidency. With the executive and the judiciary attacking one another, and the legislature entirely absent, Haiti is veering from “the narrow path of the rule of law and democracy.” But then, given our history of U.S. imperialism, coups, and countercoups, the rule of law “never had a good reputation in Haiti anyway.”
Moïse is just another in a “long string of corrupt, autocratic, and brutal” Haitian leaders, said Gustavo Sierra in Infobae.com (Argentina). During his four years in office, he has turned Port-au-Prince into “a city of fear and despair.” Armed gangs loyal to Moïse patrol the neighborhoods, “wreaking terror” and kidnapping and ransoming street vendors, merchants, students, and even cops. Moïse has proclaimed that he is no tyrant, “but his actions suggest otherwise.” Why does Washington still consider him Haiti’s rightful leader? Because to do otherwise would invite anarchy, said Jacobo García in El País (Spain). Not just the U.S. but also France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, and Canada all recognize that under the constitution, Moïse is legally the president. They have criticized his “authoritarian turn,” but understand that his fall “could mean destabilization in a geopolitically important area of the Caribbean.” Moïse’s armed supporters— “more powerful than the state itself”—could turn to trafficking drugs or humans. Still, “with the streets in turmoil and the opposition mobilized,” Moïse’s downfall may be only a matter of time.