Coup d’état or assassination?
Dear Editor,
I still don’t understand how a president of a country is murdered mere days after replacing his prime minister (PM) who is said to have been a protégé of his.
I just cannot believe that 28 men managed to overcome President Jovenel Moïse’s security, yet there is no report of a struggle or any of his security team being injured. The suggestion could, therefore, be made that the president’s security was familiar with the men and so, let them through.
There are many questions to be answered, such as: Was this a coup d’état? To whom are the police reporting the results of their investigation into the former president’s death? Are they reporting to the acting president who was replaced as prime minister by the now-murdered president?
Jovenel Moïse’s presidency had been dogged by controversy from inception. Before he took office, there were investigations into allegations of money laundering involving the then president-elect, which caused the delay of his inauguration. This resulted in the dispute over his tenure as he was of the view that the date of his inauguration marked the start of his presidency, while the Opposition argued that his term began on the day he was confirmed as the winner. This impasse between the former president and the Opposition fed into an already tense atmosphere in the country.
Apart from his squabbles with the Opposition, the president had many enemies. For example, he ‘retired’ three supreme court judges, who he accused of “involving themselves in politics”, which suggests that he was willing to breach the democratic standard of separation of powers.
Additionally, his inexperience in governance and politics played a significant role in the many blunders he committed as president. Indeed, you could say President Moïse was a novice to politics as his biography describes him as having been, for the most part, a banana farmer and auto parts trader who started business in the north of Haiti with his high school sweetheart and now wife and first lady. It would have served him well to have done some governance courses before he took office.
There is no doubt that there was a strong faction in Haiti that wanted Moïse removed from office. The many enemies he created during his tenure and his inability to govern have led to his death, throwing Haiti into further turmoil. We now have an interim president who was relieved of his post as PM by the now-dead president, and the man the president had chosen to replace the incumbent PM is also claiming to be in charge of the country — confusion abounds.