For months, the people of Haiti have taken to the streets, demanding the resignation of unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who was installed after the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. On Monday, at an emergency meeting convened by CARICOM in the Jamaican capital, chairman Mohammed Irfaan Ali announced that Henry finally agreed to step down.
Henry then announced his resignation from Puerto Rico (where he’s been stranded since March 5).
“The government that I am leading will resign immediately after the installation of [a transition] council,” Henry said. “I’m asking all Haitians to remain calm and do everything they can for peace and stability to come back as fast as possible.”
The question now that Henry’s gone: Will the Haitian people accept the CARICOM plan—an appointed interim presidential panel—until there can be free and fair elections?
Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.
As The Jamaica Gleaner’s Kimone Francis reported Tuesday:
Haiti PM out: Transitional presidential council set up, during talks in Jamaica, to guide nation in crisis to election of new leader
[CARICOM chairman] Ali, the president of Guyana, told journalists and others gathered for the press conference that a transitional presidential council had been established which will be responsible for naming an interim prime minister ahead of a national election to determine a new head of government.
He said the transitional presidential council would be comprised of seven voting members and two non-voting observers. The seven voting members will comprise representatives of Haitian political parties as well as the private sector, while the non-voting members will be represented by one member of civil society and one member of the interfaith community.
He stressed, however, that, excluded from the council would be anyone currently on a charge, indictment or who has been convicted in any jurisdiction, as well as anyone under United Nations (UN) sanction or who intends to run in the next election in Haiti. Also excluded is anyone who opposes UN Security Council Resolution 2699.
Read Resolution 2699 here. It authorizes a “Multinational Security Support” mission led by Kenya.
RELATED STORY: Caribbean Matters: Intervention or no intervention? That is the Haiti question
Widlore Mérancourt, Samantha Schmidt, and Amanda Coletta reported for The Washington Post:
Haitian prime minister says he’ll resign, clearing way for new government
[CARICOM chairman] Ali did not lay out a timetable for the creation of the council or elections.
“Haitian participants must now fully implement their commitments,” he told reporters. “It is incumbent upon all Haitians to give the agreement a chance to work, and we implore all parties, all stakeholders, all Haitians to be patient.”
Henry has been effectively locked out of the country since his trip to Kenya to promote the U.N. force. A Kenyan court has ruled the deployment unconstitutional, but officials from Haiti and Kenya have signed agreements they say should address the court’s concerns.
Still, many elements of the mission remain unclear. These include which countries will participate, whether they will be equipped to beat back the heavily armed gangs, how quickly they can deploy, and what the operational plan and exit strategy might be.
The United States has backed the force but ruled out leading it. The Biden administration struggled for nearly a year to find a country willing to take the helm.
Here’s the full CARICOM press conference held Monday; it’s cued to the “outcome statement” about Henry’s resignation.
But why should people in the U.S. pay attention?
Americans have a a voice, and we need to speak up and speak out against the continuation of support for any government that does not include the voices of the Haitian people. Most foreign policy news that makes headlines in the States centers on Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, but the United States has played both a major historical and current role in the fatal mess-making in Haiti.
Just two weeks ago I wrote “Caribbean Matters: The push for yet another 'intervention' in Haiti,” covering much of that history. I asked readers to “Consider the thoughts of Jemima Pierre, Ph.D., a Haitian-born professor at the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia and a research associate at the Center for the Study of Race, Gender and Class at the University of Johannesburg.”
Pierre was a guest on Monday’s episode of “Democracy Now!”, recorded just a few hours prior to to the latest news.
From the YouTube video notes:
Caribbean leaders are holding an emergency meeting in Jamaica today to discuss the crisis in Haiti, where armed groups are calling for the resignation of unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Haiti is under a state of emergency, with tens of thousands displaced amid the fighting, and United Nations officials warn the country's health system is nearing collapse. Ariel Henry was appointed prime minister after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, but he is currently stranded outside the country after a trip to Kenya, where he was seeking a U.N.-backed security force to help him maintain power. For more, we speak with Haitian American scholar Jemima Pierre, who says the unrest in Haiti today can be traced to decisions made two decades ago by the United States and other outside powers. "The root of this crisis is not last week, it's not this week, it's not even Ariel Henry. But we have to go back to 2004 with the coup-d'état," says Pierre. She adds that because successive security plans have been sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, "the whole world is participating in the occupation of Haiti unwittingly."
Catherine Osborn’s March 7 “Latin America Brief” for Foreign Policy predicted the resignation of Henry:
How Haiti’s Unelected Leader Lost America’s Blessing
Haiti’s political and security crisis reached a dramatic new stage on Tuesday. After a week of travel abroad, acting Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry attempted to head back home but was forced to change his itinerary because gangs blocked access to the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. Henry initially planned to instead land in the Dominican Republic and cross the border into Haiti. But for reasons that were not immediately clear, Dominican authorities denied him permission to land, and Henry detoured to Puerto Rico. The same day, Haitian gang leader Jimmy Chérizier—whose gangs control much of Port-au-Prince—warned of “a civil war that will lead to genocide” if Henry did not resign.
[...]
[W]hile airborne on Tuesday, Henry communicated with officials in Washington and received a surprising message, the Miami Herald reports: The United States wanted him to resign.
Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, a U.S. State Department spokesperson pushed back against the Herald’s account, saying the United States was simply “urging him [Henry] to expedite the transition to an empowered and an inclusive governance structure” in Haiti. But a Caribbean diplomat told the Washington Post that the U.S. message to Henry included a suggested resignation statement.
U.S. officials did confirm that they were not providing logistical support for Henry to return to Haiti, an admission “akin to publicly pulling the rug from under him,” the Brookings Institution’s Vanda Felbab-Brown posted on X.
Though it is good news that Henry will finally be gone, there are no assurances that the Haitian populace will accept the new leadership.
“Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.” It’s a saying often attributed to Albert Einstein; it’s also a recovery slogan often repeated in the Narcotics Anonymous 12-step program. It’s a point that the United States government, the Biden administration, and all the “concerned” politicians here, in Canada, in France, in CARICOM, at the United Nations, and elsewhere, who seem to be addicted to perpetuating outsider control of Haitian politics, should consider carefully.
The only time Haiti had a democratically elected president was in 1990. Currently Haiti has zero legislative officials; the 30-member Senate and its 119 legislative seats are empty.
Anyone with even a smattering of knowledge of Haitian history knows that outsider interventions and the imposition and propping up of elite leaders in Haiti have never worked for the benefit of the Haitian people. There is zero guarantee that the populace, including the gangs, will support yet another group appointed by non-Haitians.
All I can say is that I’ll keep you posted. Join me in the comments for more, and for the weekly Caribbean News Roundup.
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