Political Report # 1430
Demonstrators in Haiti are Fighting For an Uncertain Future
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Early in his term as President of Haiti, in a cartoon that
was either meant to caution or mock him, Jovenel Moïse is shown dressed as a
Haitian superhero. Eyes closed, he’s standing in the barely lit home of a
Haitian family, where he announces that in twenty-three months they will have
electricity twenty-four hours a day—even as the father reads a book by candle
light and the mother presses clothes with a charcoal-fuelled iron. The couple
more or less ignores him while only their baby cheers him on.
In the accompanying article by the journalist Roberson
Alphonse, published in Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste newspaper, on August 10, 2017,
Moïse is quoted as saying, “When I say the entire country will have electricity
twenty-four hours a day in twenty-three months, I will do it.” He added that a
President “shouldn’t have to promise that. It’s an obligation, a necessity. A
country must have electricity, water, and roads.”
It’s been thirty-two months since Moïse was sworn into
office after a contested, fraud-plagued, two-round election cycle in which only
eighteen per cent of eligible voters participated. In a country of more than
ten million people, about six hundred thousand voted for him. Even before
taking his Presidential oath, Moïse was accused by Haiti’s Central Financial
Intelligence Unit (ucref) of having laundered millions of dollars. A few months
into his term, he fired the director of ucref—a move that probably led to Moïse
being cleared of the laundering charges, which he has denied.
Unknown to most Haitians until he was handpicked by his
predecessor, Michel Martelly—who also came to power through elections mired in
fraud—Moïse was presented as a successful rural businessman from outside
Haiti’s political class, a banana exporter nicknamed Nèg Bannann, or Banana
Man. Less advertised was that he was also an auto-parts dealer and a supposed
road-construction magnate. According to two reports published earlier this year
by Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes, in 2014,
before he’d officially become a Presidential candidate, Moïse received more
than a million dollars from Martelly’s government, funds that were allocated
for road construction and repair in the northern region of the country. The
government auditors report that Moïse was paid twice for the same contract,
once as the head of Agritrans and again as the leader of another firm, called
Betexs. The two firms were listed as having the same staff and projects, as
well as the same government patent and tax-identification number. The road for
which the money was doubly paid shows no sign of having been constructed or
repaired. Moïse also got more than a hundred thousand dollars for another one
of his companies, Comphener S.A., to install solar panels on street lamps.
The funds allegedly pilfered in these schemes came from
Venezuela’s Petrocaribe oil program, which Haiti joined in 2006. Through the
Petrocaribe agreement, the Haitian government bought oil from Venezuela, paid
sixty per cent of the purchase price within ninety days, then deferred the rest
of the debt, at a one-per-cent interest rate, over twenty-five years. The
Haitian government controlled the sale of the oil and was supposed to use those
funds for development projects, including infrastructure, agriculture, education,
sanitation, and health. This debt to Venezuela has grown to almost two billion
dollars over the past decade.
On July 6, 2018, Moïse’s government announced that it was
raising the price of gasoline, diesel, and kerosene between thirty-eight and
fifty-one per cent, in order to qualify for low-interest loans from the
International Monetary Fund. Huge nationwide demonstrations followed. I was in
Haiti at the time, and it was clear that most Haitians were fed up with all the
corruption, as well as Moïse’s ineptitude at addressing the country’s urgent
problems. His silence and disappearance during difficult times has not worked
in his favor, either.
In the summer of 2018, Haiti was already facing high rates
of unemployment, rising inflation, a growing budget deficit, currency
devaluation, and spikes in gang violence, all of which have grown considerably
worse in the past year. Moïse’s government reversed its decision on the gas
hike after twenty-four hours, but the protests continued. They were later
amplified by the Petrochallengers, mostly young Haitians who started demanding
accountability for the Petrocaribe funds, on the streets, and online.
On November 13, 2018, seventy-three men, women, and children
were wounded, tortured, hacked with machetes, and set on fire in La Saline, an
impoverished neighborhood of Port-au-Prince where residents had participated in
Petrocaribe protests. Among them, fifty-nine were reportedly killed. Seven
women were raped, and many houses were ransacked or burned, according to the
Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains. Witnesses accused two top
government officials close to Moïse, Joseph Pierre Richard Duplan and Fednel
Monchéry, of having been among those who helped to plan the La Saline massacre
and providing area gang members with weapons and police uniforms. Both men, who
have denied the allegations, remained in the government's employ—Monchéry as
the executive director of the interior ministry, and Duplan as Moïse’s
representative for La Saline and the surrounding area—until a few weeks ago,
when they were fired by Moïse as the protests intensified. Moïse has not
directly denounced the La Saline massacre, nor has his government sought to
prosecute any of the perpetrators. The government has also not provided any
medical, financial, or security support to the survivors. The killings in La
Saline reminded Haitians—especially those living in destitute, gang-controlled
areas—what can happen when people in power want their resistance smashed.
In February, 2019, the frequency and size of the protests
grew, starting on the second anniversary of Moïse’s inauguration and the
thirty-third anniversary of the end of the thirty-year Duvalier dictatorship.
Schools and businesses were closed for ten days and public transportation was
generally halted in what became known as peyi lòk, or Operation Lockdown.
During peyi lòk, thirty-four people were reported to have died and a hundred
and two injured. Venezuela, which is dealing with its own political and
economic crisis, is no longer providing discounted fuel to Haiti, so the
Haitian government now buys fuel from U.S.-based energy traders, to whom the government
has been chronically in arrears. This led to recurring blackouts and gas
shortages this past summer.
Peyi lòk returned in full force in September, in the midst
of a widespread fuel shortage. Haiti has now been on lockdown for a month, with
large demonstrations taking place almost every day. Schools have not been
opened. The sick can’t get to hospitals, where resources are also dwindling.
Those who are not at the demonstrations lock themselves up at home until
there’s a reprieve, during which they go out and buy food, which has become
exorbitantly expensive, and water, of which there is a shortage in some areas.
Haitians from all walks of life have been calling for Moïse’s resignation,
including Catholic and Protestant clergy, artists and intellectuals, university
professors, business people, bar associations, and the various groups and
parties that make up the political opposition.
Moïse has repeatedly said he will not resign. In his most
recent pre-recorded address—released on September 25th, at 2 a.m.—he told
Haitians that he’s heard their cries and is aware of their despair. He called
for unity and dialogue. He promised not to respond to violence with violence.
The streets, where some police officers have used live ammunition to disperse
protesters, tell a different story. The senator from Moïse’s party who fired a
pistol outside the parliament building last month, wounding a photojournalist
and security guard, also tells another story. As does the massacre in La
Saline.
Looking back at that 2017 cartoon of Moïse being derided as
a would-be superhero, I am reminded that it is the Haitian people who have
always exhibited superhuman traits and who have had to continue to do so over
the past year. They have been dodging bullets and enduring tear gas and water
cannons while, for the most part, not being able to eat regularly, or send
their children to school, or go to a decent hospital when they are sick, or
afford the medicine they need. I know from speaking with many young people in
my own family and beyond that they know Moïse is just the latest manifestation
of bigger and broader structural and institutional problems. They are also
aware that, like generations of Haitians before them, they are fighting for a
very uncertain future.
The young men and women demonstrators, when speaking to both
local and foreign journalists, sometimes speak of their desire for a tabula
rasa. They want a more egalitarian, inclusive, and just society, where the
rights of every citizen will be respected. Not just the wealthy and
well-connected but the urban and rural poor, too. They want the international
community to stop meddling and pushing elections as a vehicle for change, only
to rig them and saddle the country with leaders like Martelly and Moïse. They
want Haitian-led solutions. They want institutions that work. They want an end
to impunity. They want freedom from government and privately funded gangs, who
routinely rape women and girls. They ultimately want accountability not just
from Moïse but from everyone who has stolen or squandered the Petrocaribe
money, which their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will still
have to repay.
They must see some parallels between themselves and those
taking part in the equally massive, and increasingly violent, protests in Hong
Kong, to which the world at least is paying attention. Twenty people were
killed and about two hundred injured during the protests this past September.
The numbers are likely to increase this month as demonstrations persist and
ramp up in intensity. One thing that Moïse said in his dead-of-night speech on
September 25th, which all Haitians should be able to agree on, is that “Ayiti
pap peri. Ayiti pa dwe peri.” Haiti will not perish. Haiti should not perish.
Not over him, or anyone else.
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