Clashes in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, during protests on February 13, 2019. (HECTOR RETAMAL / AFP) (Photo credit should read HECTOR RETAMAL / AFP / Getty Images)
Editor's note:
David Bittan ObadÍa is a lawyer, writer, analyst on political and international issues, columnist for the newspaper El Universal de Venezuela, and contributor to other media.
As a lecturer, he participated in the World Jewish Congress and was president of the Jewish community of Venezuela.
His Twitter account is @davidbittano.
The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author alone.
You can read more articles like this at cnne.com/opinion.
(CNN Spanish) -
The assassination of the president of Haiti Jovenel Moïse produces a worldwide reaction of condemnation.
Haiti is a troubled country that has had more than 20 governments in 35 years.
The assassinated president won the elections in 2016, but assumed power in 2017, when he was finally able to take office;
his tenure was traumatic, full of social protests and highly questioned by allegations of corruption.
The Haitian opposition has argued, for some time, that Moïse's five-year term ended on February 7, 2021, after the 2016 elections, but Moïse argued that his term would end a year later, since he assumed the presidency on February 7, 2017;
this position was supported by the president of the United States, Joe Biden, and by other leaders.
From my point of view, this was an issue that should have been brought up for consultation among Haitians at the time and not resolved, from the outside, by the international community.
The opposition leader Nenel Cassy said at the time: "Jovenel Moïse destroyed all the institutions, from Parliament to the local government. (…) Unfortunately we have an international community that does not support the fight against this corrupt dictator."
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Haiti is a poor and unstable country that lives permanently impressing the world with its misfortunes;
the 2010 earthquake alone left between 220,000 and 300,000 dead (estimates vary), and six years later, not yet recovered from that tragedy, with thousands of people still displaced and homeless, they are visited by Hurricane Matthew.
Not to mention epidemics such as cholera, which has left thousands of deaths in its wake and which in 2010 alone killed some 10,000 people.
According to figures from the United Nations, in 2020, almost 4 million Haitians needed help and, of these, one million were starving.
In the current photo of Haiti today, only poverty, natural disasters, political instability, insecurity (personal and legal) and also the pandemic unleashed by the uncontrolled covid-19 are portrayed.
Haiti must definitely be a global issue;
the world should set its gaze on that nation for being the poorest country in Latin America.
Condolences and sending money and food are not enough;
It is necessary to look for the mechanisms to guarantee the democratic stability of that country and to generate decent living conditions so that the Haitians can emerge and that they are not turned into the pariahs of the Caribbean;
In the Dominican Republic there are reports that they are exploited and that they perform the most demanding physical tasks, being socially marginalized as well.
Haiti's Acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph will step down
Suddenly, as I see it, an international model of "consensual intervention" would have to be created, where a government under international control is fostered, which trains and educates Haitian civil society until it can take charge of its own destiny.
Haiti has natural resources and a beautiful geography that can be transformed into attractive tourist projects, but, above all, Haiti has good people, whom we must try to save.
The criminalization of protests and the idea of making changes to the Constitution were very bad decisions by the late president.
That is the formula used by those governments that try to screw themselves into power and this situation, among others, surely added to unleash the unjustifiable and reprehensible murder of a president.
Haiti deserves more opportunities. Today we should all be Haiti.
