Haiti is experiencing crucial days, pending the negotiations that political parties and social organizations have held this week, to form a transitional presidential council that will allow the country to emerge from immobility.
The negotiations take place in the midst of the chaos in the capital, Port-au-Prince, a battleground for dozens of criminal gangs that roam the streets.
On Thursday, the house of the head of the National Police was looted and burned.
The challenge is enormous.
These days, seven coalitions of political parties and social organizations are electing the members of the transition council, which in turn must reach agreements on issues of capital importance for the Caribbean nation.
First of all, they will have to elect a new interim prime minister who would officially close Ariel Henry's time at the head of the Government.
On Monday, Henry, in power since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, announced that he will leave office when this happens.
Until this Saturday, five of the coalitions had sent the name of their representative to the body that arbitrates this process, the Caricom or Caribbean Community, the assembly of countries in the region.
Of the other two, one has declined to participate, and the other, December 21 Agreement, which supported Henry to take power in 2021, is waiting for its factions to finally agree on a name, which should happen before the end of the end. of the week, thus closing the first phase of the solution.
Once the council and a new prime minister are elected, there is no problem more urgent than the situation in Port-au-Prince and its metropolitan area.
“The priority is to generate security,” argues Monique Clesca, part of the Montana Agreement, one of the seven coalitions that elect the members of the council, with the right to vote.
“We have to talk about security and humanitarian aid,” she adds.
Clesca points out that the calling of elections, in a context like the current one, is secondary.
“Is it a priority, when people can't go out to shop, or children can't go to school?” she argues.
The last two weeks have been especially difficult in Port-au-Prince.
Criminal gangs have left the city practically cut off.
On February 29 and the following days, groups of armed men jointly attacked the airport and the National Penitentiary, freeing practically all of their prisoners, more than 3,500, in addition to nine National Police facilities.
Six officers were murdered in a police station looted by bandits, who posted videos on social networks humiliating the corpses.
Emboldened by its constant advance these years, crime responded with ferocity—and unity, a rarity—to the latest move by Prime Minister Henry, who had traveled to Kenya those days to sign an agreement to send 1,000 police officers to the Caribbean country, under sponsorship by the United Nations and financing by the United States.
The gangs did not like the idea of dealing with a reinforced police force, which they have viciously beaten over the years.
With 11 million inhabitants, Haiti has fewer than 10,000 agents.
The future
The question now is what the future council plans to do with the police aid mission, whether or not they will accept the Kenyan route.
Monique Clesca explains that the people who have already been elected have been talking, informally, about the organization's roadmap.
“I know that there have been talks about security, the humanitarian crisis, the fight against corruption, impunity, justice issues,” she explains.
Clesca is not very enthusiastic about Kenya's police mission.
“Haiti's survival cannot depend on Kenya.
We have to see what the council decides when it is formed.
I think Kenya is the option of the United States and the United Nations, but I don't know if it is the only one for Haitians,” she says.
“I think there will be discussions about this.
We may have problems, but that doesn't mean we don't have ideas.
We are not a colony,” she adds.
It is surprising, in any case, that some of the members of the council will arrive sponsored by political parties that have been accused of supporting and feeding criminal gangs in recent years, such as the PHTK, the party of former presidents Moïse and his predecessor, Michel Martelly.
Not in vain, one of the criminal leaders who have appeared the most in the press these weeks, Jimmy Cherizier, alias
Barbecue,
has supported the PHTK in the past.
Human rights organizations have denounced that Cherizier and the PHTK worked together in the repression of demonstrations against political dissidents in 2018.
“It is ironic that parties like the PHTK are part of a council that has as one of its objectives seeking help for the police, because the role of each government has been, precisely, to destroy it,” defends Michael Deibert, an American researcher and writer, with several books published about Haiti.
“Collaboration with criminal groups is something of many governments, also Lavalas, for example,” he points out, referring to the party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who governed the country on several occasions in the last decade of the last century and the first of this, until his forced departure from the presidency, in 2004.
Deibert does not have much faith in the future transitional presidential council, precisely because of its composition.
“It is disappointing that this council will be putting a lot of power in the hands of actors who generated the crisis.
The idea that they can work together is naive, they have no history of working well together, even in peaceful times.
The advice is not an improvement over Henry,” he says.
“I don't think the council is the remedy for violence.
There are too many actors inside and outside it with multiple interests,” he says.
In addition to those mentioned, another threat hangs over the future council.
This is former senator Jean-Charles Moïse, whose coalition, taken into account for its composition, declined the offer.
Moïse has established a strange alliance with a deeply chiaroscuro character, Guy Philippe, who served a prison sentence in the United States for money laundering and participated in the coup against the Aristide Government in 2004.
Both reject the council route and have announced that another committee sponsored by them should take power.
This Friday, in some neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, several groups of people marched with cardboard in favor of Philippe.
In the videos of the demonstrations, shared on social networks, burning tires appeared in the background of the marches, a symbol of the tension that continues to build up in the capital.
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