An departing Prime Minister who declares a state of siege, the President of the Senate appointed by eight of his peers to act as interim: the assassination of the President of Haiti on Wednesday exacerbated the institutional crisis in which this country was already plunged poor Caribbean for months.
The Haitian executive power brutally weakened by the murder of the head of state has put the other two – legislative and judicial – to the test.
The three weakened powers
Jovenel Moïse not having organized elections since he came to power in 2017, the mandates of Haitian parliamentarians have expired without their successors being appointed. Haiti therefore no longer has, since January 2020 and the end of the mandate of deputies and the majority of senators, only ten elected national representatives, i.e. one third of the Senate.
And the judiciary is not much better off: the administration of Jovenel Moïse also did not propose judges to replace the members of the Superior Council of the Judicial Power whose three-year terms were coming to an end, leaving a Council to the stripped ranks and whose president died of Covid-19 in June.
“With regard to the Constitution, there is no possibility of finding a solution (to the current political crisis) because Jovenel Moïse and his team had taken good care to dismantle all the institutions. Whether we turn to Parliament or the judiciary, there is nothing, ”summarizes Marie Rosy Auguste Ducena, lawyer for the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights.
Claude Joseph or Joseph Lambert?
A few hours after the assassination, Claude Joseph, Prime Minister since April, declared himself in charge of current affairs, declaring in particular a state of siege in the country for 15 days, a provision which strengthens the powers of the executive. “The Constitution is clear. I must organize elections and hand over power to someone else who has been elected, ”he also said in an interview broadcast this Saturday on the American channel CNN.
In Haiti, the Constitution certainly provides that the Prime Minister acts in the event of the president’s incapacity, but Jovenel Moïse had appointed two days before his death a new head of government, Ariel Henry. This appointment, recorded Monday in the Official Journal, has led some observers to question the legitimacy of Claude Joseph.
In this context, eight of the ten senators still in office signed a resolution on Friday evening offering the President of the Senate, Joseph Lambert, the title of provisional President of the Republic. “We cannot deny that the ten senators are the only ten remaining elected but it is obvious that they are not representative of the population”, criticizes the activist Emmanuela Douyon. And the personality of Joseph Lambert, an experienced politician, is far from unanimous in Haiti, where he has “always been criticized”, according to Marie Rosy Auguste Ducena.
Call on foreign soldiers?
The Haitian government said on Friday it had asked the United States and the UN to send troops to Haiti to help secure strategic sites, such as ports and airports, for fear they would be sabotaged afterwards. the assassination of Jovenel Moïse. An appeal that seems to echo the years of American occupation between 1915 and 1934, initiated following the assassination of then Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume, and deemed unnecessary by many observers.
“We had the Minustah (a UN mission from 2004 to 2017) during all these years and after his departure, look at what we are going through: an almost complete gangsterization of the national territory”, deplores Emmanuela Douyon. Gangs’ stranglehold on Haiti has worsened since the start of the year. Since June, clashes between armed gangs in the west of the capital have pushed thousands of residents of poor neighborhoods to flee their homes.
Let the Haitians decide
De facto at the head of Haiti since Wednesday, Claude Joseph has received the support of Helen La Lime, UN envoy to Haiti, but this position irritates the actors of Haitian civil society. “It is not a representative of the United Nations who must say” Here is who is in charge “: it recalls the colonial periods and nobody wants to relive that”, underlines Emmanuela Douyon.
“After Black Lives Matter, after all these movements to demand the reparation of slavery, it is not the moment for foreign forces to show that they are trying to impose solutions on Haitians,” said the activist.