There is no solution in sight for a country without Parliament, with an inoperative justice and the biggest wave of violence in years.
An assassination, a powerful earthquake and the worsening of insecurity this year exacerbated the dramatic crisis in Haiti, the poorest country in America and whose economy languishes with no rescue plan in sight.
Haiti is currently without parliament, with a government that has not been elected at the polls and with an inoperative judicial leadership to face the deep political crisis and the biggest wave of violence that the Caribbean country has lived in decades, without forgetting the attention demanded by the more than four million people in a situation of food insecurity.
The assassination
The political situation had been progressively deteriorating until it exploded into the air in the early morning of July 7, when, surprisingly, a group of armed men broke into the private residence of President Jovenel Moise in Port-au-Prince and assassinated him, without the guards who were watching over his safety offering any resistance.
After the stupor caused by the assassination, the authorities launched a persecution operation and within a few hours they arrested 18 former Colombian soldiers, and killed three others.
Five months after the assassination, there are still more questions than answers about the crime, of which very few details are known. In fact, it is not yet known who are the masterminds Nor what motivated them to assassinate a president who was due to leave power in February 2022.
According to the latest official data, 44 people were arrested in Haiti for their alleged involvement in the assassination, including twelve policemen, in addition to two more suspects captured in Jamaica and Turkey in recent months.
Haiti’s first lady, Martine Moise, speaks at her husband’s funeral. Photo: EFE
The Government of Haiti, a country affected by impunity and the low credibility of justice, asked the United Nations for help to carry out an international investigation into the murder.
At Moise’s funeral, his wife Martine, who was injured in the bombing, said her husband was “abandoned and betrayed”, and accused the Haitian oligarchy of the assassination.
An earthquake in the middle of the crisis
If the crisis was already unbearable for millions of Haitians, the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that occurred on August 14 in the southern peninsula further aggravated the situation in a country whose economy contracted 3.3% in 2020 and could decline an additional 1.3% at the end of this year, according to international projections.
At least 2,248 people died, more than 300 were missing and another 690,000 were affected as a result of the earthquake, the largest after the one that occurred in January 2010, which caused more than 300,000 deaths and 1.5 million affected, many of the which to this day are still without a roof.
Thousands of those affected by the 2010 earthquake have led in recent months an exodus on foot across the American continent, from Chile or Brazil to the United States border, in search of better opportunities.
The scourge of criminal gangs
Taking advantage of the socio-political crisis, the armed gangs have taken advantage of sow terror daily throughout this country of eleven million people, kidnapping and murdering indiscriminately.
The gangs even caused a serious fuel shortage in October, causing the suspension of basic services such as health, education and telephony.
Haitian authorities they lack a police force with sufficient resources to confront the gangs, while the international community has responded with a resounding no to requests for the dispatch of troops.
And as a consequence of all these dire circumstances, the emigration it has shot up again.
A stalled political crisis
Prime Minister Ariel Henry (center) assumed power after Moise’s assassination (background portrait). Photo: AP
The political situation still in neutral: the first Minister, Ariel Henry, assumed power after the assassination of Moise, and at the end of November presented a new cabinet in which several opposition figures stand out.
Last September, Henry signed a pact with the opposition in an effort to guarantee political stability, but so far the agreement is a dead letter.
The Haitian prime minister intends to promote a constitutional reform in 2022 and create the necessary conditions for the holding of elections at the end of the year, but as time progresses without solving the crisis, the calendar is increasingly in doubt each day.
EFE
ap
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