2024-03-18 03:15:58
Haiti, whose Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigned this Monday, has been mired in chronic political instability since the end of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship in 1986.
Below, the main events that have marked the last decades in the country.
– The fall of Duvalier –
In 1986, the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, president since 1971, is ousted by a popular uprising and the army takes power. Duvalier settled in France and did not return to Haiti until 25 years later.
“Baby Doc” had become president for life at age 19 in April 1971 after the death of his father, François Duvalier, known as “Papa Doc,” who came to power in 1957 during a rigged election.
– Aristide’s unfinished mandates –
On September 30, 1991, the Salesian priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, elected president in 1990, was overthrown by a military coup and went into exile.
Four years later he was restored to power by a US military intervention and his mandate ended in 1996, when René Préval succeeded him.
Re-elected in 2000, Aristide left power again and went into exile in 2004, this time under pressure from the United States, France and Canada, for an armed insurrection and a popular revolt.
For two years, the country remains under the control of the UN, which deploys an international force.
In 2006, Préval was again elected president. To this day, he remains the only Haitian leader to have completed both terms authorized by the Constitution.
– Year and a half of electoral crisis –
Michel Martelly, elected in 2011, ends his term in 2016 without a successor after the cancellation of the presidential elections the previous year. Parliament appoints a provisional president.
After a long electoral crisis, businessman Jovenel Moise is elected in a new vote in November 2016.
– Moise murdered –
Moise is quickly facing increased activity by armed groups.
Following the expiration of the deputies’ mandate in January 2020 without new elections, the president continues to govern by decree.
On February 7, 2021, the judiciary decrees the end of his mandate, but Moise maintains that he still has one year left in power. That same day, he claims to have escaped an assassination attempt.
Five months later, on July 7, Moise is murdered in his home by an armed commando. Prime Minister Ariel Henry, appointed shortly before, assumes management on an interim basis.
– Political paralysis –
On September 27, the elections scheduled between November and January are reported indefinitely.
In the midst of a legal vacuum, Henry remains in power beyond February 7, 2022, which marked the end of Moise’s mandate.
The situation was repeated on February 7, 2024, when the prime minister was due to leave power under a political agreement.
– Threat of “civil war” –
On February 28, Henry agrees to “share power” with the opposition within the framework of an agreement that provides for elections within a year, which would be the first since 2016.
On Tuesday, March 5, the head of an influential gang, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, threatens “a civil war that will lead to genocide” if Henry does not resign.
The statement comes shortly after the signing of an agreement between Kenya and Haiti that provides for the deployment of police from the African country in a UN-backed mission to fight the gangs that control much of Port-au-Prince and the roads leading to the rest. Of the territory.
– Henry’s resignation –
On March 11, the prime minister, questioned and without popular support, agrees to resign and hand over power to a transitional government, after holding an urgent meeting in Jamaica dedicated to Haiti of the Caribbean Community.
An American official assures that Henry, blocked in Puerto Rico without being able to return to the Haitian capital, will be welcome in the United States if he fears for his safety.
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© Agence France-Presse