It’s hard to imagine a more bankrupt country than this battered land, overwhelmed by misery, political violence and gang brutality. Haiti is in free fall, without Parliament for a year, paralyzed by strikes and an upsurge in kidnappings, with at its head a head of state shouted at by the street and who tries by all means to stay in power. Jovenel Moïse, rejected by a majority of the population and targeted by a report from the Court of Auditors for embezzlement, has just announced a series of reforms for the coming months, thereby reiterating his intention not to leave his post . Even if it means plunging the island into an even more dizzying crisis.
If everyone, in a rare burst of consensus, agrees that the mandate of the Haitian president ends on February 7, there is disagreement over the year. For the opposition and a growing number of jurists and civil society organizations, President Moïse’s time comes to an end on Sunday. Tells him that his mandate runs until 2022.
According to his calculation, his presidency began during his swearing-in on February 7, 2017, an inauguration then supported by the Organization of American States (OAS). For his detractors, who recall that the Constitution stipulates that a presidential mandate must end “Five years from the date of the elections”, the weather began to turn a year earlier, following chaotic and controversial elections that led to an interim presidency and a new vote. The poll organized on 25 October 2015 had in fact been canceled due to “Massive fraud”, according to the report of a commission of inquiry. The results, announced at the time, had placed Jovenel Moïse in the lead.
Govern by decree
After a new campaign, marked by a profusion of advertising spending on the part of this businessman benefiting from the support of most of the rich families of the Haitian oligarchy and the discreet support of companies from the neighboring Dominican Republic, Jovenel Moïse won in the first round on November 28, 2016, but with less than 10% of the electorate. A deep political and social crisis followed.
The attempt to increase fuel prices, then the revelations of the so-called “Petrocaribe” affair, this politico-financial scandal of embezzlement of billions of dollars in loans from Venezuela and involving four Haitian heads of state including the current one, provoked violent demonstrations and calls for the departure of Jovenel Moïse from 2018.
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