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President of Haiti killed

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BH

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The newsfeeds are reporting the president of Haiti was assassinated last night. Some gunmen attacked his home shooting him and his wife. His wife survived the attack but is in really bad shape in one of the hospitals.
 
Grim business. Things have been getting steadily worse there for several years now, and much of that was Moïse's own fault. But his death will not resolve the matter in any way. The military is already scrambling to blame the assassination on "Dominican-backed terrorists", and even the Associated Press is describing the planned December elections in a cautious past tense. They may not have happened anyway, but they definitely aren't going to happen now. The presumptive second-in-line (the head of the Supreme Court) died recently from COVID-19 complications, and hadn't been replaced. It's therefore Prime Minister Claude Joseph's government for the time being, provided he can persuade the military that this is so. He should be confirmed by the Parliament, securing his role democratically, but they were effectively dissolved early last year. The US was fervently backing Moïse's burgeoning dictatorship, but it's not clear if their benificence extends to Joseph. Ditto the newly formed "internal intelligence service", which was answering only to Moïse. A further complication was that as of an announcement two days ago, Joseph himself was announced to be stepping down soon, to be replaced by aother Moïse croney named Ariel Henri, who may make a bid for the presidency. Violence will continue to escalate.
 
Yeah, regrettably there is going to be a lot more violence with a substantial amount of people who are just trying get by, caught in the middle.
 
Jared Diamond in 'Guns, Steel' spoke a lot of Haiti. Many of their problems are self-generated by not all. Outside interference, earthquakes and poor governance have created a disaster zone.
 
Rachel Maddow showed a video of some of the assailants. One of them was speaking english with a southern accent.
 
Mercenaries, apparently. That does not clarify for whom they were working. It's being claimed that they gained entry to the domicile by claiming to be DEA agents.
 
The BBC is reporting his wife has been flown to a hospital in Florida. Also, the Haitian military has killed 4 of the mercenaries and captured two.
 
Haitian President assassinated

Haiti is clearly in chaos. Credibility, partisanship, constitutional crisis, economics, covid and big problem of gangs...

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated (12 bullets) by unknown persons and his wife is in critical condition. The First Lady was flown to a Miami hospital. There was a police shootout. Police hostage situation, maybe? Some suspects are arrested now. The National Police are saying that 4 assailants are killed and 2 arrested. People in Port-au-Prince are staying in homes, but there are repeated guns going off.

The Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph says he is in charge of the country temporarily post-assassination and that the newly selected prime minister agreed. However, the newly selected Prime Minister Ariel Henry had been selected by the President two days before by decree. He may have said that he was Prime Minister. The Supreme court's highest justice just died of Covid two weeks ago. The President had also ordered the retirement of 3 of the Justices after claiming a coup attempt. The President who had just been assassinated had been ruling by decree for over a year which might be related to why he was taken out, or he might have been taken out by opposition, or a foreign power.

One of the complications is that there are stories that the assassins claimed to be US Drug Enforcement Agents, which seems like a lie to give them cred and throw off the trail. However, now there could be needed US involvement, but the conspiracy narrative puts any intervention or on-the-ground assistance at risk of violent response.

Haiti is a small country and had a large 7.0 earthquake in 2010, followed by a Category 4 hurricane in 2016, and most recently covid and their President turning authoritarian, justified or not. They haven't had a chance to recover economically or recover their infrastructure.

Inflation and gang violence have spiraled upward as food and fuel grew scarcer in a country where 60% of Haitians earn less than $2 a day.
Click to expand...
https://www.wsaz.com/2021/07/08/haitis-future-uncertain-after-brazen-slaying-president/

Due to the turmoil that had already existed, back in May, President Biden had given 100,000 Haitians in the United States the chance to apply for Temporary Protected Status, which could allow them to continue to stay in the US an additional 18 months.
 
Aside from expressing horror at the killing, the US is not signalling anything clearly. It's worth noting for those not in the know, that we have a pretty intense history with the Haitian presidency; when Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was assassinated in 1915, we used it as pretext to begin a military occupation of the island that lasted for 19 years. We took direct control again in 1986, forcibly removing President Jean-Claude Duvalier from his office. Every president since then has either had US backing to various degrees, or wasn't in the role for long. The Clintons in particular were infamous for treating Haiti as a kind of Caribbean fiefdom under US patronage.
 
Tigers! said:
Jared Diamond in 'Guns, Steel' spoke a lot of Haiti. Many of their problems are self-generated by not all. Outside interference, earthquakes and poor governance have created a disaster zone.
Click to expand...

Diamond is full of shit when it comes to DR/Haiti. He is full of shit about Easter Island too, but those are another thread.

For all of Diamond's brilliance he still gets stuff wrong, just like anyone else.
 
Diamond is an interesting thinker but a lazy researcher. If you're interested in the real history and political science of Haiti, there are many excellent resources. A great place to start would be Bob Corbett's summary essay Why is Haiti so Poor?; a longer but very engaging read is Dr. Alyssa Sepinwalls anthological work Haitian History: New Perspectives.Phillipe Gerard's book covering recent history up to the beginnning of (and partially explaining) the Aristide/Clinton era is also a very good read.
 
Becoming the leader of Haiti doesn't sound like a great or remotely enduring job.
 
If anything good comes out of this it would be Haiti back on the world stage again. Regrettably, they'll fall off of it to once more blend with the audience.
 
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