February 17, 2023
At the 44th CARICOM Heads of Government meeting, Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, pledged his support for Haiti during the country’s humanitarian crisis. He went further and pledged the support of the Canadian Navy to patrol the coast of Haiti and conduct surveillance operations off of the beleaguered country’s coast. This is a good first step to warming up to full on intervention by a lager country with the resources to do something about Haiti. Less talk and more action.
While most of the world’s eyes are fixated on the War in the Ukraine, for obvious reasons, the countries in the Americas should not have the luxury of being overly fixated on that problem and neglect its own in Haiti. Kudos to the leaders at the CARICOM summit this year for sticking to the script on Haiti, even though it was the same script over the past 20 years. But this time it meant a bit more.
What more we need now is fresh elections in Haiti. Prime Minister Ariel Henry is not an elected leader. He is a glorified dictator, having been appointed to the post by former Haitian President, Jovenel Moïse, before the latter was assassinated. What is even more disturbing about Henry’s rise to power, was that while he was appointed by Moïse, he was not ratified before the assassination. In fact, former Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who has left the political landscape to a large degree amid this collapse, was supposed to be replaced by Henry but that never “officially” happened and Henry just assumed power.
So what we have now is someone in power who is not a reflection of the will of the people. How in the world did the Americas allow this to happen in any event? This went on too far. The minute we saw Henry was saddling up to assume power there should have been an intervention, because maybe there was a reason why Moïse decided to hold off on Henry’s appointment? Because now we are seeing that Henry is an all-out disaster as a leader for Haiti. Just look at where the country is now? Not a pretty sight.
Moving forward, along with Canada, we hope the US comes back and sends at least a Marine unit to secure the country. We also hope as elections inch close for this November, we are told, that preparations for it is done in peace and safety. In the meantime, an administrator for the country, other than Henry, would not be a bad idea.
We continue to pray for Haiti.