By: Staff Writer
August 24, 2021
Assassinated Haitian president Jovenel Moise was a victim of the imperialist war against Haiti as he was taken out by oligarchic forces in Haiti who control everything, one Haitian academic asserts.
Dr Jean Eddy Saint Paul, professor of sociology, former Founding Director of the CUNY Haitian Studies Institute Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, speaking on a panel about the legend of Haitian revolutionary Dutty Boukman hosted by the Caribbean Literary Conference (CARICON), said: “The international war against the Haiti that started in 1804, if we want to put some date, that international war, or that global war lead by the racialized capitalist system, that global war on Black people, that global war on brown people, that global war started in Haiti and that global war is still going on in Haiti.
“The assassination of President Jovenel Moise is also connected to that imperialist war against Haiti,” Dr Saint Paul added.
President Moise was assassinated at his residence on July 7, 2021. The hitmen were former Colombian military officers hired by a Venezuelan defence contractor out of Miami, Florida and led by two Haitian-American men serving as interpreters, connected to the US Drug Enforcement Agency through a Haitian Dr Christian Sanon who had delusions of becoming the president of Haiti it is all alleged.
DR Saint Paul insists that this imperialist war against Haiti is ever more present today than it was 200 years ago. He added that what happened recently with the earthquake on August 14, 2021 is also connected to the imperialist regime against Haiti.
Dr Saint Paul explained that from a recent interview he gave on PBS that: “Moise came into power by the same Haitian oligarchy. He was someone who was mostly unknown, for the Haitian electorate. Jovenel Moise was not Jean Bertrand-Aristide. He was not a charismatic figure that the Haitian electorate knew about in deep form from the election.
“Jovenel Moise was introduced to the Haitian electorate by Michel Joseph Martelly, a former musician who was imposed as president to the Haitian people with the help of the help of the US State Department.”
Michel Joseph Martelly is a Haitian musician and politician who was the President of Haiti from May 2011 until February 2016. He is one of Haiti’s best-known musicians for over a decade, going by the stage name Sweet Micky.
Dr Saint Paul also said: “So the US intervened in Haitian politics, and they imposed Michel Joseph Martelly and Martelly introduced Jovenel Moise to the Haitian population.”
Mosie came in with a lot of promise to stabilise Haiti and to help the economic situation in Haiti, but less than half of a term in his administration was plagued with corruption claims for having misappropriated oil revenues from the Petro-Caribe deal, notwithstanding his administration had not signed the oil arrangement with Venezuela or administered the bulk of the oil during his presidency.
Moise also came at a time when Haiti was still in a rebuilding stage from the devastating 2010 7.0 earthquake that destroyed the nation’s north-western side, something his immediate predecessor Martelly was also dealing with and something that was still a lingering developmental challenge for the poverty stricken nation.
Dr Saint Paul added, notwithstanding all of the challenges faced by Moise, none was greater than the oligarchic power structure he was up agasint despite being initially selected by them as Dr Saint Paul said.
He added: “Jovenel Moise came in promising to put money in the pockets of Haitian people, and that he will put food on their table, but Jovenel Moise made a pact with the Haitian oligarchy and during his government he started to try to hold accountable only two oligarchic families in Haiti and this is possibly one of the causes of his assassination.”
Wanting to control the same oligarchic power structure that created Jovenel Moise sealed his fate Dr Saint Paul insisted. With a country of 90 percent plus African descendants, why is it that it is ruled by such a strong oligarchy of less than 20 families Dr Saint Paul tried to reason.
He likened this strange sociological conundrum to the time when Boukman wrote his poem speaking about the “White man’ God” being evil while the African God of the captive was displayed as a good God.
“To Boukman he took the fight for the enslavement of the black people, he fought for the liberation and emancipation of black people. But black people are like foreigners in our own land because we don’t run the economy,” said Dr Saint Paul.
“In the name of Dutty Boukman” can be viewed on the CARICON’s Youtube page or Facebook page. It has award winning Caribbean author and storyteller, Dr Amina Blackwood Weeks, chairing the panel along with Dr Cécile Accilien, acting chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Kennesaw State University, and Haitian intellectual joining the panel with Dr Saint Paul.