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      Dueling Claims to Power. Broken Institutions. How Does Haiti Fix This?

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      Other countries have faced similar challenges, often with poor results, from protracted limbo to, in the worst cases, civil war.PARIS — Battered by gang violence and corruption, its Parliament near vacant, its judiciary in tatters, its Constitution subject to dispute, its poverty crushing and its history a chronicle of unrest, Haiti was in bad shape even before its president was assassinated and rival factions laid claim to power.Now, it’s in meltdown.“Haitian democracy has been slipping away for a long time and with each round it’s been getting worse,” said Peter Mulrean, a former United States ambassador to Haiti. “There is not much left to save.”Claude Joseph, the interim prime minister, and eight of the 10 remaining members of Parliament in the entire country of 11 million people have both said they have a legitimate right to assume power and fill Haiti’s vacuum of authority.Mr. Joseph, as the incumbent, has tepid backing from a Biden administration desperate not to be sucked into a quagmire. The vestigial Senate, having been elected, has some legal imprimatur, but is dogged by accusations of corruption and self-dealing.When power is disputed, institutional strength and the rule of law become paramount. Haiti has little or none. It finds itself in a desperate void. As the battle for power escalates, there is scarcely a Haitian democratic institution standing that can adjudicate the dispute stemming from the assassination of the president, Jovenel Moïse, in his home on Wednesday.After the last United States election result was contested, a mob incited by former President Trump stormed the capitol on Jan. 6, but American legal checks and balances held in the end. Further violence was averted, but only just.Haiti’s interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, claims to be in charge of the country. Haiti’s senate says he is not.Joseph Odelyn/Associated PressAbsent strong institutions, some powerful international investment in stability is critical. Afghanistan is scarcely more stable than Haiti. Neither state can make a claim to have a monopoly on the use of organized violence within its own borders, a classic definition of a government’s authority.Yet Afghanistan overcame a similar crisis last year. After the 2020 election, both the incumbent, Ashraf Ghani, and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, claimed victory. Mr. Abdullah initially denounced the election result as a “coup.” A violent clash seemed possible. But the United States, through intense diplomacy, was able to mediate a compromise.“The United States had troops in the country,” said Barnett Rubin, a former State Department official with deep knowledge of Afghanistan. “It had advisers. It was invested. It was tacitly on Mr. Ghani’s side.”The United States had an overriding national interest in resolving the conflict and opening the way for peace talks with the Taliban — even if those efforts seem fleeting now that the United States is withdrawing its troops and the Taliban advances across the country.In Haiti, there is no clear rule of law nor any indication that the United States is eager to intervene militarily and force a resolution. If it has any national interest, it lies in preventing upheaval so close to its shores and avoiding another mass Haitian migrant exodus like the one that followed the 1991 coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.The potential for the crisis in Haiti to worsen is evident. Mr. Joseph immediately declared “a state of siege,” a form of martial law, but his right to do so was unclear. In many ways rampant gang violence had already reduced Haiti to a condition resembling a country under siege.The Senate, or what’s left of it, wants Joseph Lambert, its president, to become provisional president and Mr. Joseph replaced as provisional prime minister by Ariel Henry. Before his death, Mr. Moïse had named Mr. Henry, a neurosurgeon, to the prime minister’s position, but he had not yet been sworn in.The Haitian senate has said that the senate president, Joseph Lambert, center, should be Haiti’s president.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe path to breaking a standoff is murky. Under Mr. Moïse, Parliament was eviscerated. The terms of two thirds of the nation’s senators had expired, as did those of every member of the lower house, with no elections to replace them.Critics accused Mr. Moïse of presiding over the collapse deliberately, to further consolidate power. When he was assassinated, the nation was suddenly rudderless.Countries can function, to varying degrees, with nobody in power, or power disputed. In the postwar years, Italy and Belgium have managed with no government for long periods, but they had solid democratic institutions.Lebanon, in dire financial straits, has limped along for many years with two military forces — the national army and the Hezbollah militia — and a sectarian power-sharing system that looks to a millennial generation like a license for the political elite to loot with impunity while the country suffers. Still, it has avoided spiraling back into civil war.In the Ivory Coast, though, violence ultimately settled dueling claims to power after two people declared victory in the 2010 presidential election. The incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to step down despite the fact that international electoral observers had recognized his rival, Alassane Ouattara, as the winner. Several thousand people were killed in a brief civil war before the French army helped pro-Ouattara forces oust Mr. Gbagbo.In Venezuela, also deep in economic misery, Nicolás Maduro, the nation’s authoritarian leader, has clung to power through more than two years of turmoil despite the rival claims of Juan Guaidó, an opposition leader who has been backed by dozens of foreign governments, including the United States, as the rightful president.President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has clung to power despite the rival claims of Juan Guaidó, who was backed by the United States. Miraflores Palace, via ReutersAmerican sanctions have cut off much of the Maduro government’s revenue. The result has been mass migration of precisely the kind the Biden administration wants to avoid in the case of Haiti.Democracies take root slowly and painfully, and Haiti, since becoming the first independent state of Latin American and the Caribbean in 1804, has suffered turmoil almost without respite. Crippled by debt imposed by France, occupied by the United States for almost two decades in the early 20th century, undermined by corruption and coups, hit in 2010 by an earthquake and over the past year by the coronavirus pandemic, the country is at its most vulnerable and combustible.But the Biden administration, at the very moment when the president has been pulling the country back from its forever wars, is wary of any deep Haitian involvement, especially of a request from Haitian officials to deploy American troops. Haitian leaders tend to look to Washington for backing and approval to reinforce their political credentials.For the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, the path of least resistance may well be to seek to resolve the power conflict by urging Haiti to move forward with elections planned for September. The Biden administration has already done just that, as if voting was some panacea.But in an article in Just Society, Mr. Mulrean, who was the American ambassador to Haiti between 2015 and 2017, wrote that holding the elections would be “a mistake.”“It is tempting to think that new elections will clarify the situation and restore stability, but experience teaches us the opposite,” he wrote. “What Haiti needs is to take stock of what is broken and fix it.”A broad coalition of opposition parties and civil society is calling for just that. Voting, they note, solves nothing if the institutions that secure democracy have ceased to function. More

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      Its President Assassinated, Haiti’s Future Is Uncertain

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      For years, the United States has adopted a wary tolerance of Haiti, batting aside the horror of kidnappings, murders and gang warfare. The more convenient strategy generally seemed to be backing whichever government was in power and supplying endless amounts of foreign aid.Donald Trump supported President Jovenel Moïse mainly because Mr. Moïse supported a campaign to oust President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. And in February, the Biden administration accepted Mr. Moïse’s tenuous argument that he still had another year to serve despite opposition calls for his departure and large street protests. Mr. Moïse, though initially elected to a five-year term due to end in 2021, did not take office until 2017, thus his claim to an extra year as president.There had appeared to be a tacit understanding during Mr. Moïse’s rule: Haiti is turbulent and difficult, a bomb waiting to explode in the hands of anyone who attempts to defuse it. After all, why should Mr. Biden take on the unrewarding task of “fixing” Haiti when there was already an elected president in office who could bear the brunt of criticism about the deteriorating political situation there?But the assassination of Mr. Moïse on Wednesday will now force a reluctant administration to focus more carefully on the next steps it wants to take concerning Haiti. There are no simple options.The killing has destroyed the Biden administration’s hopes (however far-fetched) for a peaceful transfer of power with elections presided over by Mr. Moïse. But that’s not to say that Haiti’s future is entirely up to the United States nor should it be. When the United States has stepped in, Haitians have ended up worse off. When President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was killed by an angry crowd in 1915, U.S. Navy ships lay on the Haitian coast waiting to quell unrest to keep Haiti stable for American business interests there. In the wake of the killing, U.S. Marines occupied Haiti and remained there for 19 years.U.S. interventions didn’t stop there. In 1986, the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier (and his father before him) fell to a combination of popular unrest in Haiti and political maneuvering by Washington. The country managed to hold its first free and fair elections in 1990, in which Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former liberation-theology priest, was elected. Three years after Mr. Aristide was removed in a coup, the Clinton administration reinstated him.Haiti was never able to shake off the foreign yoke, except, one might argue, during the darkest days of the Duvalier regime. Over the years it has been at the mercy of the United States, of course, and of the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the Organization of American States and the United Nations, which deployed a peacekeeping force there from 2004 until 2017. Yet Haiti has ended up just as poor and unstable as ever, if not more so. And the country never truly recovered from a devastating earthquake in 2010.Drug cartels and their Haitian connections have also played a damaging role. Observers say that much of the violence in recent years has stemmed from turf wars between street gangs operating in a largely lawless environment.The presidential mandate of Mr. Moïse itself was iffy, to say the least. Only 21 percent of the electorate voted in that election. Nevertheless, it was easier for the United States and other parties to tolerate Mr. Moïse and wait for the next elections, no matter how flawed they were likely to be, than to deal with a void created by his assassination.President Biden has called Mr. Moïse’s killing “very worrisome.” But Haiti was very worrisome even before the killing. Now the United States is confronted by an even murkier situation there: no leader, no legislature, a justice system in disarray, a nonfunctioning and dispirited police and army, and gangs roaming the streets. It’s not clear what will emerge from the vacuum at the top — perhaps a new strongman or, less likely, an interim government.Despite that precariousness, the United States has still called for elections before the end of the year. But it’s hard to imagine how elections can proceed in an atmosphere of security and freedom, leading to a truly democratically elected president and legislature. As it stands, two men are claiming the role of prime minister, accentuating the sense of instability.Haiti’s problems cannot be solved by U.S. intervention. The United States no longer has the standing, the stomach or even the desire to impose its vision on Haiti. The best option right now for the United States is to wait and watch and listen not just to the usual suspects but to a broad new generation of Haitian democrats who can responsibly begin to move toward a more workable Haitian polity.Haiti still needs the cooperation of international friends who pay attention to the character and the goals of those to whom they extend financial and political support, rather than choosing a convenient candidate in a quickie election, with the catastrophic results for the country that we’ve seen in the past.A majority of Haitians want to build back their institutions and return to a normal life: schools, clinics and businesses opening again, a plan to deal with the Covid-19 crisis, produce markets functioning and safe streets free from the threat of armed gangs. This is the best of all possible outcomes for Haiti — but sadly, it’s improbable, at least in the near future.Amy Wilentz (@amywilentz) is the author of “The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier” and “Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti,” among other books. She is a Guggenheim fellow and teaches in the Literary Journalism Program at the University of California, Irvine.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      White House Offers Assistance After Haiti's President Is Assassinated

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      Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, on Thursday offered U.S. assistance to Haiti in the wake of the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and renewed American support for legislative and presidential elections that had been scheduled for September.Ms. Psaki did not say if the U.S. recognized Haiti’s interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, as the leader of the country, as a power struggle brewed between him and Ariel Henry, who had been appointed as prime minister by Mr. Moïse two days before his death.“We recognize the democratic institutions of Haiti, and we are going to continue to work with them directly,” Ms. Psaki said.Asked again about the power struggle in Haiti, Ms. Psaki suggested that the situation would be resolved with new elections.“We have been in touch with the acting prime minister, and we echo his call for calm,” Ms. Psaki said. “But I would again reiterate that’s one of the reasons we have called for elections this year, and we believe that they should proceed.”Opposition groups and protesters in Haiti had called for the elections to be canceled, citing violence and unrest in the country as well as a political crisis intensified by Mr. Moïse’s refusal to step down at the end of a five-year term in February.Ms. Psaki wasn’t asked about reports that at least one American citizen is among the six people detained in the assassination of Mr. Moïse. Haitian officials said another American may also be among the six, adding to their assertions that “foreigners” had been involved in the brazen attack.The Biden administration had publicly supported Mr. Moïse throughout the crisis — continuing the stance of the Trump administration on Haiti. In a statement, the State Department said that Mr. Moïse’s term of office could be extended to February 2022 — contradicting a ruling by Haiti’s judiciary branch.The Biden administration had also supported the Haitian president’s plans to hold elections and a constitutional referendum in September that would have centralized power in the presidency and allowed Mr. Moïse to seek an additional term in office.America has a long history of intervening in Haitian politics. The ruthless dictator François Duvalier enjoyed American support in the form of aid and military training. American support continued under the despotic rule of Mr. Duvalier’s son, Jean-Claude. The Central Intelligence Agency funded far-right Haitian paramilitaries during a period of military rule in Haiti in the 1990s. The U.S. then invaded the country to overthrow the military government in 1994, and deployed marines to restore order after another coup in 2004. More

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      El presidente de Haití no tiene apoyo popular pero quiere reformar la Constitución

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      El país se enfrenta a una crisis prolongada y se prepara para la mayor reorganización del gobierno que se haya visto en décadas con un referéndum constitucional y elecciones nacionales previstas para este año.El presidente de Haití sabe que tiene un problema: gobernar un país que a veces parece rozar lo ingobernable es bastante difícil cuando se tiene mucho apoyo.Está claro que Jovenel Moïse no lo tiene.En una entrevista reciente, el líder haitiano se lamentó de que solo tiene la confianza de una pequeña parte de su pueblo.Ganó las elecciones de 2016 con algo menos de 600.000 votos en un país de 11 millones de personas. Y ahora muchos están enojados por su negativa a dejar el cargo en enero, en medio de una disputa sobre si su mandato terminaba entonces o debía prolongarse un año más.Sin embargo, Moïse, de 52 años, ha escogido este momento para embarcarse en la mayor sacudida de la política haitiana en décadas, y supervisa la redacción de una nueva Constitución que reestructurará el gobierno y dará mayores poderes a la presidencia.La necesidad de una nueva Constitución es un raro punto de acuerdo entre Moïse y sus numerosos detractores. Lo que preocupa a algunos observadores es el enfoque unilateral del presidente para redactarla. Otros simplemente no confían en él.Moïse, según los críticos, se ha vuelto cada vez más autocrático y se apoya en un pequeño círculo de confidentes para redactar un documento que, entre otros cambios, dará al presidente mayor poder sobre las fuerzas armadas, así como la posibilidad de presentarse a dos mandatos consecutivos. También otorgaría al líder de Haití inmunidad por cualquier acción realizada en el cargo.Una protesta contra MoïseValerie Baeriswyl/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMoïse dice que la ampliación de poderes es necesaria.“Necesitamos un sistema que funcione”, dijo en la entrevista telefónica. “El sistema actual no funciona. El presidente no puede trabajar para cumplir”.Haití obtuvo su independencia en 1804, después de que los haitianos se alzaran contra la Francia colonial, pero no fue hasta 1990 cuando tuvo sus primeras elecciones ampliamente consideradas como libres y justas. Incluso entonces, en un país con una larga historia de dictaduras y golpes de Estado, la democracia nunca se ha arraigado del todo.Muchos haitianos dicen que es necesaria una nueva Constitución. La actual ha creado dos centros de poder que compiten entre sí en el país —el presidente y el primer ministro —, lo que a menudo provoca fricciones y un gobierno fracturado.El proyecto de Constitución suprimiría el Senado, y dejaría en su lugar un único órgano legislativo elegido cada cinco años, y sustituiría el cargo de primer ministro por un vicepresidente que responda ante el presidente, en un intento de simplificar el gobierno.Los haitianos votarán la nueva Constitución en junio, antes de las elecciones nacionales previstas para septiembre.Sin embargo, algunos no se sienten muy tranquilos con la votación que se avecina.“La gente tiene que darse cuenta de que las elecciones no son inherentemente equivalentes a la democracia”, dijo Jake Johnston, investigador asociado del Centro de Investigación Económica y Política en Washington.Cada vez que hay una crisis política en Haití, dijo, la comunidad internacional tiende a pedir elecciones. Eso deja al país pasando de un gobierno paralizado a otro, en lugar de intentar reformar el proceso electoral y trabajar para conseguir la participación de los votantes.“Cuando unas elecciones dejan de representar realmente la voluntad del pueblo, ¿qué tipo de gobierno esperan que produzca?”, preguntó Johnston.Desde 1986, tras casi 30 años de dictadura, la participación electoral ha disminuido constantemente en Haití. Solo el 18 por ciento de los haitianos con derecho a voto participaron en las elecciones de 2016 que llevaron a Moïse al poder.Ahora, el profundo marasmo económico y social del país solo puede animar a más haitianos a quedarse en casa cuando llegue el momento de votar por la nueva Constitución y luego por un nuevo presidente.El desempleo es galopante y la desesperación está en su punto más alto. Muchos haitianos son incapaces de salir a la calle para hacer el mercado sin preocuparse de que los secuestren para pedir un rescate.Un mercado en Puerto Príncipe. Muchos haitianos no pueden salir a la calle sin preocuparse por la delincuencia, incluido el secuestro.Chery Dieu-Nalio para The New York TimesMoïse dice que a él también le preocupa la participación electoral.“Hay una mayoría silenciosa”, dijo. “Muchos haitianos no quieren participar en algo que creen que será violento. Necesitamos paz y estabilidad para animar a la gente a votar”.A medida que se acerca el referéndum de junio sobre la Constitución, el gobierno trata de registrar a cinco millones de votantes, dijo Moïse. Su objetivo, explicó, es inyectar al proceso más legitimidad de la que tuvo su presidencia.Según las Naciones Unidas, hay al menos 6,7 millones de votantes potenciales en Haití. Otros dicen que esa cifra es un recuento insuficiente, ya que muchos haitianos son indocumentados y sus nacimientos nunca se registran ante el gobierno.En un esfuerzo por aplacar a los críticos, y aliviar las preocupaciones de que se posiciona para beneficiarse de la nueva Constitución, Moïse ha prometido no presentarse a las próximas elecciones.Pero para arreglar el país antes de retirarse, dice, necesita acumular suficiente poder para enfrentarse a una oligarquía que, según él, ha paralizado Haití para aprovecharse de un gobierno demasiado débil para regular o cobrar impuestos sus negocios.“Hoy en día sufrimos la captura del Estado, es el mayor problema al que nos enfrentamos”, dijo Moïse.Algunos ven con profundo escepticismo las afirmaciones de Moïse de que se ha convertido en un enemigo de las grandes empresas al intentar regularlas. Dicen que el presidente simplemente trata de avivar el sentimiento populista para desviar la atención de los fracasos de su propio gobierno y dejar de lado a sus oponentes políticos.Policías se enfrentan a manifestantes que exigían la renuncia de Moïse en febrero de este año.Valerie Baeriswyl/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOtros están dispuestos a ser más colaborativos, pero dicen que él no ha hecho lo suficiente para conseguir apoyo.“El problema es la forma en que Moïse ha actuado”, dijo Alexandra Filippova, abogada del Instituto para la Justicia y la Democracia en Haití, una organización que proporciona representación legal a las víctimas de abusos de los derechos humanos. “Lo está impulsando unilateralmente”.El proyecto de Constitución, por ejemplo, publicado el mes pasado, solo está disponible en francés —que la gran mayoría de los haitianos no lee— en lugar de en criollo.Y no se invitó a ningún miembro de la sociedad civil a participar en la redacción del documento. En su lugar, Moïse nombró una comisión especial para hacerlo. Esto, según los críticos, disminuye las posibilidades de un progreso real.“Se supone que el cambio constitucional debe reflejar algún tipo de consenso social”, dijo Filippova.Maria Abi-Habib es la jefa de la corresponsalía para México, Centroamérica y el Caribe. Ha reportado para el Times desde el sur de Asia y el Medio Oriente. Síguela en Twitter: @abihabib More

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      A Go-It-Alone President Wants to Reshape Haiti. Some Are Skeptical.

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      Haiti, facing a prolonged crisis, is preparing for the biggest shake-up of government seen in decades with a constitutional referendum and national elections slated for this year.Haiti’s president knows he has a problem: Governing a country that at times seems to verge on the ungovernable is hard enough when you have a lot of support.Jovenel Moïse clearly does not.In a recent interview, the Haitian leader lamented that he has the confidence of only a small sliver of his people.He won the 2016 elections with just under 600,000 votes in a country of 11 million. And now many are angry over his refusal to leave office in February, amid a dispute over whether his term ended then or should extend for one more year.Yet Mr. Moïse, 52, has chosen this moment to embark on the biggest shake-up Haiti’s politics has seen in decades, overseeing the drafting of a new Constitution that will restructure government and give the presidency greater powers.The need for a new Constitution is a rare point of agreement between Mr. Moïse and his many detractors. What concerns some observers is the president’s unilateral approach to writing one. Others just don’t trust him.Mr. Moïse, critics charge, has become increasingly autocratic and is relying on a small circle of confidants to write a document that, among other changes, will give the president greater power over the armed forces as well as the ability to run for two consecutive terms. It would also grant Haiti’s leader immunity for any actions taken in office.A protest againt Mr. Moïse.Valerie Baeriswyl/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Moïse says the broader powers are necessary.“We need a system that works,” he said in the telephone interview. “The system now doesn’t work. The president cannot work to deliver.”Haiti won its independence in 1804, after Haitians rose up against colonial France, but it was not until 1990 that it had its first election widely regarded as free and fair. Even then, in a country with a long history of dictatorships and coups, democracy has never fully taken root.Many Haitians say a new Constitution is needed. The current one has created two competing power centers in the country — the president and prime minister — which often leads to friction and a fractured government.The draft Constitution would abolish the Senate, leaving in place a single legislative body elected every five years, and replace the post of prime minister with a vice president that answers to the president, in a bid to streamline government.Haitians will vote on the new Constitution in June, ahead of national elections slated for September.But some take little reassurance from the ballot casting ahead.“People need to realize that elections are not inherently equivalent to democracy,” said Jake Johnston, a research associate for the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.Every time there is a political crisis in Haiti, he said, the international community tends to call for elections. That leaves the country limping from one paralyzed government to another, instead of trying to reform the electoral process and work to engage voter participation.“When an election actually ceases to represent the will of the people, what kind of government do they expect that to produce?” Mr. Johnston asked.Since 1986, after nearly 30 years of dictatorship, voter turnout has steadily declined in Haiti. Only 18 percent of all eligible Haitians participated in the 2016 election that brought Mr. Moïse to power.Now, the country’s deep economic and social morass may only encourage more Haitians to stay at home when it is time to vote on the new Constitution and then for a new president.Unemployment is rampant and desperation is at an all-time high. Many Haitians are unable to step onto the street to run basic errands without worrying about being kidnapped for ransom.A market in Port-au-Prince. Many Haitians are unable to run basic errands without worrying about crime, including being kidnapped.Chery Dieu-Nalio for The New York TimesMr. Moïse says he, too, is concerned about voter participation.“There is a silent majority,” he said. “Many Haitians don’t want to participate in something they think will be violent. We need peace and stability to encourage people to vote.”As the June referendum on the Constitution approaches, the government is trying to register five million voters, Mr. Moïse said. His goal, he said, is to inject the process with more legitimacy than his presidency had.According to the United Nations, there are at least 6.7 million potential voters in Haiti. Others say that number is an undercount, since many Haitians are undocumented, their births never registered with the government.In an effort to placate critics, and ease concerns that he is positioning himself to benefit from the new Constitution, Mr. Moïse has promised not to run in the next election.But to fix the country before he steps down, he says, he needs to accumulate enough power to take on an oligarchy he says has paralyzed Haiti to profit off a government too weak to regulate or tax their businesses.“We are suffering today from state capture — it is the biggest problem we face today,” Mr. Moïse said.Some view with deep skepticism Mr. Moïse’s claims that he has made an enemy out of big businesses by trying to regulate them. They say the president is simply trying to stoke populist sentiment to deflect from the failures of his own government and sideline political opponents.Police officers clashing with protesters demanding the resignation of Mr. Moïse.Valerie Baeriswyl/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOthers are willing to be more charitable, but say he has not done enough to build support.“The problem is that the way that Moïse has gone about it,” said Alexandra Filippova, a senior staff attorney with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, an organization that provides legal representation for victims of human rights abuses. “He is unilaterally pushing it forward.”The draft Constitution, for example, released last month, is available only in French — which the vast majority of Haitians do not read — instead of Creole.And no members of civil society were invited to take part as the document was drafted. Mr. Moïse instead appointed a special commission to do that. That, critics say, dims the chances for real progress.“Constitutional change is supposed to reflect a social consensus of some sort,” Ms. Filippova said. More

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      Did a Coup Attempt Really Happen Two Weeks Ago in Haiti?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyDid a Coup Attempt Really Happen Two Weeks Ago in Haiti?The Biden administration must speak up for human rights in the island nation.Ms. Stockman is a member of the editorial board.Feb. 23, 2021A copy of the Haitian Constitution wrapped in an American flag at a march in Port-au-Prince on Feb. 10. The Haitian president’s supporters and opponents disagree on when his term ends.Credit…Valerie Baeriswyl/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCatherine Buteau, a 33-year-old marketing and communications specialist in Montreal, woke up on Feb. 7 to a lot of missed calls on her phone. Her relatives in Haiti had been desperately calling her. Her father, mother and aunt had been snatched from their beds in Port-au-Prince in the middle of the night.“No one knew what was happening, just that they were taken,” she told me. “In the beginning, not understanding what’s happening, I thought the worst.”Later that day, Ms. Buteau learned that her parents and her aunt were among the eighteen people who had been arrested and accused of attempting a coup against Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse. Since that day, she’s been working around the clock with a lawyer in Haiti to try to get her parents out of prison.Were they plotting a coup or trying to restore democracy?Jake Johnston, a Haiti specialist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told me that the answer depends on when you think the president’s term is up. Opposition leaders say it ended on Feb. 7, four years after his inauguration in 2017. They were openly planning to swear in a parallel government to force him to relinquish power. But supporters of Mr. Moïse say he has another year left in his term, because a disputed election delayed him from taking office.“That’s what so much of this comes down to: legitimacy,” Mr. Johnston said.Some coups are obvious, like the recent military takeover in Myanmar. Others are murkier. What constitutes a coup d’état is all too often in the eye of the beholder.Coups are getting rarer, according to John Chin, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who tracks illegal power grabs. The 1960s saw dozens of coups around the world each year. More recently, there’s been only one or two a year. But accusations of coup plots have not gone away. Indeed, even the leaders of democracies — like Donald Trump in the United States and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel — have cried coup to delegitimize opponents by portraying their conduct as illegal and undemocratic, Mr. Chin told me.The question of whether something is deemed a coup has practical implications. In 2009, when Honduran special forces escorted President Manuel Zelaya from his house in his pajamas at gunpoint and onto an airplane flight out of the country, the U.S. State Department refrained from calling it a “military coup,” because doing so would have meant cutting off aid to the Honduran military.And, in 2019, when Bolivia’s president Evo Morales, an icon of the left, was forced to flee to Mexico just weeks after he was declared the winner of a fourth term in office, U.S. officials rejected the term “coup” and called it an expression of “democratic will.”If a government is unpopular enough, its overthrow is called a revolution. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Haiti, a nation founded when enslaved and free people revolted against their French colonial masters, winning independence in 1804. Few historians would call that a coup.But popular revolts are easier to produce than popular governments. Haiti has endured a number of brutal dictators, notably François Duvalier, known as “Papa Doc,” in the 1950s and ’60s and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, “Baby Doc,” who ruled from 1971 to 1986. There were lots of plots to take out Papa Doc, who survived by relying on a dreaded militia, the Tontons Macoute. Haiti is an example of how failed coups, or even purported failed coups, can strengthen a leader’s hold on power by giving a pretext to crack down on opponents.Haiti didn’t have its first free democratic election until 1990, when Jean-Bertrand Aristide won in a landslide, only to be deposed twice in military coups. Once a country catches a case of the coups, it can be hard to cure. Every leader afterward is less secure.Ms. Buteau’s parents don’t seem like the coup-plotting type. They weren’t soldiers. Her father, Louis Buteau, is an agronomist who worked for years in Haiti’s Ministry of Agriculture. Her mother, Dr. Marie Antoinette Gautier, is a well-known surgeon at Hôpital Eliazar Germain who once opened a clinic inside their house for people in their neighborhood. Dr. Gautier also ran for president in 2015 as a long-shot candidate.“My mother, she is very vocal,” Ms. Buteau told me. Raised by a widowed nurse with seven children, Dr. Gautier went into medicine, while her sister, Marie Louise Gauthier, joined the national police.“These are people who have dedicated their lives to public service in Haiti,” Ms. Buteau said.Images from a petition to free Dr. Marie Antoinette Gautier, left, Marie Louise Gauthier and Louis Buteau.They sounded like the kind of educated and civic-minded Haitians who might throw up their hands at the political situation and emigrate to the United States or France or Canada. But Ms. Buteau’s parents didn’t want to leave Haiti.They stayed even when, a few years ago, Mr. Buteau was shot by robbers outside a bank, and then a wave of kidnappings washed over the country, snapping up a distant cousin for ransom. Still, the last time Ms. Buteau talked to her parents, they were on edge because of the deteriorating political situation. The last year has been marked by increasing protests against the president, who has ruled by decree since he dissolved Parliament in January 2020.Whatever legitimacy Mr. Moïse enjoys stems from his 2016 election. But political legitimacy gets murky when large numbers of people have been kicked off the voter rolls and when elections have a reputation for being rigged.Only about 20 percent of Haitians turned out in the election that brought Mr. Moïse to power. Merely holding elections isn’t enough — the public must perceive the vote to be free and fair for the winner to carry moral force. That’s a warning for the United States, where Republicans are busy trying to toss people off the voter rolls, and where some Democrats feel it’s futile to try to convince Trump supporters that President Biden won fairly.The question of when the president’s term ends should have been answered by a constitutional court. But the justice system in Haiti isn’t functioning as it should, thanks to the president. So Mr. Moïse has been planning another year in office, even rolling out plans for a nakedly unconstitutional referendum in April that would strengthen his grip on power. While a consensus has formed in Haiti that some political reforms are necessary to prevent cyclical deadlock, the current Constitution specifically forbids amendments by referendum.After the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, Americans no longer have much credibility to lecture other countries about elections, if we ever had it to begin with. In the past, Americans overtly meddled in Haiti’s politics, in ways that didn’t produce good long-term results. It isn’t our place to resolve the crisis in Haiti.Nor should U.S. tax dollars pay for Mr. Moïse’s unconstitutional referendum. And Haiti’s leaders should not be allowed to park their money in U.S. banks if there is reason to believe it was pilfered in corrupt schemes or garnered through kidnapping rings involving state security forces. That’s what the Magnitsky Act is for.Many people in Haiti believe that the Trump administration made a deal with Mr. Moïse: If he supported the U.S. case against Venezuela, then Washington would look the other way when it came to human rights abuses in Haiti. But things have gotten so bad there that even the Trump administration couldn’t stay silent. In December, the Treasury Department issued sanctions on two former officials in Mr. Moïse’s government and a notorious gang leader for their alleged role in a 2018 massacre in which at least 71 Haitians were killed, reportedly for refusing to side with the president against the opposition.More must be done to hold those who committed atrocities accountable. It’s hard to imagine free and fair elections in Haiti as long as such killers walk free. Still, the State Department initially supported Mr. Moïse’s view that he has another year in office, a declaration that some feel gave him the confidence to arrest Ms. Buteau’s relatives, although a spokesman also called on him to adhere to the spirit of the Constitution. Other voices inside the U.S. government have spoken up forcefully about the situation in Haiti.Mr. Moïse’s government put out a videotape showing “proof” of a coup, which featured a recording of a conversation between Ms. Buteau’s aunt, the national police’s inspector general, and the head of security at the presidential palace. The government says the tapes prove that Ms. Buteau’s aunt tried to bribe the security chief into arresting Mr. Moïse so that a new provisional president — a Supreme Court judge who was also arrested — could be sworn in.Was this really proof of a coup? Not likely. The video named the coup’s mastermind as Dan Whitman, an American who served as the U.S. Embassy spokesman in Haiti 20 years ago. Reached at his home in Washington, Mr. Whitman told me the allegation “couldn’t be more bizarre and more untrue.”Mr. Whitman, who retired from the State Department in 2009, told me he hasn’t been to Haiti in two decades. He had lost track of what was happening there until a Haitian radio journalist called him to ask for a comment about the purported plot. He has since heard a rumor that someone impersonating him has been calling up opposition figures in Haiti and giving orders that paved the way for the Feb. 7 arrests.“I’m disgusted,” he told me. “I’m creeped out. But I’m not surprised. This kind of thing happens all the time in small, vulnerable countries.”The Biden administration must find ways to speak up for fair elections in Haiti without trying to decide the outcome. In a draft of letter to Congress, Frantz G. Verret, former president of Haiti’s electoral commission, asked for help convening a meeting between the opposition and the president. He likened it to “roadside assistance” to get Haiti’s democracy moving again.That’s the sort of help that would be proper for the United States to provide. After all, it is the people of Haiti who must decide if their president is legitimate or not, and if the foiled coup in Haiti was really a coup at all.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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