But Mr. Price also sent a warning to Mr. Moïse about delaying elections and ruling by decree.
“The Haitian people deserve the opportunity to elect their leaders and restore Haiti’s democratic institutions,” Mr. Price added.
Mr. Moïse has led by presidential decree since last year, after suspending two-thirds of the Senate, the entire lower Chamber of Deputies and every mayor throughout the country. Haiti now has only 11 elected officials in office to represent its 11 million people, with Mr. Moïse having refused to hold any elections over the last four years.
Mr. Moïse is seeking to expand his presidential powers in the coming months by changing the country’s Constitution. A referendum on the new Constitution is set for April, and the opposition fears the vote will not be free or fair and will only embolden his budding authoritarian tendencies, assertions Mr. Moïse denies.
André Michel, 44, a leader of the opposition coalition, the Democratic and Popular Sector, vowed that if the president did not step down, the opposition would stage more protests and engage in civil disobedience.
“There is no debate,” he said. “His mandate is over.”
The opposition hopes to tap into the discontent of the millions of unemployed Haitians — more than 60 percent of the country lives in poverty — to fuel the protests, which in the past have often turned violent and shut down large parts of the country.
Although the president has never been weaker — holed up inside the presidential palace, he is unable to move freely even in the capital — observers say he has a good chance of staying on the job. A weak and feeble opposition is plagued by infighting and cannot agree on how to remove Mr. Moïse from power or whom to replace him with.
H0vis on February 7th, 2021 at 15:01 UTC »
If your President lost and refuses to go, that's already unrest. You don't have brace for it, because it means that the peaceful transition of power, the central core of democracy, just failed, and every second he delays leaving is a second spent in a dictatorship.
Idesofdecember on February 7th, 2021 at 14:13 UTC »
The most vexing part of being haitian american is you hear hot-take after hot take every time your mother country comes in the news, with little care to even understand haitian society or think about what haitians would even want. Its just people bickering over the score like a football game with little concern for the country at this point.
The real situation is we know Haiti is fucked up. White imperialism fucked us up but you can only blame white imperialism for so long. At the end of the day there will never be positive progress even if white people ceased to exist tomorrow, there are too many fractures within our society. Ask a haitian about black peoples capacity for cruelty and they will tell you that race doesn't matter - black white or milat they will abuse you all the same if they are the leader of haiti. I am part of the papa doc diaspora era, and my parents actually love Papa doc, because even though they had family members and friends chopped apart by the Tonton Macoute and fled with nothing on their backs, at least Papa Doc provided the catalyst to get them out of that god forsaken country and live somewhere where they could at least live in peace.
Every time Haiti is brought up people just want to obsess about race because its an important element, but quite frankly it doesn't do shit. In a country where the wealth gap is so enormous and so many people live in abject destitution, racial equality pledges will never yield any results - imperialists would never provide more funds out of a political obligation (and they probably shouldn't tbh), and there is just simply not enough juice to squeeze out of the few milats and foreigners that make up the upper echelon of Haitian society. The problem is so big and complex that is feels like screaming into the void. You need to let actual Haitians lead the rebuilding efforts, but actual Haitians have given a lot of reason to not be trusted so rebuilding efforts are always stalled by that reluctance. One would want to give a democratically elected leader a chance, but if the vast majority of the country is in abject poverty and fear and hatred rule the minds of many would you trust the leader that they try to elect? You need to bolster and empower the few remaining people willing to create jobs in Haiti - but how far can you really empower a class of people that are likely western textile firms and Lebanese multimillionaires whose work looks awfully similar to what the only industry Haiti has ever been able to support (agricultural slavery, or slavery with extra steps). You need to somehow channel the only real resource that Haiti has ever had - millions of young people who speak french and have real capacity for incredible ingenuity and intelligence, but people far smarter than me have no idea how to channel that energy other than lackadaisical rebuilding efforts, or political gangsterism.
I know I cry about providing solutions, and I just provided no solutions. Thats the funny nature of this beast. I just wish people looked at Haiti with a different perspective instead of always painting it with the same two tones of paint.
Toad32 on February 7th, 2021 at 13:32 UTC »
Haiti has been in constant unrest for a very long time.