After deadly weekend protests calling for his resignation, followed by a general strike, Haitian President Jovenel Moise late on Wednesday emerged to reaffirm his legitimacy and appeal for calm in a televised address.
The strike shut down most of Haiti on Wednesday as tension and uncertainty gripped the Caribbean country following the protests and Moise’s unexplained absence from public view.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas and is still battling to overcome a years-old cholera epidemic and the aftermath of a major earthquake, alongside political turmoil.
Photo: AP
“During my five-year presidency no one, I emphasize no one, whatever the pretext, can threaten the interests of the country or put the nation in danger,” said Moise, who has been in power since February last year.
Making his first public comments since the weekend protests, Moise said that dialogue must include all levels of society and that democracy “asks that the rules of the game be respected, according to the constitution.”
He gave his six-minute address surrounded by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Henry Ceant, the ministers of interior and justice, and national police leaders.
Moise had said nothing since Sunday’s protests and was supposed to speak to the nation on Tuesday, but his appearance was canceled several hours after being announced, with no explanation given.
The breakdown in presidential communications was widely criticized on social media.
Schools, shops and private businesses were closed in main cities on Wednesday, in line with the opposition’s call for a general strike.
As police patrolled empty main avenues in normally chaotic Port-au-Prince, burning barricades went up in some neighborhoods and sporadic gunshots set residents on edge.
At least three people were killed by gunfire during the mass protests over the weekend demanding Moise’s resignation, the Haitian National Police said.
The opposition said 11 people lost their lives.
“We can no longer live like this, frustrated, because we know how people live in other countries,” 30-year-old resident Jean Junior said, complaining that people lack “potable water, hospitals, housing” while the president only makes “promises that he doesn’t keep.”
In the upscale Petionville neighborhood, the only two gas stations open were besieged by motorcycle taxi drivers desperate to refuel.
Various opposition groups, arguing that the situation is out of control, have proposed ways to remove the president in order to resolve the crisis.
The protests were part of a sporadic movement that began during the summer over a scandal at the heart of a Venezuelan aid program known as Petrocaribe.
Through Petrocaribe, Venezuela for years supplied Haiti and other Caribbean and Central American countries with oil at cut-rate prices and on easy credit terms.
However, investigations by the Haitian Senate in 2016 and last year concluded that nearly US$2 billion from the program was misused.
A dozen of Haiti’s former Cabinet ministers — all members of the current ruling party — have been implicated, but no legal proceedings have followed, sparking public anger.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS