The cacophony of sirens, horns and street vendors in Haiti’s capital was quieter than usual this week as residents remained on edge after anti-government protests, which organizers promised were to start again yesterday.
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Port-au-Prince and the island nation’s other main cities for days of protests that began on Feb. 7, calling for Haitian President Jovenel Moise to resign amid ballooning inflation, a weakening currency and allegations of misused funds.
“The protests hurt my business. We’re frustrated and the people are still scared,” said 33-year old Jocelyn Alexis, a street vendor in the city center.
Photo: EPA
Other small-business owners said that customers were still staying away after the recent protests turned violent, even though the marches died down this week.
Opposition leaders are calling for an independent probe into the whereabouts of funds from the PetroCaribe agreement, an alliance between Caribbean countries, including Haiti, and Venezuela.
The agreement’s preferential terms for energy purchases were meant to help free up funds to aid development in Haiti, a poor country habitually hammered by natural disasters.
“The fight will continue ... we will continue to seek the president’s resignation and we need to have a PetroCaribe probe because we need to end the corruption in this country that has allowed a small minority to get majority of wealth,” opposition leader Andre Michel said.
“The new protests are set for Friday [yesterday],” he said. “The fight will start again.”
In an address from the presidential palace on Thursday last week, Moise defied calls for his ouster, saying he would not hand the country over to drug traffickers and that dialogue was the only way to stop a civil war.
The Haitian government’s “mismanagement of the economy” has fueled ‘ frustrations, said economist Kesner Pharel at consultancy Group Croissance.
Annual inflation of 15 percent as of December last year and a currency that weakened nearly 20 percent versus the US dollar last year, and has continued to depreciate this year, has made buying basic necessities more difficult.
“People are living in misery. We won’t stop until we get what we need. We need better leaders in government that give people hope. Until then the battle will continue,” Haitian Senator Evalliere Beauplan said.
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