Jovenel Assassinated

The Haiti Democracy Project, reachable at (202) 588-8700, was pretty much alone among pundits in Washington in stressing that Jovenel Moïse won, fair and square, first place in the October 25, 2015 presidential elections. Two hundred eight separate reports from our accredited observers proved that. The election was overturned by the losers. Moïse went on to win the next one by an even larger margin. In that one, we photographed 4 percent of the nation’s election returns and found not a single discrepancy between the local results and those posted on the central board. We then uncovered a falsity in an anti-corruption agency’s charge against Moïse at the beginning of his presidency. We alone among the pundits spoke out loud and clear against the 2017 withdrawal of the U.N. stabilization mission, contending that Haiti was anything but stabilized. We did allow ourselves some criticism of arbitrary acts by Moïse. These continued apace up to the present. He was no innocent. But when the opposition pretended that Moïse’s presidential term was only four years, we posted the text of Article 134-2, cited by the opposition, showing that its requirement of an immediate start for the president-elect had been ignored, and with it the scheduling that might have shortened his term. Thus the president who has been assassinated was both freely elected and ruling legally. The opposition in Haiti must take responsibility for its false and reckless accusation that Moïse was ruling beyond his term and to the extent that that had anything to do in encouraging the assassination, the opposition’s flagrant disregard for the truth in this matter is to be condemned. The Haiti Democracy Project was pleading for months with members of the opposition to drop this false claim. U.S. policy has also been negligent. In our letter published last week in the Washington Post, we recalled the exertions of earlier U.S. policy and stressed that the United States has simply failed to do the things one must do to protect and support an elected president in Haiti given the true conditions in that country. Writing less than two weeks before the assassination, we said that Washington had completely dismantled the protective edifice that three U.S. presidents had put in place over twenty-four years.