Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry says he wants members of a powerful opposition coalition seeking his removal from office, replaced by a two-year transitional government, to join his election push to steer Haiti out of its current crisis and back to popular rule.
“We have to go to elections,” Henry told the Miami Herald on Friday in an exclusive interview. “It’s the only option that we have, and it’s the process to go to elections that we have to negotiate.”
Henry says he wants to go to election “as soon as possible,” and planned to present his plan Friday to members of the coalition known as the Montana Accord.
“We are trying to convince them,” he said. “We have a road map and we will talk to them about the road map.”
Representatives of the Montana group declined to answer questions ahead of the meeting. With four individuals representing each group, the two were still meeting late into Friday evening with the Montana group pushing a press conference to Saturday morning due to security concerns for journalists.
Until now, Henry’s government and the Montana Accord supporters have been unable to reach a consensus. The international community during a virtual conference hosted by Canada last month on Haiti called on Henry, 72, to redouble his efforts to find a broad consensus among Haiti’s competing political factions on the path forward given the country’s lack of an elected president, functioning parliament or judiciary.
Both he and Montana Accord supporters have accused the other of not wanting to sit down or be willing to reach a compromise.
Made up of human rights and grassroots activists, civic leaders, entrepreneurs and powerful politicians, the Montana group has proposed its own transition plan and last month elected its own prime minister, former parliamentarian Steven Benoit, and president, economist Fritz Alphonse Jean. The choices are part of a proposed power-sharing agreement with a five-member presidential college, which Henry has been invited to join. But the neurosurgeon, has so far rebuffed the idea, saying the next occupant of Haiti’s presidential palace must come out of an election.
In recent days, supporters of the Commission to Search for a Haitian Solution to the Crisis, which drafted the Montana Accord, have vacillated between having Henry join their proposed power-sharing agreement and calling for his removal from office. Those calling for the latter argue that the mandate of assassinated President Jovenel Moïse expired Monday, based on the calculations of the international community, and so too should the mandate of the prime minister he appointed before his July 7 assassination.
They argue that Henry lacks constitutional legitimacy to run the country, and though the same can be said of them, they cite their broad support among various groups.
Moïse first tapped Henry in mid-June to serve as his prime minister — his seventh since assuming office in 2017. But he was killed inside his private residence before Henry could be installed. The shocking murder triggered a struggle for control of the country. Henry eventually won out, but his legitimacy has been called into question ever since, and questions about his relationship with one of the key suspects in the assassination have been fueling calls for the United States and others in the international community to drop their support.
Henry on Friday pushed back on those seeking to tie him to Moïse’s assassination, saying it would be naive for people to think he was involved because he had nothing to gain with the president’s murder.
“First of all, I had been named by the president and I was in the process of forming a government,” he said. “They are trying political machinations and it’s part of the game of politics.”
In a brief press conference after the meeting, Henry he said no judge has charged him with the assassination of the president and he has never been implicated in the death Moïse.
“Because I am prime minister, they think they can assassinate my character,” he said. “We will continue to extend our hands to all of the country’s offspring.”
He gave no indication how his election proposal had been received during the talks.
The brutal assassination of Moïse has become a political Achilles' heel for Henry as his political detractors, who normally don’t see eye to eye and were at odds during the last five years, forge common ground in lobbying for his removal from power.
On Wednesday, former government ministers of Moïse sent a letter to U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Kenneth Merten at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince questioning the Biden administration’s support for Henry. The ex-government officials, some of whom had been fired by Henry or replaced during his last Cabinet shakeup, provided a list of actions by Henry that they say raise “many questions on the part of the Haitian people.”
“Ariel Henry constitutes a major obstacle to the manifestation of the truth around the assassination of President Moïse, the realization of the inclusive dialogue as a mechanism for resolving the crisis and general elections democratic, honest and free so that legitimate leaders can really address Haiti’s many development challenges,” said the letter signed by the newly formed Rally of Jovenelists for Democracy group.
Supporters of the Montana Accord, named after the Petionville hotel where it was signed, argue that Haiti is in no shape to hold elections given the explosion in gang violence and kidnappings, which have made Haitians afraid to even leave their house to go run basic errands much less go vote. In the fall, a gang-aggravated fuel crisis prompted both the United States and Canada to warn citizen to leave Haiti, and kidnappings have continued to surge.
In recent days, Gérard Dorcely, the dean of the University of Port-au-Prince and former government minister, became the latest victim. Eight days after his kidnapping in Croix-des-Bouquets, he was still being held hostage Friday despite the payment of a ransom. The 86-year-old was grabbed by a faction of the 400 Mawozo gang while on his way to take a COVID-19 test to travel. The same gang was behind the kidnappings of 16 Americans and a Canadian late last year.
With the political impasse has come deepened uncertainty in Haiti where the spike in violence and rising prices are also fueling migration, both legal and illegal, and protest. In recent days, demonstrations by factory workers seeking higher waves — they are currently making about $5 a day and want $15 — have closed the road leading to the airport. A similar strike at the Caracol Industrial Park in the north also led to the park being shut down after the strike turned violent. The park was later hit with flooding from heavy rains and only recently opened its doors after being shuttered for three weeks.
One of the problems of the ongoing crisis, Henry said, is Haiti’s unstable economy and the country, he said, “will not have investments if we don’t have (stability),” he said.
“If we don’t stabilize the political environment, we will not have elections,” he added, noting that his government is also working on bolstering security. “We will not have investments in the country if we don’t have elections. So we must have an accord, an agreement to go to elections."
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