Haiti - How America Created A Nightmare (Part 2)
Setting up the table of Chaos.
In part one we talked about President Michel Martelly but he was just the tip of the Iceberg. He was the god father that started the cascading effect, the catalyst. If you though part one was crazy you’re in for a wild ride.
Omertà & Bananas
Jovenel Moise started out as a small business man in Haiti selling auto parts. Shortly after, he ended up in the agricultural field helping implement a project where Haiti would produce Bananas and sell them to Germany. He also partnered with Haiti’s #1 drinking water company and helped implement a water project to get clean water to the northern Haitian provinces. Jovenel was involved in a lot of business projects but they either failed or their successes are not easily verifiable.
Somewhere along the line, Jovenel got involved in the underworld. According to a US State Department document:
“UCREF published a 68-page report which charged that Jovenel Moïse, then the CEO of Agritrans and a presidential candidate, had likely laundered some $6 million through his company’s banana-exporting agribusiness between 2007 to 2013. The unit launched a money laundering case against Moïse, but the investigation never led to formal charges.”
Jovenel started his life in politics by running in the presidential election in 2015. Jovenel was endorsed by sitting president Michel Martelly and ran as the head of the PHTK party that Martelly created himself. Jovenel ran on improving Haiti’s agriculture sector and that earned him the nickname Banana Man. Presidential elections were held in Haiti on 25 October 2015. In the preliminary results, Jovenel was winning by 32.81%. All the other candidates disputed election and denouncing the results as “anti-democratic”. There would be protests and on December 22 the election council in Haiti announced that the runoff was being postponed indefinitely.
Martelly’s time as president was over and he stepped down leaving an acting president in his place until a new president can be elected. A verification commission was created in May 2016 to audit the August 2015 election results. The commission released a report and recommended the election be redone because they found significant fraud.
“Commission President Pierre Francois Benoit said there were far too many “zombie votes” and other problems in the Oct. 25 presidential balloting to be considered legitimate. He said some tally sheets from polling stations had fingerprints that appeared to be from a single person.”
Before this report got released the US was pressuring for Haiti to continue to the second round of election. According to an article from the New York Times:
“But the Obama administration — which spent the money to help ensure “credible, inclusive, and legitimate” elections here — has emerged as a central force, pressing Haitian politicians to move forward with the vote, however flawed the first round may have been.”
After being postponed several times the presidential election started again in November 2016. 27 candidates ran and Jovenel won by a landslide, 55.60% of the vote. Surprisingly, no one claimed fraud this time but we have no evidence for or against so we’ll have to go with it.
Descending into Chaos
Jovenel’s presidency oversaw the descension of Haiti into a failed state. Jovenel would go on to replace judges with people that were aligned with his aims. He would fire Sonel Jean-Francois as UCREF director general in an attempt to shut down the money laundering investigation against him. There would also be allegations of embezzlement but they would not go anywhere.
Haitian elites including the former president Martelly started funding Haitian gangs in a huge way. Martelly was proven to be involved and sanctioned by Canada for it but Jovenel also has allegations due to him being seen as Martelly’s protege. The elites would use these gangs and make them do their bidding like burning down a neighborhoods or attack a rival elite’s business. The Haitian National Police would have their hand’s tied when it came to dealing with these gangs. Every time the Haitian police would come close to capturing a gang leader they would receive orders to back off. Sometimes the Police would get ambushed by a gang and when they called for backup no one would come.
Jovenel was setting the stage for what was to come next.
I appreciate you taking the time to write and publish these articles
Like most Americans, I know very little about Haiti other than it’s in rough shape so this series has been enlightening. I’ve always wondered how Haiti could be so different from the DR.