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A second Special Commission
of Inquiry into the Jul. 13 death of Investigating Judge Jean
Serge Joseph, this one commissioned by Haiti’s Chamber of
Deputies, released its report on Aug. 23, recommending that the
lower house indict President Michel Martelly, Prime Minister
Laurent Lamothe, and Justice Minister Jean Renel Sanon for
illegally intervening in a judicial investigation, threatening a
judge thereby causing his death, and then publicly and
repeatedly lying about the matter.
The findings of the report
match almost exactly those of a Senate inquiry released on Aug.
8 (see Haïti Liberté,
Vol. 7, No. 5, 8/14/2013).
The Senate Commission also recommended that Parliament remove
Martelly and Lamothe from office.
Judge Joseph was investigating
charges of massive corruption against Martelly’s wife, Sophia
St. Rémy Martelly, and their son, Olivier Martelly. After
issuing subpoenas for several high government officials to
testify before him, the judge had been pressured and threatened
personally by Martelly and others. Finally, in a secret Jul. 11
meeting, Martelly, Lamothe, Sanon, and other officials
aggressively told the
judge to call off the investigation, according to both
parliamentary reports. Two days later, the judge died from a
brain hemorrhage caused by either stress or poison.
Martelly and Lamothe publicly
claim that they had never met the judge and never attended the
meeting, which took place at the office of Martelly’s legal
counselor Garry Lissade, both reports say.
Whether the lower house will
act on the report has taken on urgency since the Deputies, who
under Haiti’s Constitution have the power to indict the
President and Prime Minister, are scheduled to go on vacation on
Sep. 9 and would not reconvene until Jan. 14, 2014, when
Parliament is due to resume its regular session... maybe.
On that date, another third (10
seats) of the Senate will have expired as one third did two
years earlier, thereby reducing the body of 30 to less than its
quorum and theoretically rendering Parliament non-functional.
Parliamentary critics have long
argued that Martelly and Lamothe have purposefully delayed
holding partial Senate elections for over two years to arrive at
precisely this outcome. Some argue that remaining Senate seats
won’t expire until January 2015.
As shock, outrage, and disgust
raced through Haiti’s body politic in the wake of the two
devastating reports, the Parliament’s two presidents, Sen. Simon
Dieuseul Desras and Dep. Jean Tholbert Alexis, convened meetings
at Pétionville’s Montana Hotel from Aug. 26-28 to meet with
political parties on day one, civil society groups on day two,
and Haiti’s diplomatic corps on day three.
“The meetings were essentially
damage control,” Sen. Moïse Jean-Charles told Haïti Liberté.
“They were organized after the Senate President’s visit to
Washington, DC, where they pushed him to do it. The meetings
with political parties, civil society, and the diplomats didn’t
focus on the grave crimes detailed in two Parliamentary inquiry
reports, which are now the top priority. We can’t have a
president and his new Macoutes assassinate a judge, and we just
ignore that.”
The three days of meetings
ended with Sen. Desras issuing a bizarre ultimatum: if President
Martelly does not show up to make his traditional address at
Parliament’s opening session on Jan. 14 – an absence which would
indicate that he considers Parliament dissolved – then
Parliament would consider him as “having resigned.” In other
words, if you accept us, we’ll accept you; if you reject us,
we’ll reject you.
Sen. Moïse called it a message
of weakness and compromise with Martelly, “who should be chased
from power as quickly as possible.”
Moïse’s analysis is echoed by
leading popular organizations who issued a statement on Sep. 3,
warning against “hand-me-down democracy” (demokrasi pepe) and
“monkey business” (magouy) aimed at excluding the Haitian masses
from any role in resolving the crisis.
Saying that the
Martelly/Lamothe regime was guilty of a host of crimes over the
past two years and that the Parliament’s reports present “the
last straw,” the groups said that the masses were now rising up
but that Washington and its allies are using Parliament “to hold
a series of dialogues with the supposedly opposition political
parties, civil society and representatives of the diplomatic
corps to impose their own solution in this political crisis.”
The eight signing groups, which
include the Dessalines Coordination (KOD), the Heads Together of
Popular Organizations, and the National Movement for Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity of Haitians (MOLEGHAF), denounced that
“the meetings did not address the most important question of the
moment: the two special inquiry reports of the Parliament on the
death of Judge Joseph, and how the country can immediately
replace this criminal government which has been caught in the
act of lying to the people.” Therefore the groups called on “all
sectors of good faith, who are looking for a national solution
to get the country out of the mess it is in, to force the
Parliamentarians to take up their responsibility in the face of
the brazen Martelly/Lamothe regime.”
To do so, according to the
Haitian Constitution, the Deputies would have to vote to indict
Martelly, and the Senate would then act as a High Court of
Justice to put him on trial.
The latest report, which was
prepared by Deputies Sadrac Dieudonné, Gluck Théophile and
François Louytz Amiot, charges that Martelly and Lamothe “lied
because they know very well that the encroachment of the
Executive Branch into the field of sovereign powers of the
judiciary - which they did - is arbitrary and illegal, and
therefore unacceptable, because the Constitution calls for the
effective separation of the three state powers. They lied
because they know they had exerted strong pressure on the judge,
sufficient to bring on the stroke which caused his death... For
them, the best strategy is to deny that the meeting of July 11,
2013 ever took place.”
At the end of the 26-page
report, the investigating deputies “recommend impeachment of the
Head of State, Prime Minister and Minister of Justice for
perjury, a crime against the Constitution and abuse of power,
that shows the encroachment of the Executive Branch into the
sovereign domain of the Judiciary.”
Getting the deputies to act on
the report may prove challenging. Largely through the use of
bribery, Martelly and Lamothe control a majority of the lower
house through the Parliamentary block for Stability and Progress
(PSP). However, many deputies have begun to question their
allegiance to Martelly not only due to the reports but also
following his week-long unexplained departure from the country
last month. When he surfaced later in Suriname, Martelly
worsened matters by calling his parliamentary critics “dumb.”
“Martelly is losing deputies,
so anything is possible,” Sen. Jean-Charles said.
The Senate, with its fragile
quorum, may also pose a problem. Sen. Edo Zenny, a close
Martelly ally, told Le Nouvelliste that “I will vote
against [any impeachment] and if it is me who has to block a
quorum, I will do it.”
But Pierre Espérance of the
National Network to Defend Human Rights (RNDDH) calculates that
there would be enough votes in the Senate to impeach Martelly
because even Senators who sometimes support Martelly “often take
a distance from the regime’s illegal actions.”
The President has also
alienated many by appointing a new hard-line Port-au-Prince
District Attorney, who threatened to crack down on journalists
and dissidents. “Playtime is over,” said Francisco René, using
the same phrase uttered by former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby
Doc” Duvalier when he launched a crackdown on critics in
November 1980. “The radio dramas are over. There will no longer
be any question of characterizing the authorities any old way…
Slander will be prosecuted. I will strengthen the system of
criminal justice.”
Meanwhile, Haitian police arrested and severely beat
the man who brought the original corruption lawsuit against Martelly’s wife
and son that Judge Joseph was investigating before his death. On
Aug. 16, Enold Floréstal was arrested and held for two days in
an apparent domestic dispute. Afterwards, Floréstal gave an
interview to Radio Kiskeya claiming to have proof that on Jul.
10, the day before Judge Joseph’s fateful meeting at Lissade’s
office, Prime Minister Lamothe offered him money and a
diplomatic post if he would drop his case against Martelly’s
wife and son. |
