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As PM’s Removal is Proposed:
Martelly’s Government Totters on Eve of Kerry Visit
by Kim Ives
Haiti’s political crisis deepened on Tue.,
Dec. 9 as an 11-member presidential “advisory commission”
proposed that Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe step down, a
recommendation which will swell the ranks of thousands of
demonstrators nationwide calling for President Michel
Martelly’s resignation. The capital’s next major
demonstration, planned for Dec. 12 when U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry visits Haiti, is expected to be massive.
The advisory commission’s 10-page
report also recommended the sacking of Martelly-pawn Anel
Alexis Joseph, who heads the Supreme Court and the Superior
Council of the Judiciary Power (CSPJ), the resignation of
the Electoral Council, and the release of all political
prisoners.
“The country is facing an economic and
structural crisis,” says the report, according to the
Miami Herald. “To avoid a worsening of the current
situation, ‘the most credible solution to the crisis’ should
allow a return, in a reasonable time, to constitutional
normalcy and well-functioning institutions.”
“This is a rescue operation by
the international community aimed at saving the mandate of
President Martelly while Martelly is primarily responsible
for the crisis,” said outspoken lawyer Andre Michel, a
leader of the Patriotic Movement of the Democratic
Opposition (MOPOD), the Miami Herald reported.
In its eight days of existence, the
advisory commission had some clashes. On Sun., Dec. 7,
former Sen. Gabriel Fortuné, who was expelled from the anti-Martelly
Dessalines Children platform for taking part in the
commission, made headlines when he said that commission
coordinator Reginald Boulos refused to allow investigation
into the unaccounted funds of the National Education Fund
(opaquely filled with and emptied of millions of dollars in
illegal taxes of $1.50 on every international money transfer
and 5 cents on every minute of Haiti’s overseas phone calls
over the past three years) and the PetroCaribe account
(which receives about 40% of the revenues from Haiti’s
Venezuelan oil sales). Fortuné also said he would not sign
the report unless all 10 prominent political prisoners were
immediately released.
To the surprise of many, all the
commissioners signed the report on the evening of Mon., Dec.
8 at the Ritz Kinam Hotel in Pétionville following a meeting
with Senate President Simon Desras Dieuseul and President
Martelly. The commission then handed the report to Martelly
in an official ceremony at the National Palace on Dec. 9.
In the run-up to Kerry’s
much-anticipated visit, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Pamela White
reiterated Washington’s support for Martelly. “We believe he
was elected for a certain period of time,” she told Le
Nouvelliste in an interview. “He must stay until
his mandate ends” on May 14, 2016.
But the tens of thousands expected to
march on Dec. 12 disagree and are calling for Martelly’s
immediate resignation, as they have in many demonstrations,
each larger than the last, over the past two months.
Asked by Le Nouvelliste about
Lamothe, White responded that “it is not at all the decision
of the United States if the Prime Minister stays or goes.”
But she added that she felt he “has done many good things
for the country.”
Lamothe is expected to run for
President of Haiti at the end of 2015.
On Dec. 5 and 6, Port-au-Prince saw
giant marches calling for both Martelly and Lamothe to step
down. Demonstrators hurled epithets in front of the French
and Canadian embassies, as they had on Nov. 29 in front of
the U.S.’s, and held up pictures of Russian President
Vladimir Putin as a way to express their rejection of U.S.
and French imperialist meddling in Haiti.
On Dec. 6, thousands also marched for
Martelly’s resignation in Cap Haïtien, Haiti’s second
largest city, and in the southern city of Aux Cayes, where
protestors were also marking the 85th anniversary
of the 1929 massacre by U.S. Marines of a dozen
demonstrating Haitian peasants in Marche-à-Terre during the
first U.S. military occupation of Haiti (1915-1924).
From Dec. 3-5, 11 of Haiti’s remaining
20 senators, most of them pro-Martelly, held a desperate
conclave at the fancy Club Indigo resort in Montrouis near
St. Marc to “find a way to save state institutions” and to
“avoid disruption, dislocation, and chaos.” Their final
pathetic resolution called on President Martelly to
“urgently convoke all the major powers of the State to take
all necessary measures to safeguard the Nation-State of
Haiti,” and all that before Christmas. Needless to say, the
six senators who have opposed Martelly’s efforts to ram
through a rigged electoral law and electoral council did not
sign the final document.
Martelly plans to begin ruling by
decree on Jan. 12, 2015 if no agreement is reached and
Parliament is allowed to expire. But demonstrators want
Martelly to step down and to have a provisional government
set up a new electoral council that will hold elections now
delayed for over three years. It is a high-stakes game of
chicken into the middle of which Kerry will be stepping.
"We are definitely witnessing the final days of the regime,”
said Sen. Moïse Jean-Charles, who has been at the forefront
of the anti-Martelly protests. “We do not expect to
celebrate Haiti’s independence on New Years 2015 with
Martelly still in power. We are not going to negotiate now
with Martelly. We simply want Martelly and Lamothe to go.”
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