Haitian President Assassinated; State of Emergency Declared

The President of Haiti Jovenel Moise was killed on Wednesday, July 6th at 1 am local time. He was at his private residence Pétion-Ville, in the hills above Port-au-Prince, Joseph when the unidentified attackers shot him dead. The First Lady Martine Moise was also shot, and she is currently receiving medical treatment. The Caribbean nation declares a state of the university as fears and tensions rise.

“A group of unidentified individuals, some of them speaking Spanish, attacked the private residence of the president of the republic and thus fatally wounded the head of state,” said the Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph. He also reported that the police and army had the security under control.

Moise’s successor is still undetermined. He had appointed a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, who hasn’t been sworn in yet and the head of the Supreme Court died of Covid-19 last month.

Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and its modern history has been riddled with political instability since the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986. The nation, with a population of 11 million, has faced a series of coups and foreign interference.

In 2004 a UN peacekeeping mission was sent to the country to restore peace after a rebellion, but it ended up toppling the then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The mission ended in 2017, with the country in chaos. Haiti has suffered many natural disasters and is still recovering from a major earthquake that occurred in 2010, which left extensive damage to the infrastructure and the economy.

The humanitarian crisis and political unrest have been brewing in the country in recent months and there is a high chance of the situation escalating. Many districts of the capital have been turned into no-go zones.

Moise, once a banana exporter, took the office in 2017 and faced multiple protests since. The opposition claimed he was an authoritarian dictator. His rule had quick unchallenged changes and introductions of law which very full of controversies.

Smooth transitions of power are important for strong governance, the lack of which descends countries into massive havoc. The political void that has been created now will feed on the country’s turmoil, and swift action is required to stop the situation from spiralling out of control.

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