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Thread: Over the weekend, amid the large anti-govt demo in Port-au-Prince & the beginning of Carnival in Port-de-Paix, I made a point of talking to some of my friends in #Haiti about the current crisis, and I wanted to share some of what they told me...
...From an intellectual in Port-au-Prince (upper middle class): "I am for the moment caught in the turmoil of the return of the dictatorship with Jovenel Moïse"...
...From a friend from the Saint Martin bidonville (lower class/pep la): "Jovenel is a good president, it's the opposition that is hindering his work...It is the same opposition who are causing all the chaos you see in Haiti"...
...From a friend in the private sector (upper class): "Unlike our usual cycles of unrest and settling down, I see troubled days ahead as we've never seen before. I hope I'm wrong"...
...From a friend in the Artibonite Valley (middle class): "It will be very hard to have elections this year. At the end, both the govt and the opposition will need to compromise"...
...From a friend in Port-au-Prince (the only non-Haitian) who travels regularly around the country: "When I talk to people in the countryside (particularly the NW), the says 'this guy (Jovenel) has done more than anyone else," but in PauP he's almost universally hated"...
...From a friend in Cité Soleil (lower class/pep la): "Things are complicated and getting worse"...
...From a private sector friend (upper class): "We quote Dessalines constantly but we don't understand a thing. Respect starts with yourself. I stay in Haiti because I love my country. And I hope that the spirit that gave us independence will prevail"...
...I often find a large gap between the strident statements that so often dominate Haiti Twitter and what I hear when I speak to people actually on the ground, which is generally a more nuanced understanding of a complex, multifaceted crisis...
...The crisis involves 1) An unpopular (though not as unpopular as some seem to think) authoritarian govt credibly accused of corruption & violence 2) A discredited political opposition with a long record of corruption & violence & little respect/understanding of democracy...
...3) A civil society that genuinely wants to change the country but is almost totally separated from political power 4) A group of elites, some behind the scenes, some in public, struggling for advantage, some supporting the govt, others opposing it...
...5) Outside actors (US, UN, OAS, CARICOM) who appear to have decided, barring some even more shocking event, come hell or high water, Haiti is going to elections this year...
...6) Other outside actors (various U.S. politicos, many anglophone commentators, nakedly partisan NGOs, orgs) who view it as their brief to basically be lawyers on behalf of the opposition...
...What we are seeing now is the result of systemic structural failures of Haiti's political system dating back at least to 1986, if not before...
...The hard grains of corruption and impunity - which are mutually beneficial to Haiti's habitually predatory political and economic elites (not interchangeable) - have never been addressed by any govt...
...The intl community, convinced "elections" alone were enough to solve Haiti's problems, have regularly made common cause w/the country's most sanguinary political actors to forget their crimes & ensure their participation for "elections" to go forward (see La Scierie massacre).
...Even René Préval, the country's wiliest politician who arguably gave Haiti its longest sustained period of peace & development before the 2010 earthquake, did so by adroitly playing these actors off against one another, not by substantively changing the system they moved in...
...I don't know what the solution for Haiti is today. I only know that, somehow, it must come from the Haitians themselves and not be imposed on them in the name of "stability," because that has been done over and over again and only produced more instability...
...But, by the same token, kraze brize/koupe tet boule kay/nou bouke is not a platform, not an agenda, not a plan. You can get rid of the head of the snake but, as we have seen time and again, the body of the snake (the system) churns on. Se lè koulèv mouri ou wè longèl...
......If you are foreign & looking at Haiti & want to support its renaissance, here are some local orgs worthy of support that work to better the lives of the people on the ground:
@LakouLape
@kbsshaiti
@FOKAL_Ayiti
@SOFA_Ayiti
@KayFanmAyiti
@Fonkoze
@LakouLape
@kbsshaiti
@FOKAL_Ayiti
@SOFA_Ayiti
@KayFanmAyiti
@Fonkoze
...I hope Haiti will finds its way out of even this kafou danjere, & that no more generations will be sacrificed or forced to flee due to its political wars. A country that taught the world so much about freedom cannot & must not die. Ayiti pap peri. /END
