Intruders killed Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in an attack on his private residence early Wednesday. The country’s interim prime minister has called the killing a “hateful, inhumane, and barbaric act.”
First Lady Martine Moïse was shot in the overnight attack as well. She remains in the hospital according to interim Premier Claude Joseph. He says police are patrolling the National Palace and the upscale community of Pétionville and will move into other areas.
Joseph condemns the assassination. He says some of the attackers spoke in Spanish but offered no further explanation. “The country’s security situation is under the control of the National Police of Haiti and the Armed Forces of Haiti,” he says. “Democracy and the republic will win.”
Haiti was in a political uproar before the assassination. The country has grown increasingly unstable and disgruntled under Moïse. In recent months, the opposition repeatedly demanded he step down. Violent anti-government protests have rocked the country.
Haiti’s opposition says that Moïse’s five-year term began on February 7, 2016, and should have ended on February 7, 2021. But Moïse and his supporters insist he still has another year left.
The disputed difference has to do with a year-long delay due to charges of election fraud. Moïse didn’t take office until February 7, 2017.
On February 7 this year, the day his challengers claim his term was over, Moïse announced that an effort “to overthrow his government and assassinate him” had been foiled. Now five months later, the coup has evidently happened. Whatever Moïse’s deeds, he will “receive what is due . . . whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10)—but it shouldn’t occur at the hands of humans.
In the early morning hours of Wednesday, the streets were largely empty in the Caribbean nation’s capital of Port-au-Prince. However, people ransacked businesses in one area.
Haiti’s economic, political, and social woes have deepened recently. Gang violence has spiked heavily in Port-au-Prince, inflation has soared, and food and fuel have become scarce. The problems come in a country where 60% of the population makes less than $2 per day. In addition, Haiti is still trying to recover from a devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew that struck in 2016.
Opposition leaders accused Moïse of seeking to increase his power. They say he approved a decree that limited the powers of a court that audits government contracts. They also allege he helped create an intelligence agency that answers only to the president.
Haiti is scheduled to hold general elections later this year. But now, with a murder investigation, an interim prime minister, angry citizens, and a pending transfer of power . . . there could be more trouble ahead for the island nation.
(Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse, center, exits a ceremony at the National Pantheon museum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on April 7, 2018. AP/Dieu Nalio Chery)
