The interim leader chosen by the Haitian political opposition broke his silence on Saturday, six days after his appointment, and called on his compatriots to fight against “the dictatorship”, an attack on the disputed President Jovenel Moïse.
“I call on those who swear loyalty to this land and to this nation to stand up,” said Joseph Mécene Jean-Louis in a written statement. “Stand up against corruption, impunity and dictatorship, stand up for social justice, public security,” he added.
The 72-year-old magistrate had been appointed on the night from Sunday to Monday by several opposition parties who consider that Jovenel Moïse’s mandate ended on February 7.
In his two-page written statement, Mr. Jean-Louis considers that the situation in which the country finds itself “requires patriotic sacrifices” and refers to the violence that is raging in the country.
He mentions in particular the assassination by bullets, in February 2020, of the president of the bar of Port-au-Prince, Monferrier Dorval. He “and all the others did not die for nothing”, he says in this text.
Haiti has been living under tension since Sunday with a multiplication of citizen mobilizations denouncing an authoritarian drift of power by Jovenel Moïse. A call for a demonstration was launched for this Sunday by organizations for the defense of human rights.
Jovenel Moïse maintains that his mandate at the head of the Caribbean country runs until February 7, 2022. But this date is denounced by a good part of the Haitian population, according to whom the five-year mandate of Jovenel Moïse came to an end on Sunday February 7, 2021.
This disagreement of date arose from the fact that Mr. Moïse had been elected in a ballot canceled for fraud, then re-elected a year later.
No Haitian institution can today legally separate these two camps which refuse any dialogue.
Haiti no longer has a functioning parliament since January 2020.
Isolated, President Moïse has since governed by decree, fueling growing mistrust among the population, undermined by poverty and enduring daily gang violence.