White appears to mean \u201cput aside\u201d in the hypothetical sense, discussing the future of Haiti without the former president as an obstacle, but the phrase takes on new meaning given his assassination in July at the hands of Colombian mercenaries<\/a> alleged to be organized by elements of the Haitian elite. The comments have circulated<\/a> among Haitians online, heightening suspicion on the island that the U.S. approved of the operation against Mo\u00efse.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one in their right mind would think I had anything anything to do with his assassination,\u201d White told The Intercept on Wednesday. \u201cI do not want to clarify a statement that was very clear. I have been proven right. Moise was not presidential material. He had totally lost the support [of] the Haitian people. With reason.\u201d<\/p>\n\n After his predecessor, Jocelerme Privert, left office\u00a0after less than a year as provisional president, Mo\u00efse was sworn in as president in February 2017 for a five-year term. While his opposition maintained he should leave office five years after the previous president left, Mo\u00efse argued that the February 2021 expiration of his tenure was premature and that he planned to remain in power until new elections were held.<\/p>\n On July 5, Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon allied with former President Michel Martelly, was named prime minister by Mo\u00efse. Henry, who had moved in and out of government but was most recently on a commission overseeing the country\u2019s Covid-19 response, had previously been a member of the Council of Sages, a group of seven Haitian leaders propped up by the U.S. Two days later, Mo\u00efse was gunned down in his bedroom, and Henry began jockeying to become the nation\u2019s de facto leader.<\/p>\n A prosecutor charged with investigating the assassination revealed that immediately after the killing, Henry had had two phone calls with Joseph Badio, a former Haitian justice official accused of having run the operation. The plot\u2019s alleged financier, Rodolphe Jaar, was arrested Friday in the Dominican Republic at the request of the United States. Jaar, a Haitian businessman who had previously been convicted of drug trafficking and served as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told the New York Times<\/a> that he participated in what he thought was a kidnapping, not an assassination, because he was told it had the approval of the United States. \u201cIf the U.S. government was involved, then it was safe,\u201d Jaar said, though the Times maintained that \u201cNo evidence has emerged\u201d of U.S. government involvement.<\/p>\n As The Intercept reported in July, the Colombian mercenaries who carried out the hit were hired by a Florida-based firm<\/a>. At least seven of them had received training by the U.S. military<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ambassador Pamela White gives a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Aug. 27, 2015.<\/p>\n \nPhoto: Hector Retamal\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n At the March hearing,<\/u> after saying that there were several quality candidates for the prime minister position who could take power after the president was \u201cput aside,\u201d White suggested that the next step would be to recreate the country\u2019s electoral council, or CEP, with enough legitimacy to stabilize the government. The CEP has been overseeing elections since the 2004 U.S.-backed coup that ousted Jean Bertrand Aristide, a left-wing proponent of liberation theology who became Haiti\u2019s first democratically elected president in 1991. (After a different coup ousted him later that year, Aristide returned twice to the presidency, from 1994-96 and 2001-04.)<\/p>\n \u201cThen we have this summit that we get to and we put out the old CEP, we have a summit where the actors come back to the table and we discuss how we can get the right representation to inform it to have a CEP that is credible, I mean that is one solution that I can see happening within the very near future,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n White told The Intercept the situation in Haiti has spun out of control, but that she was not involved. \u201cThis entire saga is just unbelievable. You have more than enough nefarious characters to investigate. I am not one of them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem with transitional governments,\u201d White said at the hearing, \u201cis then we are in that mess again and it slows down everything here. \u2026 I wrote a piece, or talked for a piece in the New Yorker, a couple years ago, when I said I think that is exactly what we need. But I think right now we could use the prime minister option.\u201d<\/p>\n White had been responding to a question from Deutch, who argued that no election could be considered legitimate if it was overseen by Mo\u00efse. Paradoxically, he suggested the president needed to be removed in defense of democracy. Deutch asked:<\/p>\n Any election or referendum that is overseen by the Mo\u00efse administration would automatically be seen by the Haitian people as illegitimate. We have seen on the ground, I have heard, firsthand, human rights groups and opposition leaders maintaining that Mo\u00efse’s term ended February 7th and an interim government is necessary to organize elections now. The question, Ambassador White, that I have for you is, if the provisional electoral council cannot meet the standard of being free, fair, and credible, but the current President does not step down, how can Congress and the Biden Administration and the international community play a responsible role in ensuring that any election that is held is credible and legitimate and then facilitating the public acceptance of the results and in mediating between the Mo\u00efse administration and the opposition?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n White\u2019s response to Deutch was the second time in her testimony that she\u00a0suggested Mo\u00efse should be \u201cput aside,\u201d which buttresses the idea that she was talking about how Haitian politics could unfold in his absence, not necessarily that violently creating his absence ought to be an objective. \u201cIt is difficult for me to imagine having successful elections this year in Haiti. Putting aside for the moment the question of, President Mo\u00efse should have left in February, or should he leave next February, I do not know the answer, but I do not believe that right now the necessary institutions are in place to assure a smooth transition. The [U.S. government], the OAS, and the U.N. have all stated that Mo\u00efse’s term ends in 2022, but several Haitian constitutional experts as well as Harvard, Yale, and NYU law school clinics disagree,\u201d she testified.<\/p>\n \u201cHere are a few quick suggestions,\u201d she said. \u201cIf President Mo\u00efse will not step down, he should step aside. He must be completely transparent and honest. He must bring relevant actors to the table. A well-respected Haitian should be appointed prime minister. He or she should immediately dissolve the current CEP and call a summit with all relevant political actors to establish a legal CEP.\u201d<\/p>\n In mid-September,<\/u> the Haitian prosecutor revealed the allegations about Henry\u2019s role in the assassination. Henry urged the prosecutor\u2019s boss to fire him; when he refused, Henry fired them both. Less than two weeks later, with the U.S. standing behind Henry, Daniel Foote, the U.S. envoy to Haiti, resigned in protest, citing in part the American willingness to back Henry. In late September, Henry dutifully dissolved the CEP.<\/p>\n In the October 2019 New Yorker interview<\/a> White referenced in Congress, she expressed similar sentiments. \u201cThe Western solution to immediately hold elections in countries that have been controlled for decades by dictators and ruthless militias has never worked and never will,\u201d White said. \u201cWe need some creative thinking about how a country with low education and high poverty levels can function in order to provide basic services to its citizens. Elections are so corrupt and the people running so inexperienced that they cannot possibly be considered a good solution. In the best of all worlds, a council of well-educated and experienced Haitians would form a coalition government \u2014 it would include business and civil-society representatives \u2014 with senior Western advisers.\u201d She added, \u201cA realistic development plan would be detailed so all citizens could see it, with a realistic budget, no big fancy buildings, no fancy cars or lucrative travel budgets. A strong police presence would also be a huge help, especially if they were trained to render real services to the people, not only security. But if anyone thinks another election is going to solve all of Haiti\u2019s woes, they are sadly mistaken.\u201d<\/p>\n As for her comments at the March hearing, White told The Intercept she was speaking only for herself, a point she made at the hearing as well. \u201cNothing zero that I said has anything to do with US policy. I certainly do not not speak for the Biden Administration,\u201d she said. \u201cI personally wish that right now we (USG)\u201d \u2014 the U.S. government \u2014 \u201chad the guts to push Henri aside. He is not to be trusted.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Former Ambassador on Haitian President in March: \u201cPut Him Aside\u201d and Embrace \u201cPrime Minister Option\u201d<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on The Intercept<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Four months later, Jovenel Mo\u00efse was assassinated and replaced with a U.S.-backed prime minister, fueling suspicion of American involvement.<\/p>\n The post Former Ambassador on Haitian President in March: \u201cPut Him Aside\u201d and Embrace \u201cPrime Minister Option\u201d<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,340],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468805"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468805"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470195,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468805\/revisions\/470195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"HAITI-US](\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2022\/01\/GettyImages-485391034.jpg\")
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