Last Friday’s stoning incident involving Haiti’s President Michel Martelly while he was walking in a carnival procession would have come as a sensational occurrence, even for those familiar with the recurring instability and turbulence of Haitian politics.
Deposing Haitian presidents by force – like the twice democratically elected Jean Bertrand Aristide – was becoming a norm, starting with Jean Claude Duvalier back in 1986. However, a physical attack on an unsuspecting Haitian head of state is quite a new political development and one that signals trouble ahead for the less than one-year-old Martelly administration.
It was an incident that sharply contrasted with the public image of the first-time president, who was projecting such confidence in his meeting early last week with a Caribbean Community goodwill mission led by the community’s current chairman and Suriname President Desi Bouterse.
Rocks were thrown, one hitting the president before he was embraced and hustled into a car by two security guards, as angry shouts came from a nearby crowd seemingly upset over the government’s failure to ease their life of misery from the consequences of the nightmare earthquake of January 2010, and the subsequent outbreak of the cholera epidemic that has already killed at least 7 000.
There have been conflicting reports on how the attack on the president occurred, with the official view blaming “troublemakers”, including university students, while other accounts pointed to clashes involving his supporters, who tore down a fence and invaded the university where a students’ conference was reportedly assessing the problems affecting the Haitian people.
The incident has come in an increasingly volatile atmosphere with sharp differences between the president’s administration and the legislative branch over sensitive issues such as financial accountability and dual citizenship, which is contrary to Haiti’s Constitution and which the Opposition-controlled Senate claims to involve both the president and Prime Minister Gary Conille.
Both men have denied such claims but Opposition lawmakers are demanding proof.
In that atmosphere a 15-member United Nations Security Council delegation, headed by United States ambassador to the world body, Susan Rice, turned up in Port-au-Prince last week to assess, among other areas of concerns, the work of the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti and the toll of the cholera epidemic.
Rice said before leaving: “Haiti’s executive and legislative branches need to rise above their own interests and work together in the spirit of compromise to overcome their common challenges.”
That diplomatic warning was sounded days before last Friday’s fracas when President Martelly became the victim of a stoning incident, the latest disturbing episode in what remains a volatile political climate.
