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Haiti’s President Was Assassinated, and No One Knows Who’s in Charge

The line of succession is murky, following months of political unrest.
A Haitian police officer stands guard outside of the presidential residence on July 7, 2021 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
A Haitian police officer stands guard outside of the presidential residence on July 7, 2021 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  (Photo by VALERIE BAERISWYL/AFP via Getty Images)

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A “state of siege” was declared in Haiti on Wednesday, after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse pushed the nation further into existential crisis. For the next 15 days, the police have the power to break up large gatherings and search residential homes to investigate the killing.

But opponents of the decree are questioning if former Prime Minister Claude Joseph has the ability to make the move in the first place. 

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Steven Benoit, a former Haitian senator, pointed to a constitutional article that says, “No part of the territory can be placed in a state of siege unless there is a civil war or a foreign invasion.” He also argues that Joseph is technically no longer in power.

“Joseph holds no qualification or title to take over the reins of power in Haiti,” he told VICE News, adding that only peaceful collaboration between the country’s clashing political parties could pull the country out of this crisis.

Benoit’s hope feels distant with Moïse’s end continuing Haiti’s ceaseless cycle of political uncertainty. His continuous power grabs—including proposed changes to the constitution that would’ve expanded his executive powers—had activists and human rights experts fearing he was a threat to the country’s already ailing democracy.

Now that Moïse has been killed by unidentified assailants in the early hours of July 7 in his own home, no one’s sure who’s in power.

Haiti’s former Supreme Court president, Judge René Sylvestre, would have been next in line to take over, but he died from COVID-19 complications in June. After him, the next in the line of succession would’ve been incoming Prime Minister Dr. Ariel Henry, who was appointed to the job a day before Moïse’s death. But Henry would’ve needed to be confirmed for the presidency by a functioning Parliament, which Haiti hasn’t had since January 2020, when Moïse dissolved it and began ruling by decree. 

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Henry also appears to be missing. Friends of Henry say they have not heard from him since the assassination, and one of his associates told VICE News he believes Henry’s been whisked to safety.

Elected in 2016, Moïse’s time in office was marked by spiking gang violence and kidnappings, crippling inflation, and an economy that had 60% of Haitians living in poverty. The untenable became irreparable in February, when Moïse refused to step down when critics said his five-year term had ended. Moïse argued he had another year left in power because he wasn’t sworn in until 2017. The Biden administration initially supported his claim, but Moïse’s grasp on power was still tenuous.

“Jovenel Moïse was operating illegally,” Paul Denis told VICE News, Haiti’s former minister of justice. “He himself conducted a coup against the constitution, and that weakened him."

Since Moïse’s refusal to leave office, the streets of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince have become subsumed with inescapable violence. Protesters took the streets while gangs—some of whom believed to be connected to Moïse—murdered activists and bystanders and kidnapped schoolchildren. 

“The protests you’re talking about are normal,” Moïse told VICE News in March, during a carnival in Port-de-Paix, a coastal city more than a hundred miles from the capital. “This is a democracy.” 

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Moïse didn’t play a direct hand in all of the malfeasance that led to his or his constituents’ deaths. Activists and writers have noted that the international community’s imperial treatment of Haiti and support for its most acidic regimes made it difficult for the first Black republic to climb out of poverty and political corruption. 

Haiti’s intelligence-gathering institution was also uprooted following the trauma of François Duvalier—U.S.-supported dictator who terrorized civilians with a murderous paramilitary force, according to Denis. A competent intelligence institution was never fully instated and left him especially vulnerable. 

"I am surprised that an armed group could enter the president's bedroom to execute him without a fight,” Denis said. “There was no mention of fighting between the president's guards and the commandos.”

But if a precedent exists for what comes next, it’s the lack of constitutionality that marked previous exchanges of power. After Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown and allegedly kidnapped by U.S. forces in 2004, U.N. forces were flown in to instate a transitional government. 

Despite the controversial history, rectifying the ongoing crisis will almost certainly need foreign intervention as well.

“It comes down to what the nature of that is: If it’s imposing solutions or if it’s supporting solutions,” said Jake Johnston, a senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “There have been voices in Haiti who have been pushing for something different, who have plans for something different. Will they be allowed to achieve that or fight for that?”

Though Benoit was encouraged that there wasn’t widespread looting and violence following Moïse’s assassination, he stressed the need for Haiti’s political parties to meet very soon at the roundtable to discuss the country’s next step.

“Otherwise, as usual, we’ll have the president that the Americans choose,” he said.