Last Wednesday the Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated at his home. The identity of his murderers is still unknown and things are still developing, so a lot of the news out there will likely turn out to be wrong since the fog of war is thick right now. Originally it was claimed by local police and politicians to be a Colombian hit squad, but now other politicians and some in the Haitian media are saying it wasn't. The president's bodyguards will be brought in for questioning next week; there have been claims that they were the true perpetrators. For the time being, the streets are quiet.
The Colombian defense ministry has confirmed that a dozen nationals have been arrested in Haiti as suspects, for what it's worth. Hit squads seem to be one of Colombia's big exports. I guess that's whet you get when the American military trains the poor and desperate how to fight. When the fighting's done, you can't exactly turn that skillset into shoemaking or baking. Two of those arrested are Americans, and they claim they were only there as translators and didn't know anyone was going to be killed. They were likely the ones who yelled out on loudspeakers after the assassination that they were DEA officials. Let the right wing conspiracy theories commence!
The Haitian government has requested assistance from the international community, specifically the US, but there are understandably a lot of people over there that kind of bristle at asking the US to come in and mediate things. Especially since many believe there's a distinct possibility that the US might be behind the assassination in some way. Personally I don't buy it; the president was already essentially a US puppet, why kill an asset like that? It's more like the US to overthrow a liberal looking to fix his country than some corrupt yes-man like Moïse was. Then again, the US military has intervened with the military in Haiti without their blessing in the past (100 years ago we did the same thing there that we just got done doing in Afghanistan). We trained them to be great at coups....
The Haitian constitution doesn't specifically spell out how the position should be filled, but there are actually 2 constitutions and there's argument in the government about which one is the legitimate one. Moïse had named a new prime minister 2 days before he died, but apparently the current interim prime minister appointed himself and refuses to step down. And there are only 10 sitting lawmakers right now for the entire country, and no funtioning parliamentary at all, so it's not like many people are speaking from a position of authority over there.
I think a lot of the reason for the lack of civil unrest is that the populace didn't really like Moïse. He was running for a 2nd term and there were a lot of claims of corruption and illegitimacy. His term should have ended earlier, but in a Trumpian move he claimed that his term should have started as of the day he was sworn in, not elected, so he still had a few months or something. There is supposed to be a presidential election in September, I think it's important that it continues as planned for the sake of their democracy. But I understand the calls for a delay, it will be hard to uphold the results as legitimate considering how much is unknown right now....
Haiti
Re: Haiti
that other thread was about one of the wolves who chases the sun and moon in Norse mythology, silly
https://norse-mythology.org/skoll-hati/
https://norse-mythology.org/skoll-hati/
Re: Haiti
TBH I may or may not have been trying to just post in the other thread, and not realized that I had hit the Post Topic button by mistake until after I had written my whole diatribe. By the time I realized my mistake, I just said fuckit and posted anyway. 