THE LONG MARCH UP THE AISLE ON HAITI

The situation in Haiti over the past week has gotten worse.  The Prime Minister of Haiti Ariel Henry was warned when he left Guyana and the Heads of Government meeting to go to Kenya that he should not have gone there but should have gone directly back to Haiti.  He went to Kenya to sign an agreement which was to remove the last legal hurdle for Kenyan troops to come support the return to order in Haiti.

While in Kenya, events shifted on the ground so that all the concessions that he made after stalling for almost three years seemed not to make a difference.  The gangs moved on the city and fired at the airport and made it impossible for commercial flights nor charter flights to land. The Prime Minister and many of his ministers were stuck outside the country.

Now the Prime Minister is up to Saturday past holed up in Puerto Rico and trying to arrange with the Americans and his Caricom partners the surrender of his government and the ignominious issue of arranging safe passage for them to friendly countries.  This is Aristide’s ouster all over again.

The Bahamas has been helping through its Prime Minister Philip Davis, to move the political process along.  However the politics in Haiti is nothing like The Bahamas or any other Caricom country. There is no political consensus in Haiti and not ever a fixed majority.  They seem simply to hate each other, and each one wants to be president.

Nevertheless the Caricom Prime Ministers are trying.  At week’s end, they seemed to have a hashed out a concordat with the Haitian civil society and the Prime Minister and the Americans and Canadians which would have the Prime Minister resign and hand over to a presidential council that will choose a new and more acceptable interim leader to the volatile population.

The question is whether the Kenyan force will still be needed or more importantly welcomed since the deal was done with the former Prime Minister.

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