Haiti’s coali­tion crim­i­nal gangs have de­cid­ed to ramp up vi­o­lence in a move to de­ter the new­ly ap­point­ed Tran­si­tion­al Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil (CPT) from tak­ing of­fice, amid fears that the po­lit­i­cal and so­cio-eco­nom­ic cri­sis will con­tin­ue to haunt the French-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try.

The nine-mem­ber CPT, in­clud­ing two with ob­serv­er sta­tus, has re­cent­ly been ap­point­ed, but the mem­bers have so far, not been able to be sworn in and to as­sume of­fi­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, be­cause of con­tin­ued as­saults on the Pres­i­den­tial Palace by heav­i­ly armed gangs that want to take over the fa­cil­i­ty, where po­lice spe­cial com­bat units have been re­sist­ing.

Me­dia re­ports in Port of Au Prince, Tues­day said that the mem­bers of the CPT are like­ly to de­cide lat­er to­day on the date and place of the CPT in­stal­la­tion.

The re­ports quot­ed sources as say­ing that the in­stal­la­tion could take place on Wednes­day at the Na­tion­al Palace.

Feared gang leader, Jim­my Cherisi­er, alias Bar­be­cue, has been heard talk­ing with his hench­men on the ground, or­der­ing them to burn down whole ar­eas as well as chas­ing and ex­e­cut­ing peo­ple in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly.

“Rid­dle them with bul­lets! Con­tin­ue to burn hous­es, you don’t need to know whose hous­es are they! Just set them on fire,” Bar­be­cue said as he ex­changed com­mu­ni­ca­tion with one of his hench­men.

“Make sure you force every­body to flee their homes. Set them all on fire!”, Bar­be­cue in­sist­ed, as his abet­tor con­firmed he had just com­mit­ted the crime.

“Yes, Chief! I’ve set them on fire,” the man, whose name was not re­vealed, said in the voice con­ver­sa­tion.

Bar­be­cue has re­peat­ed­ly threat­ened to at­tack mem­bers of the po­lice spe­cial units that he called out dur­ing an im­pro­vised protest or­ga­nized by gun­men in the slum of Bel-Air, over­look­ing the area of Champ de Mars, where the Pres­i­den­tial Palace is lo­cat­ed.

Mean­while, ne­go­ti­a­tions among dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal groups, civ­il so­ci­ety or­ga­ni­za­tions and out­go­ing of­fi­cials con­tin­ue in or­der to in­stall the CPT, which could take place be­fore the end of the week, ac­cord­ing to sources close to the dis­cus­sions.

Last week, sev­en peo­ple, in­clud­ing one po­lice­man, were killed by gangs in the dis­trict of Car­refour, neigh­bour­ing the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince. Gang mem­bers took away sev­er­al weapons and oth­er ma­te­ri­als be­long­ing to the Hait­ian po­lice.

The May­or of Car­refour, Jude Edouard Pierre told the Hait­ian-Caribbean News Net­work (HC­NN) that gang mem­bers had al­so planned to take with them sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers, but fi­nal­ly, as to show pity, the crim­i­nals, who had threat­ened to kill them, had de­cid­ed to give them a chance to con­tin­ue to live.

“We con­demned with the fullest en­er­gy the crim­i­nal as­sault car­ried by about 200 heav­i­ly armed ban­dits on the Omega po­lice sta­tion in Car­refour. We mourned the po­lice­man and the oth­er vic­tims of the at­tack,” said May­or Pierre.

“We want to thank them any­way be­cause there are po­lice­men that had been tak­en hostage and that they had want­ed to ex­e­cute, but they did not kill those po­lice of­fi­cers.

“Ac­tu­al­ly ac­cord­ing to what we know, it could have been worse; ru­mours about a mas­sacre was cir­cu­lat­ing; thank God what we had feared did not hap­pen,” Pierre said, adding “we ask the armed gangs to give Car­refour a chance”.

Pierre said that when the ban­dits in­vad­ed the po­lice precinct “po­lice of­fi­cers had to flee, not be­cause they were cow­ard, but be­cause when they re­alised the su­pe­ri­or fire pow­er on the side of the gangs, they had to choose to flee for their lives”.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions, more than 2,500 peo­ple were killed or wound­ed as a re­sult of gang vi­o­lence, dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2024.

A US mil­i­tary plane – which land­ed in Port-au-Prince, on Tues­day – bring­ing non lethal ma­te­r­i­al for the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty forces.

The air­port has been closed since March 4, this year, and ports have been out of ser­vice in an area al­most to­tal­ly con­trolled by gangs.

The Unit­ed Na­tions Tues­day re­port­ed that its hu­man­i­tar­i­an col­leagues say that the pro­cure­ment of es­sen­tial sup­plies, in­clud­ing food and med­i­cines, is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly chal­leng­ing – with the in­ter­na­tion­al air­port closed, main ports bare­ly func­tion­ing and roads lead­ing out of the cap­i­tal blocked.

“Fu­el avail­abil­i­ty has al­so be­come a press­ing is­sue with prices soar­ing on the black mar­ket and trans­porta­tion costs on the rise,” the UN spokesman added.

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, Apr 23, CMC