The leader of the so-called peace­ful “Rev­o­lu­tion”, Guy Philippe, is call­ing for uni­ty among all Haitians af­ter de­clar­ing that the move to oust the “il­le­git­i­mate and blood thirsty gov­ern­ment” of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ariel Hen­ry has been suc­cess­ful.

“To all those who have been il­le­gal­ly and un­just­ly ar­rest­ed and de­tained be­cause they de­mand change in their coun­try; to all those who have been in­jured and hos­pi­tal­ized, as a re­sult of the ac­tions of the blood­thirsty gov­ern­ment, which un­leashed its as­sas­sins, with a mis­sion to mas­sacre, to kill… I ask you to hold on,” Philippe said in a state­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, a copy of which has been ob­tained by the Hait­ian-Caribbean News Net­work (HC­NN), a part­ner of the Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC), Philippe, who led the 2004 coup d’etat against then-pres­i­dent Jean Bertrand Aris­tide, said: “Jus­tice will be done.

“The hench­men, the as­sas­sins, re­spon­si­ble for all the crimes and abus­es, will pay! When the time comes, they will pay,” he in­sist­ed, say­ing that there are ef­forts to pre­vent the com­plete re­moval of the Hen­ry gov­ern­ment from of­fice.

“The sys­tem pan­icked, it re­ceived a hard blow, but it is chang­ing strat­e­gy. We must al­so change our strat­e­gy. We must mon­i­tor them. The sys­tem wants to res­ur­rect, it wants to re­gen­er­ate, but we will not al­low that to hap­pen. We will re­main vig­i­lant. We will watch them,” he said in the state­ment.

But in its own state­ment on Thurs­day, the gov­ern­ment said it would ex­tend a state of emer­gency for an­oth­er month in its Ouest De­part­ment, the seat of the cap­i­tal city, as it seeks to re­gain con­trol of the trou­bled French-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try.

A de­c­la­ra­tion pub­lished in the of­fi­cial Gazette said the state of emer­gency would ex­tend un­til April 3, with a night­ly cur­few un­til March 11, and that this was in or­der to “reestab­lish or­der and take ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures to re­take con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion.”

The au­thor­i­ties had first an­nounced the state of emer­gency and cur­few on Sun­day evening (March 3), as fight­ing es­ca­lat­ed and the crim­i­nal gangs al­lowed for thou­sands of in­mates to be freed from two of the main pris­ons here.

Prime Min­is­ter Hen­ry re­mains strand­ed in Puer­to Ri­co, af­ter hav­ing trav­elled first to Guyana to at­tend the CARI­COM sum­mit, and then Kenya where he signed an agree­ment al­low­ing for the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil sanc­tioned in­ter­na­tion­al force led by the African coun­try to re­store peace and se­cu­ri­ty in his trou­bled coun­try.

CARI­COM on Wednes­day said it has not been “able to reach any form of con­sen­sus” re­gard­ing the sit­u­a­tion in Haiti de­spite work­ing on the is­sue over the past three days.

“In spite of many, many meet­ings, we have not yet been able to reach any form of con­sen­sus be­tween the gov­ern­ment and re­spec­tive stake­hold­ers in the op­po­si­tion, the pri­vate sec­tor, civ­il so­ci­ety and re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions,” CARI­COM Chair­man and Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali said in a video state­ment.

A soldier stands guard in the Haitian capital, Port au Prince. [Image courtesy CMC]

Mean­while, the Unit­ed States has de­nied re­ports that it is mov­ing to “push” Prime Min­is­ter Hen­ry in­to re­sign­ing.

“We are not—we are def­i­nite­ly not—push­ing the prime min­is­ter to re­sign.  That is not what we’re do­ing but we have un­der­scored that now is the time to fi­nal­ize a po­lit­i­cal Ac­cord to help set Haiti on a path to a bet­ter fu­ture, and that is some­thing that we’ve been work­ing on for some time,” said White House Press Sec­re­tary, Karine Jean-Pierre.

“We’ve been work­ing that on that with the CARI­COM so that is noth­ing new.  We’ve had those con­ver­sa­tions… and al­so the Hait­ian Part­ners on the path to restor­ing De­mo­c­ra­t­ic or­der in Haiti—through free and fair elec­tions, in­clu­sive gov­er­nance and pow­er shar­ing—this will give the peo­ple the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect their prime min­is­ter,” she added.

Philippe, 56, who served time in a US fed­er­al prison be­tween 2017 to 2023, said the re­moval of the present regime un­der Hen­ry, who came to pow­er fol­low­ing the Ju­ly 2021 as­sas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Joven­nel Moïse, “is the on­ly way to guar­an­tee that we will have ac­cess to the fair­er and more egal­i­tar­i­an Haiti that we de­mand.”

“We must send a clear mes­sage, na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, to tell them that we are tired. The break is over.  The dis­or­der is over!” said Philippe, who was a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in the 2006 Hait­ian gen­er­al elec­tion, re­ceiv­ing near­ly four per cent of the votes.

“It is high time that those who have re­al­ly worked are re­ward­ed. It should not be the oth­er way around! All Haitians must be able to taste the sweet­ness of the coun­try. If the coun­try is par­adise, it should be a par­adise for all of us,” he added.

Philippe, who has been tak­en over as the head of the so-called Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil on Tues­day, said he be­lieves that “all chil­dren must be able to live in peace, they must be able to go to school, eat their fill, every­one must be able to live with dig­ni­ty, in all de­cen­cy.”

He as­sert­ed: “We are a small coun­try, but we can live at home like hu­man be­ings. To all Haitians strug­gling abroad, whether in Chile, Brazil, the Unit­ed States, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and else­where, I tell you to hold on. Be con­fi­dent, one day Haiti will get bet­ter.”

“Whether you are in Eu­rope, Asia or Amer­i­ca, you will soon find the Haiti we are look­ing for. How­ev­er, we must re­main vig­i­lant. The mo­bi­liza­tion must con­tin­ue. We shouldn’t give up,” he said.

“They want to slow us down, put us to sleep, we will not let it hap­pen. The move­ment must con­tin­ue every­where. All Haitians from dis­ad­van­taged neigh­bour­hoods, ghet­tos and ad­van­taged ar­eas, in Pé­tion-Ville and every­where. Don’t give up,” Philippe urged.

He added: “The coun­try needs all its chil­dren to come to­geth­er to move for­ward, so that we can build the Haiti that we all dream of.” —PORT AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CMC)

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Sto­ry by Joseph Guyler C. Del­va | CMC