Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

US Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken and Hait­ian Prime Min­is­ter Ariel Hen­ry have agreed on the ur­gency of de­ploy­ing a UN-au­tho­rised multi­na­tion­al force or peace­keep­ing op­er­a­tion to en­able the Hait­ian Na­tion­al Po­lice to re­store peace and se­cu­ri­ty and al­le­vi­ate the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in that coun­try.

Both men met yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, on the fi­nal day of Cari­com’s 45th reg­u­lar meet­ing.

Sec­re­tary Blinken and Prime Min­is­ter Hen­ry dis­cussed the ur­gency of en­larg­ing po­lit­i­cal con­sen­sus and reach­ing a broad­ly sup­port­ed agree­ment to en­able a re­turn to de­mo­c­ra­t­ic or­der as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, said spokesman Matthew Miller.

Blinken reaf­firmed the Unit­ed States’ un­wa­ver­ing sup­port to the Hait­ian peo­ple, in­clud­ing through the con­tin­ued pro­vi­sion of hu­man­i­tar­i­an, eco­nom­ic, and se­cu­ri­ty as­sis­tance.

Haiti’s PM must be ‘hon­est bro­ker’, tell cit­i­zens he won’t con­test elec­tion—PM Browne

Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Gas­ton Browne says Haiti’s Prime Min­is­ter Ariel Hen­ry should be­come an “hon­est bro­ker” and com­mu­ni­cate to Haitians that he does not in­tend to con­test that coun­try’s elec­tion.

Browne said Hen­ry should in­stead use the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter to re­store con­fi­dence in the process and en­sure the nec­es­sary sys­tems are im­ple­ment­ed for elec­tion.

He ex­pressed his views to re­porters yes­ter­day morn­ing at the Hy­att Re­gency. Haiti’s cur­rent po­lit­i­cal and so­cio-eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion was among the agen­da items.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that Haiti was a very del­i­cate and com­plex sit­u­a­tion, Browne said “It will re­quire a Hait­ian home-grown so­lu­tion, ob­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed with the help of Cari­com and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.”

Browne said Cari­com has ap­point­ed an Em­i­nent Per­sons Group on the is­sue and they are do­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of work bring­ing the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers to­geth­er. He said in­cre­men­tal progress has been made.

“But I’m of the view that the cur­rent of­fice hold­er in Haiti’s of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, he too has a sig­nif­i­cant role to play in bring­ing the var­i­ous par­ties to­geth­er to help to come up with a Hait­ian so­lu­tion,” Browne said.

“My un­der­stand­ing is that the Prime Min­is­ter of Haiti (Ariel Hen­ry) has in­di­cat­ed that he and his oth­er col­leagues will not par­tic­i­pate in the elec­tion when they’re held.”

Haiti’s cur­rent in­sta­bil­i­ty would not al­low for an elec­tion at this time and may take up to 12 to 18 months, but Browne said Hen­ry has to in­di­cate to the peo­ple that he does not in­tend to run for of­fice.

At the same time, Browne said there should be a gath­er­ing of re­sources for nec­es­sary equip­ment and train­ing for Haiti’s po­lice to re­store sta­bil­i­ty. He said the as­sis­tance of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will be need­ed for cer­tain ar­tillery re­quired and oth­er fi­nan­cial sup­port. “We need the sup­port of coun­tries like the US, Cana­da, and France to con­tribute to fund­ing the re­quire­ments to strength­en Haiti’s law en­force­ment.”

Hen­ry be­came prime min­is­ter fol­low­ing the Ju­ly 7, 2021 as­sas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moïse at his pri­vate res­i­dence. Since then Hen­ry has had to deal with calls for his res­ig­na­tion from op­po­si­tion leg­is­la­tors as well as crim­i­nal gangs that have se­vere­ly dis­rupt­ed life in the coun­try with a spate of kid­nap­pings, mur­ders, and ri­val war­fare.

Mean­while, ac­cord­ing to a Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC) re­port, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves shared Browne’s po­si­tion, re­mind­ing CMC that dur­ing the Cari­com sum­mit in the Ba­hamas ear­li­er this year, Prime Min­is­ter Hen­ry had giv­en an un­der­tak­ing to not be in­volved in the elec­tion.

“He has said that and he said he has said it pub­licly, I don’t know. But he cer­tain­ly said it to me, said it re­peat­ed­ly to me in the pres­ence of (Cana­di­an) Prime Min­is­ter (Justin) Trudeau and al­so the Prime Min­is­ter of the Ba­hamas when we were in the Ba­hamas. So that is a mat­ter of record. And I mean, I can say that be­cause he told me that in front of wit­ness­es,” Gon­salves told CMC.

But Gon­salves, the longest serv­ing Cari­com leader, told CMC he want­ed to make it clear that “what­ev­er we do here in Cari­com, or we at the UN ... it has to be with­in the frame­work, that the process must be Hait­ian de­vised and Hait­ian led”.

Gon­salves said Cari­com was play­ing a role in the po­lit­i­cal process, to get all the stake­hold­ers to­geth­er, in­clud­ing the Gov­ern­ment so that “we can have an in­clu­sive process for a po­lit­i­cal so­lu­tion, lead­ing even­tu­al­ly, maybe to an­oth­er year and a half, two years, for elec­tions in cir­cum­stances where they can be held cred­i­bly in a se­cure en­vi­ron­ment”.

Ba­hamas Prime Min­is­ter Philip Davis said his coun­try’s po­si­tion was clear and that “there needs to be as­sis­tance to the Haiti Na­tion­al Po­lice by pro­vid­ing them train­ing re­sources, as­sist­ing in re­cruit­ing and train­ing, to be able to se­cure Haiti; to pro­vide a space for peace, tran­quil­li­ty, to al­low per­sons to move about freely with­out fear of in­tim­i­da­tion or vi­o­lence.”

He said, “We have been talk­ing too much about it, and we just need to act.”