According to the country’s acting prime minister, Claude Joseph, Haitian President Yorvernell Mois was killed in an attack on his private home early on Wednesday morning. He said in a statement that a group of unidentified people was killed on the 1st. Break into Moise’s home from left to right. I was the head of state and was fatally wounded. He described the murder as a “heinous, inhumane and barbaric act.”
Joseph then proceeded to say that the President was slain in a “highly coordinated attack by a highly trained and heavily armed group.” Specific details of the President’s death were no9t revealed by him, but he also said that Haiti’s first lady was shot and is receiving treatment.
For weeks, the country has been recovering from the violence. In a televised speech, Joseph addressed the whole country, announcing that Haiti had entered a “state of siege” and begging citizens to remain calm.
“Me and all the ministers have been working since the news broke and we want to assure you we will bring the killers of the president to justice,” he added. “Please stay calm and let the authorities do their work. We don’t want the country to plunge into chaos. This is a very sad day for our nation and for our people.”
The state of siege is an intermediate state among the three levels of emergency provided by Haitian law. The lowest “state of emergency” and the highest level are called “state of war.”
Under the state of martial law, the borders of the country are closed and martial law is temporarily imposed, and the Haitian army and national police have the right to enforce the law. It is unclear who will replace Moise. Judge Jean Werner Morin, president of the Haitian National Association of Judges, told CNN that the country’s presidential succession route is now blurred. The president of the Supreme Court of Haiti usually ranks second, but he recently died of COVID-19. -19. Morin said that if acting prime minister Joseph wants to formally succeed the president, he must obtain the approval of the Haitian parliament. But without the recent elections, the parliament would effectively cease to exist.
Moise is 53 years old. The former banana exporter is a controversial figure who spent most of last year in a political war with the opposition over his presidency; many in the country are vying for his right to continue as president this year.
The United Nations and the Organization of American States support his fifth-year re-election claim. Critics say he should resign on February 7, 2021, on the grounds that the constitution stipulates that the time starts when the president takes office, instead of starting his five-year term when he takes office. It should end in 2022, because he didn’t take the oath of office until February 2017. His inauguration was postponed due to allegations of election fraud during the 2015 elections, resulting in the presidential runoff being postponed twice due to what the authorities called threats and “security concerns.” During his presidency, Moise repeatedly failed to hold elections at the local and national levels. Level, leaving most of the country’s government infrastructure vacant.