By Babyson Pierre, member of the IWU-FI
In an interview at the G20 summit in Brazil on 21st of November, the French president called the members of the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) ‘cons’ (idiots in vulgar language), blaming ‘the Haitians’ for having destroyed Haiti, and strongly criticising the TPC ‘s decision to dismiss Prime Minister Gary Conille and his government. The statements generated great outrage in Haiti, given the criminal history of French imperialism. The Haitian people did not even elect this TPC . It was elected by the imperialists, like Macron, hand in hand with Caricom. The Core Group governments, such as the US, Canada, Spain, Brazil and France, previously supported the corrupt and mafia-like governments of the PHTK by force of occupation. What is in crisis, then, is a model of colonial tutelage that has been in place in Haiti for decades.
Within the Core Group there is what former OAS ambassador to Haiti, Ricardo Seitenfus, has called the ‘imperial trident’, made up of the US, Canada and France. The TPC was installed on April 12th 2024, following the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who was prevented from returning to the country after his trip to Kenya to finalise the agreement to send troops. Henry had been imposed by the Core Group after the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, and Moïse himself had been imposed in fraudulent elections by the OAS. For many years it has been the imperialist powers who decide who governs Haiti.
Henry, shortly before resigning, had paid 500 million dollars to the Venezuelan government for the Petrocaribe debt, an action that should be investigated for probable corruption. Petrocaribe and MINUSTAH have been two cases of complicity of Latin American reformism with the Haitian bourgeoisie and imperialism in Haiti.
The TPC has nine members, currently all men, of whom two participate as observers. The presidency of the council rotates every six months and its function is supposed to end on February 7th 2026 with the holding of national elections. The TPC appointed Prime Minister Gary Conille, a former Clinton advisor and former prime minister under Martelly.
The CPT has involved the main political currents of the Haitian bourgeoisie, from the extreme right of the PHTK to the centre-left of Lavalas and Pitit Dessalines, and it has failed. Conille’s main mission, according to the ‘Political Agreement for a political and orderly transition’ of April 4th 2024, was to re-establish public security conditions, restore state institutions and set up the Provisional Electoral Council. The tasks of the CPT and the government are very similar, but in its seven months of operation we have seen more power struggles and corruption scandals than the fulfilment of these tasks.
The first known clash between the CPT and Conille was the disagreement expressed by Leslie Voltaire, who heads the CPT, over statements by the then chancellor Dominique Dupuy criticising the Dominican government’s policy of mass deportations. Voltaire, who is linked to Lavalas, called for the foreign minister’s head. Abinader’s government is known to be linked to Haitian oligarch Gilbert Bigio, sanctioned at the end of 2022 by the Canadian government for his links to the financing of armed gangs. Bigio remains very influential in Haitian bourgeois politics, is honorary consul of Israel in Haiti, and was even sanctioned by the US in the 1990s for his involvement in the first coup against Aristide.
Three members of the CPT, Smith Augustin (former ambassador to the Dominican Republic), Emmanuel Vertilaire and Louis Gerald Gilles, were indicted by the Anti-Corruption Unit for abuse of power and active and passive corruption against the National Credit Bank. They remain to this day in a CPT that is only interested in securing its privileges and the interests of its oligarchic partners. Alix Didier Fils Aimé is the new Prime Minister, which promises to be more of the same.
The deployment of Kenyan troops, dedicated solely to defending the regime, came after the US failed to engage the governments of Canada and Brazil to repeat the MINUSTAH scheme. Recently, the imperialists tried to get the UN Security Council to approve the sending of another mission of blue helmets, without success. In short, we are facing a crisis of the model of imperialist domination of the last decades.
Macron’s statements demonstrate the arrogance and irresponsibility of the Core Group, because in the CPT they are ‘idiots’, but in the end they are their ‘idiots’.
It is high time to demand internationally that the right of the Haitian people to decide their own destiny be respected. Given the subordination of the Haitian bourgeoisie to imperialism, only a government of the working class and popular sectors can assert this right to self-determination and begin the reconstruction of the country.
