{"id":5948,"date":"2021-11-03T05:18:14","date_gmt":"2021-11-03T09:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/?p=5948"},"modified":"2021-11-04T05:27:23","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T09:27:23","slug":"a-tribune-of-democracy-for-interim-president-of-haiti-by-editor-new-york-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/?p=5948","title":{"rendered":"A Tribune of Democracy for Interim President of Haiti (By Editor New York Sun)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>A Tribune <\/strong><strong>of Democracy for Interim <\/strong><strong>President of Haiti<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>By Editor New York Sun<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Editorial of The New York Sun October 24, 2021<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The savagery of events in Haiti \u2014 the latest being the kidnapping of 17 Christian missionaries \u2014 underlines a point that these columns have been pressing since the assassination of President Moise. The crisis on Hispaniola can be resolved only by international intervention. For in Haiti, there is no head of state, no elected prime minister, no working legislature, no functioning national police, nor supreme court. To whom could the international community turn?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Our endorsement for interim president would be Raymond Joseph. He is familiar to readers of the Sun as one of our longest-running and wisest columnists. That, though, is the least of his accomplishments, which began when he was at the Moody Bible Institute in America and did the first translation into Creole of the New Testament. He went on to found, with his brother Leo, the newspaper\u00a0<em>Haiti-Observateur<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Issued in exile at Brooklyn and circulated world wide, the paper became the leading tribune of democracy in Haiti during the years when it was under the grip of the Duvalier regime. When the Duvaliers fell, Mr. Joseph was summoned to be Haiti\u2019s\u00a0<em>charg\u00e9 d\u2019affaires<\/em>\u00a0in Washington. Later, under the government that acceded after the flight of President Aristide, Mr. Joseph returned as Haiti\u2019s ambassador in Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In every assignment to which he has been called by his country, Mr. Joseph has served with distinction. He is an unparalleled voice for Haiti. Few if any can match his long record of educating the world on the significance of the slave revolt that created in Haiti the first black republic. And on the role that Haiti played in America\u2019s history (it helped create the circumstances that made possible the Louisiana purchase).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The key point is that Haiti is without a head of state. We understand that in theory, the acting prime minister, Dr. Ariel Henry, is also listed on the Internet as acting president. His government, such as it is, was endorsed in July by the so-called \u201ccore group\u201d of diplomats\u2014 America, Brazil, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, the European Union, as well as representatives of the UN and the OAS.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Their move in July, following the assassination of President Moise, whose own claim on power was extra-constitutional, strikes us as having been hasty and, in any event, ineffectual. The country is suffering from the want of a serious statesman and a figure with, forgive us, moral authority. Hence our instinct for Mr. Joseph, who has spent his entire adult life in the cause of Haitian democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">When we have put the question to Mr. Joseph, he demurred and forcefully. For years he has been marking the failure of foreign interventions in Haiti, including America\u2019s under President Clinton and of the United Nations\u2019 rule that followed. So Mr. Joseph says that, much as he admires the United States, he wants no part of being a puppet for it or, for that matter, the United Nations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Mr. Joseph favors a \u201chemispheric\u201d solution, in which a wide array of neighboring countries would recognize an interim\u00a0<em>conseil d\u2019etat<\/em>. It would have real, if interim, authority. Haiti\u2019s neighbors would provide the military muscle. On Wednesday, Mr. Joseph notes, Secretary of State Blinken was in Bogota, where he reportedly met with Colombia\u2019s president, Iv\u00e1n Duque, and separately, with 17 of the region\u2019s leaders.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Not being a functioning state, Haiti was not invited (who would represent it?). No communique was issued, though the agenda was topped by the crisis of Haitians fleeing their country and becoming more than a headache for the Latin countries and even the United States. So it is time for Haiti\u2019s neighbors to step up. For the UN, which sent an international force in 2004, and still maintains a mission, has failed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Outside help, Mr. Joseph reckons, would need to accept Haitian political leadership of civil society to seek a broad consensus for transparent and efficient governance and a plan to develop Haiti. He calls for decentralizing powers of the state, which has been for too long the \u201cRepublic of Port-au-Prince.\u201d That is a way for Haiti to become again the \u201cPearl of the Antilles, even drawing back its able sons and daughters in the diaspora.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Those who might suggest that Mr. Joseph is too old, we respond that they don\u2019t know him. He is still writing weekly for his own newspaper and working for democracy from dawn to dusk. He is beyond the age of personal ambition. Few can talk as he does of Haiti as a land where freedom was born in this hemisphere and whence Bolivar sailed to liberate Latin America. This is why Mr. Joseph calls his hemispheric plan \u201cdeliverance in reverse.\u201d President Biden would be wise to call him.________<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Image: Ambassador Raymond Joseph of Haiti greets First Lady Michelle Obama at the Joint Meeting of Congress to hear President Obama deliver the 2010 State of the Union Address. Detail of a White House photograph.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nysun.com\/editori-als\/a-tribune-of-democracy-for-interim-president\/91700\/?fbclid=IwAR26CQhveyRZ3EhIFa0Xkc8bzbp VJC_bgvvDcvwOeuz7zIpkhi9 Q18wuMHI\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">https:\/\/www.nysun.com\/editori-als\/a-tribune-of-democracy-for-interim-president\/91700\/?fbclid=IwAR26CQhveyRZ3EhIFa0Xkc8bzbp VJC_bgvvDcvwOeuz7zIpkhi9 Q18wuMHI<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Cet article publi\u00e9 est reproduit par l\u2019hebdomadaire <strong>Ha\u00efti-Observateur VOL. LI, No. 42<\/strong>\u00a0New York, \u00e9dition du 3 novembre 2021, et se trouve en\u00a0<strong>P. 12<\/strong> \u00e0 : <a href=\"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/h-o-3-nov-2021.pdf\">h-o 3 nov 2021<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Tribune of Democracy for Interim President of Haiti By Editor New York Sun Editorial of The New York Sun October 24, 2021 The savagery of events in Haiti \u2014 the latest being the kidnapping of 17 Christian missionaries \u2014 underlines a point that these columns have been pressing since the assassination of President Moise. The crisis on Hispaniola can be resolved only by international intervention. For in Haiti, there is no head of state, no elected prime minister, no working legislature, no functioning national police, nor supreme court. To&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,1,36,45],"tags":[4460,448,522,4458,4210,1113,4130],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5948"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5951,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948\/revisions\/5951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}