The tragic fate of Jovenel Moïse, businessman at the head of Haiti

Published on : 07/07/2021 – 15:52

Elected in 2016 at the end of an eventful electoral marathon, Jovenel Moïse was unknown to the general public in the spring of 2015 when he appeared on the political scene.

It is ultimately very isolated, with a suspended parliament and governing by decree, that the 53-year-old Haitian president ended, on the night of Tuesday 6 to Wednesday 7 July, in a tragic way his single mandate, the target of an attack. at his home.

This father of two children was unable to stop the downward spiral of his nation, the poorest on the American continent, and in particular the violence that plagues the lives of the inhabitants.

Coming from a modest family – a father who was a mechanic and a farmer, a mother who was a seamstress and a shopkeeper – this native of Trou du Nord, in the Nord-Est department, continued his studies to the Faculty of Educational Sciences in Haitian University Quisqueya.

His family had moved to the capital Port-au-Prince in 1974. In 1996, very young married with his classmate Martine, he returned to his native department with a dream: to make Haiti an “essentially agricultural” country by developing the hinterland.

Agricultural entrepreneur

According to the biography available on his website, Jovenel Moïse created, thanks to private equity funds, a trade in automotive spare parts and a first banana plantation of 10 hectares.

Its last organic banana plantation is the largest in the country (nearly 1,000 hectares). Hence his nickname after his entry in the running for the presidency: “Nèg Bannan nan”, or “the banana man” in Creole.

Sensitized to the importance of drinking water, he formed a partnership with the specialist Culligan and in 2001 opened a distribution plant in the North-East and North-West regions. Then he became interested in regional electrification, creating in 2008 with partners a special purpose company.

In 2012, he launched Haiti’s first agricultural free zone, and set up his company Agritrans there for which he obtained a six million dollar equity loan from the government of his predecessor, Michel Martelly.

According to Jovenel Moïse’s website, this device has made it possible to develop dozens of agricultural projects and “to create nearly 3,000 direct jobs and 10,000 indirect jobs”.

Well-off minority and a country plagued by corruption

His sensational entry into politics, it is also to Michel Martelly that he owes it: the outgoing president – who could not run for a second term – chose him in the spring of 2015 to represent his party Tet Kale (PHTK), with the ‘objective to ensure his succession.

Then began a very active electoral campaign centered on him, in particular on social networks still under-exploited by the traditional political class, financed by large industrialists and members of the economic elite, the same wealthy minority who surrounded Michel Martelly.

Once elected, Jovenel Moïse undertakes to clean up the country, plagued by corruption. But, quite quickly, it was some of his own collaborators who found themselves suspected of embezzlement of public funds.

Year after year, parliamentary inquiries, NGO inquiries or Court of Auditors inquiries confirm that corruption continues to permeate Haitian institutions, despite the waltz of ministers and senior officials.

Controversy over his term of office

Like a good part of the political class, including before him, Jovenel Moïse in particular struggles to be accountable for the way in which the money lent under the Petrocaribe program, initiated by the former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, was used. which allows several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to acquire petroleum products at an advantageous cost.

Jovenel Moïse appointed seven prime ministers in four years and failed to carry out a major constitutional reform he called for, sparking criticism and incomprehension even in his own camp.

His end of presidency was marked by another lively controversy, believing that his mandate would end on February 7, 2022, while for the opposition and part of civil society it had ended on February 7, 2021. This disagreement was due to the fact that Jovenel Moïse had been elected after a ballot canceled for fraud, then re-elected a year later.

With AFP