Ap and Afp

La Jornada Newspaper
Wednesday, November 13, 2024, p. 26

Port-au-Prince. Operations at Haiti’s airport were suspended yesterday following the outbreak of violence on the Caribbean island that this time ended with gang members shooting at a Spirit Airlines plane, wounding a flight attendant, while the new Prime Minister, Alix Didier Fils -Aimé, I was protesting.

Schools, banks and government offices were also closed. The streets, where just a day before gangs and police clashed in an intense shootout, were empty.

Violence resurfaces after a transitional council tasked with restoring democratic order in Haiti decided to remove the country’s interim prime minister, Garry Conille, after six months in office.

Even though Conille declared the measure illegal, the council quickly appointed businessman Fils-Aimé as interim prime minister. That one ended up wishing success to his successor, in a publication yesterday on social networks.

But many Haitians, like Martha Jean-Pierre, 43, have little interest in the political fights that experts say only give gangs more freedom to expand their control as Haiti teeters on the brink of famine.

Jean-Pierre was one of the people who dared to walk the streets of Port-au-Prince yesterday to sell the bananas, carrots, cabbages and potatoes that he carried in a basket on his head. He had no choice, he said, selling was the only way to feed his children.

What good is a new prime minister if there is no security, if I cannot move freely and sell my products?he declared, nodding toward his basket of vegetables. This is my bank account, my family depends on this.

The United Nations estimates that gangs control 85 percent of Port-au-Prince, the capital. A UN-backed mission led by Kenyan police to quell violence by criminal groups is in Haiti but faces a lack of funding and personnel.

In this context, the spokesperson for the State Department, Matthew Miller, called on the Haitian authorities: The acute and immediate needs of the Haitian people demand that the transitional government prioritize governance over the competing personal interests of political actors

Washington, which largely finances the international security force deployed this year in Haiti to curb gang violence, assured that it will work with the new prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé.