‘BETTA BELLY BUSS THAN FOOD WASTE’
Jamaica braces for flood of Haitians after assassination
THE assassination yesterday of the latest president of Haiti, Jovenel Moise, by heavily armed men, marked another Haiti been-there-done-that and an uncanny parody of the sad 217 years of the western hemisphere’s most troubled nation.
The current turmoil is something the world has seen many times before, but this time the globe reacted with greater shock and apparent alarm, likely because there was so much hope for a new Haiti after the devastating January 2010 earthquake and the outpouring of grief and promised aid.
Nearly every world capital expressed disbelief, and United Nations Secretary General António Guterres condemned the incident in the strongest terms, calling on all Haitians to “preserve the constitutional order, remain united in the face of this abhorrent act, and reject all violence”.
Security Council President Ambassador Nicolas de Rivière of France said members of the 15-member UN body, who met yesterday, were saddened by the death of the Haitian leader. The entrepreneur and politician had been in power since 2017.
The cry of Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness about the killing of Moise and injuring of his wife, Martine Marie, suggested that they were more than leaders of a country but friends who shared a common vision for Haiti.
The Jamaican leader, whose diplomatic tone is usually more measured, described the assassination of Moise as “a heinous act, a stain on Haiti, and a sorrowful time for the Caribbean”.
The two leaders are close in age — Moise, 53, and Holness, 49 years on July 22 — and Holness disclosed that he had “found him to be committed to seeing Haiti take her place within the world”.
But Holness’s pain aside, Jamaican authorities were