Haiti's transitional council will be up and running in days, says Bob Rae
'It's a pretty critical moment now for the people of Haiti,' says Canada's ambassador to the UN
Canada's ambassador to the United Nations says Haiti's transitional council should be up and running in a matter of days.
Haiti's unelected prime minister and acting president, Ariel Henry, announced Monday that he would step down once a transitional council is in place and his temporary replacement has been chosen.
Haiti is currently under a state of emergency after increasingly powerful armed gangs seized control of the nation's capital city Port-au-Prince, shutting down ports and airports, taking over government buildings, and freeing thousands of inmates from prison.
On Monday, Haitian civil and political leaders met with Caribbean, Canadian and U.S. leaders in Jamaica to forge a path out of the crisis and towards an election. The meeting was organized by the Conference of the Heads of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), a regional trading bloc.
Bob Rae, Canada's ambassador and permanent representative to the UN, was at that meeting. Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
When might this transitional council be in place?
We're ready to go. It's just a question of how quickly the Haitian political parties themselves can come together and get moving.
Are we talking weeks, months?
Days. We don't have weeks.
This will be a seven-member presidential council. It will choose a new interim prime minister to replace Ariel Henry. How will these members be chosen?
They'll be chosen by the [Haitian political parties and civic groups] themselves.
The job of this council is really to carry out a transition towards an election. But in order to get to an election, we have to get the level of violence way down.
Right now, it's just terrible for the people of Haiti. We're at a moment of crisis. But I think that the consensus that was reached was that there needs to be this non-partisan or multi-partisan group that's ready to set their differences aside and get moving.
And Prime Minister Henry agreed that, once that structure is set up, he will step aside and let a new prime minister take over, and that prime minister will appoint a new government.
There are other key issues around security, getting the multinational force going, getting more assistance on the ground, making sure we get the airport open and the ports open. And those are all things that need to happen as well.
So it's a pretty critical moment now for the people of Haiti and for the whole region.
Haitians have been wanting [Henry] to step aside for a long time. What did it take to finally make it happen now?
I think he realized that not only the pressure from within Haiti, but just generally feeling, I think, that it was time. He'd been there for three years [and] had not really been able to get the violence under control ... and I think he was ready to do the right thing.
What will the mechanism be to get these gangs to go home and abandon their weapons after being able to accumulate so much power?
I think there's two things that will help to make it happen. I think that once people become convinced that, you know, this is a Haitian-led change that's been encouraged by constructive partners in the region, that there really is no benefit to anybody to continue this — except for the financial benefit for the gang leaders, many of whom are connected to political leaders.
And the second is that a multinational force is being built and is coming and is being trained … and that will make a difference in helping the Haitian National Police (HNP) to bring their gangs under control.
On the issue of the multinational force, there's been a lot of resistance across the board in Haiti for any foreign boots on the ground. Why was that important to you and the others to make that a condition of this council, knowing there's been so much opposition?
The big issue is security in Haiti.
I've been going there now for the last four years on a regular basis and having a lot of conversations with people. And my sense is that ... there's quite a substantial majority of people who want assistance to the HNP.
There must have been … discussions yesterday … about whether there are going to have to be concessions made to these gangs. I mean, what could you possibly entertain on that front?
It's not up to us. I mean, the Haitian legal system will have to be built up from pretty much the bottom. There will have to be a serious look at detaching kids from the gangs. It's not just a matter of killing everybody or throwing everybody in jail.
Dealing with gangs requires ... a level of firmness from the government, and clarity with respect to what exactly is going to be done and how it's going to be done.
And it also requires a series of social and economic strategies that will really help recognize the fact that many or most of the people who are in these gangs are … teenagers who haven't ever got to go to school. They don't have jobs. The families have no money. The gangs are an easy way for them to make cash, they think, and then they don't realize how dangerous it is and just how wrong it is, because it's causing so much havoc for everybody else.
You've got to have an anti-gang strategy that's not just based on rhetoric. It's got to be based on the realities on the ground. And that's something we are working with other countries in developing the programs and really trying to create the momentum for that to happen.
Given what you know today, ambassador, do you believe Canada and other countries like the United States should have supported Ariel Henry as prime minister after the assassination of [Haitian president] Jovenel Moïse in the way that they did?
[Canada's ambassadors to Haiti] have been very clear that we don't have a favourite candidate.
I was in the room when the prime minister talked very candidly to Mr. Henry about how he needed to broaden its coalition, how we needed to bring new people in. We tried to encourage that to happen. I made many visits myself. Others have made many visits to try to move this along.
Is it frustrating because it's taken so long? Of course it is. But it's not just a matter of snapping your fingers.
The fact is, there are lots of the competing elements in Haitian society that want different things. And I think one of the things that Canada has been very clear about is it's not up to us to support one faction or group or another.
With files from The Canadian Press. Interview produced by Morgan Passi
