Haiti civil society groups choose transition leader

A group of Haitian civil society and political organizations chose former prime minister Fritz Alphonse Jean to head the country as interim president for two years. The vote was carried out by 42 voting members of the National Transitional Council (CNT) out of 44 (after the withdrawal of the Famni Lavalas party).  Delegates also chose former Senate president Steven Benoit as interim-prime minister. The vote was not recognized by acting-prime minister Ariel Henry.

The CNT stems from the Montana Accord (after the name of the hotel in Port-au-Prince where it was announced), the agreement is a blueprint for a two-year transitional government that will serve Haitians’ basic needs, bolster democratic institutions, reestablish legitimacy and trust, and organize free, fair, and participatory elections. In mid-January, the coalition grew bigger and now includes the modified Protocole d’Entente Nationale (PEN), a powerful alliance of seven political parties, writes Monica Clecsa in Foreign Affairs. The end goal of the transition is free and fair elections. “However appealing quick elections may appear to outside powers, it is clear they are not the answer to Haiti’s problems: in all likelihood, they will lead only to undemocratic outcomes and further instability.”

Last week Henry rejected a separate attempt to form a transitional government by the “Haiti Unity Summit,” which also chose Jean to head an interim government. Henry said the country’s next president will be “elected freely and democratically by the majority of the Haitian people,” but did not say when. 

February 7 marks the end of Moïse’s presidential term, a date that could provide Henry’s adversaries with a pretext to challenge his fragile authority, and which could develop into a new flashpoint in Haiti’s prolonged political, social and security crisis, reported the Miami Herald earlier this month.

(EFE, Haiti Libre, EuropaPress, Le Nouvelliste, Miami Herald)

Democratic Governance

• Puerto Rico’s revised fiscal plan, approved this week, includes pay raises for teachers, firefighters, corrections officers and other employees. A federal control board that oversees the U.S. territory’s finances noted that many government workers have not seen a pay raise since 2014, a year before Puerto Rico announced it was unable to pay its more than $70 billion public debt load, reports the Associated Press.
  
• But the new bankruptcy plan does nothing for most of the island, argues Julio Ricardo Varela in an MSNBC column. “In the end, the debt burden and the continued austerity push will fall once again on the people of Puerto Rico.”
  
• The Barbados Labour Party’s landslide win in this month’s snap elections leaves Barbados without parliamentary opposition, which means “checks and balances fall primarily on an independent judiciary which is the custodian of the rights set out in national constitutions,” writes Sir Ronald Sanders. “But the day-to-day vigilance relies more particularly on a free and vigilant media – these days the social media platforms.”

Development

• Many Cayman Islands residents are increasingly frustrated by growth that seems dictated by investors and foreign interests rather than local needs, reports Periodismo Investigativo. Cayman’s open and mostly tax-free real estate market means that any one from anywhere can buy, trade and profit off of Cayman Islands properties and government revenue data indicates a sharp increase in wealthy transplants and real estate investors to the islands during the pandemic.

Climate Justice and Energy

• The U.S. should increase financing and aid to the Caribbean to help the region recover from the pandemic and cope with the growing impact of climate change, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne told Reuters in an interview. China has lent over $4 billion to Caribbean nations in the last 10 years, according to figures compiled by the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue. But borrowing from Chinese banks shouldn’t be construed as a political statement, said Browne, as the conditions of those loans are more favorable than even those provided by multilateral agencies such as the International Monetary Fund.
  
• Three Guyanese women filed a legal case challenging the May 2021 decision by Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency to modify Esso’s permit to allow it to flare gas in exchange for a US$45 fee per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent. (Kaieteur News, Stabroek News) 
  
• Residents of the Dominican Republic’s Haina industrial zone are increasingly sickened by toxic smoke from dozens of factories, reports Al Jazeera in a long-form piece.
  
• A Costa Rican dive center is training young people to do conservation work, such as seabed cleaning, reef monitoring, water pollution analysis, and underwater archeology, reports the Guardian.

Gender and LGBTQ+ Rights

• While most Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries in the Caribbean and Latin America legalized same-sex intimacy in the mid-1800s, most Anglophone Caribbean countries retained their Victorian Era bans on same-sex activity even after decolonization. For these countries, the movement for LGBTQ rights can seem like a foreign imposition on domestic policy and spark a nationalist backlash, writes Robert Carlson in Global Americans.
  
• A woman whose marriage broke down after she reported allegations of domestic abuse against her husband faces having her Cayman Islands residency revoked, according to court documents. (Cayman Compass)

Access to Justice

• St. Lucia has not been able to hold a homicide trial for two years, because courtrooms are too small to safely seat a jury under Covid rules, even as the murder rate has risen to record levels. It is one of the most extreme examples of the damaging impact of the pandemic on access to justice globally, according to the Guardian.  

Housing

• The U.S. government has allotted more than $554 million to repair some 275 public housing complexes in Puerto Rico that were damaged by Hurricane Maria more than four years ago, reports the Associated Press.

Public Security

• Dancehall artists in Jamaica took to social media to denounce the country’s violent crime, and to call on perpetrators to stop, reports NY Carib News.
  
• Jamaica’s Advocates Network is registering its deep disquiet and disappointment at the lack of information and delays in the investigation of the alleged cutting of the locks of Nzinga King in July, 2021. (Petchary’s Blog)

Histories

• Eric Williams’ groundbreaking Capitalism and Slavery will be published in Britain, 84 years after it was first rejected by publishers. Slavery, Williams argues, was abolished in much of the British empire in 1833 because doing so at that time was in Britain’s economic self-interest – not because the British suddenly discovered a conscience. — Guardian
  
• Academics and artists are shedding new light on the traditionally ignored history of indentured labor in the British Empire — Commonwealth Foundation.

Events

• 1 Feb (2 p.m. EST) — Oil Dorado? Guyana’s Black Gold | Live Book Launch
  
• 15 February — How can small island states fund their urgent battle against global warming? — Commonwealth Foundation
  
• 7-10 March — The Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean online training module: Caribbean Small States and the Diplomacies of Climate Change: Negotiations in Practice. More information.

Opportunities

• FY 2022 Julia Taft Refugee Fund call for proposals to support to one-time, low-cost interventions that address important gaps in protection and assistance for refugees and stateless persons — The U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM).

WHO — Call for proposals for six low- and middle-income country (LMIC) case studies examining how health systems are responding to the climate crisis at the national or sub-national levels.