In the midst of the chaos and violence, Ariel Henry, the questioned prime minister of Haiti, resigned

Respected as a doctor but criticized as a politician, the Prime Minister of Haiti Ariel Henry tried to stay in power longer than expected, until the uprising of armed groups that control much of Port-au-Prince forced him to resign.

Ariel Henry took the reins of power in Haiti after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021 and was expected to leave office in early February.

His resignation was equal an express request from powerful criminal gangs who keep the population in suspense and control large areas of Haiti.

THE crisis of violence worsened to the point that the international community pushed for a transition with the participation of the Haitian company.

Henry he finally agreed to resign this Mondayas confirmed in a video published on the Haitian government’s social networks.

Who is Ariel Henry

The much talked about 74 year old politician has made a name for himself in Haiti through his professional career as neurologist.

After studying medicine at the French University of Montpellier, he directed the neurosurgery department of one of Haiti’s most renowned private hospitals and taught at state universities in Port-au-Prince.

His political career started late. In January 2015, President Michel Martelly appointed him Minister of the Interior, a position he held for less than eight months.

After a change of cabinet, he took over the Social Affairs and Labor portfolio for just over six months in September 2015, before leaving the political scene for more than five years.

Nomination and murder

In July 2021, President Moïse chose him as his seventh prime minister.

But only two days after this appointmenton July 7 Moise was murdered in his private residence by an armed commando composed of former Colombian soldiers.

The murder threw the country into chaos.

After two weeks of comings and goings and under pressure from foreign embassies, Henry was finally installed at the head of a government that It already lacked legitimacy.

The investigation into the assassination of the president the distrust towards his figure increased: the night of the murder, Henry had several telephone contacts with one of the prime suspects, Giuseppe Felice Badio.

The prime minister defended himself by assuring that we are faced with a “nationally and internationally orchestrated turmoil”.

Henry did not deny having called Badio, who would have been geolocated two hours after the murder in the neighborhood where Moise’s residence is located. He only said that he struggles to remember the names of all the people he called that day and the tenor of the conversations.

The gangs in Haiti

Long before the death of President Moise, the gangs had extended their power over Haitian territorymultiplying robberies, extortionate kidnappings and murders.

Today they control much of Port-au-Princemaking safe transportation impossibleor by road to the southern half of the country and blocking access to the prime minister’s offices.

Henry ruled from his official residence.

On January 1, 2022, he was forced to flee under a hail of gunfire during the ceremony for the National Day of Haiti organized in the city of Gonaives.

This “attempted murder”, which he firmly denounced, did not prevent Henry from maintaining his political program, similar to that of the late Moïse, namely: the organization of elections and the adoption of a new Constitution.

With an unpopular and questionable prime minister at the helm, Haiti has created the fourth transition regime in the history of its young democracy, born after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986.

In the end it was the current crisis that precipitated its downfall the gangs banded together with the stated goal of overthrowing the prime minister.

“If Ariel Henry does not resign, if the international community continues to support himwe are heading towards a civil war that will lead to genocide“said Jimmy Cherizier, nicknamed “Barbecue”, during a press interview on March 5.

When the current crisis broke out, Henry he was on an official visit to Kenya sign an agreement to send Kenyan police to Haiti as part of an international mission supported by the UN and the United States.

Your plane, which I could not land in Haiti due to insecurity, finally took him to the US territory of Puerto Rico, from where he announced his resignation on Monday.

“As I have always said, no sacrifice is too great for our country,” Henry said in his resignation video.