Haiti interim PM to step down

Joseph: Everyone who knows me knows that I am not interested in this battle, or in any kind of power grab. The president was a friend to me. I am just interested in seeing justice for him.

Claude Joseph, who has nominally led Haiti as acting prime minister since the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, said in a Washington Post interview published yesterday that he has agreed to step down, handing power to a challenger backed by the international community. The announcement appears to end a power struggle in the Caribbean nation between Joseph and Ariel Henry, the 71-year old neurosurgeon who was appointed prime minister by Moise two days before the killing but had yet to be sworn in. Moise was fatally shot when attackers armed with assault rifles stormed his residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince. The assassination has pitched the troubled nation into chaos, coming amid a surge in gang violence that has displaced thousands of people and hampered economic activity in the poorest country in the Americas. Joseph told the Washington Post that he and Henry had met privately over the past week, adding that he agreed to step down “for the good of the nation” and is willing to transfer power “as quickly as possible”. “Everyone who knows me knows that I am not interested in this battle, or in any kind of power grab,” Joseph said. “The president was a friend to me. I am just interested in seeing justice for him.” The new government will not have a president, and will be tasked with organising fresh elections “as soon as possible”, said a government official, who is close to the prime minister’s office. Joseph will return to his former post as foreign minister in the new government, which will be installed today, the official said. Haiti, a country of 11mn people, has struggled to achieve stability since the fall of the Duvalier dynastic dictatorship in 1986, and has grappled with a series of coups and foreign interventions.