Any reform after the assassination of Jovenel Moïse will depend on the US re-evaluating its interests in the country

The assassination of Jovenel Moïse, Haiti’s president, marks another point in the years-long power struggle that pitted his loyalists against activists and working-class families, exhausted by years of social strife and gang violence. On Saturday, his wife Martine Moïse, injured in the attack, returned home to the Caribbean state to face speculation about her own political career. Meanwhile, the authorities still search for the motive for her husband’s killing.

At least 20 people have now been arrested in connection with the murder, including Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian-American self-proclaimed pastor who lives in South Florida, and who allegedly issued the order for the assassination. According to reporting by the Washington Post, Sanon had ambitions to become president of his homeland. He had vowed to transform the country into a “free and open society” with an ambitious $83bn redevelopment plan for Haiti. His defenders say, however, a plot to kill Moïse was never part of the masterplan.

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Source: The Guardian