A Kenyan police officer, part of a UN-backed multinational force, runs to take cover from an exchange of gunfire between gangs and police at the Kenyan base in the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024. (Odelyn Joseph/AP)
(Tribune News Service) — When Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier announced on the 221st anniversary of Haiti’s independence that the country’s most powerful gang coalition would soon become a political party, the New Year’s Day announcement by the ex-cop who became a warlord didn’t go unnoticed — but it also didn’t generate the kind of political debate Haitians are used to.
Now it just may.
The powerful gang coalition known as Viv Ansanm — Live Together — which has been launching deadly coordinated attacks all across Port-au-Prince since February of last year, is among several organizations listed on a document sent to the 15-member Caribbean Community bloc that suggests ways the country’s troubled political transition can be saved.
The document was sent to CARICOM this week and signed by several high-profile Haitian politicians representing three different political groups— the December 21 Agreement, the Collective of Political Parties of January 30 and the EDE party. The document is a joint proposal on what to do about the Transitional Presidential Council, the nine-member ruling panel that has been engulfed in a bank bribery scandal involving three of its members. The council members, who insist they are innocent, have dismissed pleads to step aside in order to save the transitional government, which is tasked with returning democratic order to Haiti with elections some time this year.
In arguing for a reconfiguration of the ruling panel, the groups presented several scenarios to CARICOM. Among them is reducing the council to three members, with a member of Haiti’s highest court serving as president, alongside a representative of civil society and one from the political class. To show the idea has widespread support, the proposal to CARICOM included a mention of Viv Ansanm, saying that even though the gang did not sign the April political accord that created the transitional government, it supports the idea of reconfiguration.
The inclusion was immediately seen as giving legitimacy to Chérizier and his band of gang leaders, whom the United Nations said this week were responsible for more than 5,600 deaths last year — 1,000 more than the year before.
While confirming the group’s inclusion in the document during a radio interview on Port-au-Prince Magik 9 on Friday morning, Liné Balthazar, the president of the PHTK political party that is also part of the Collective of January 30 parties, defended mentioning the gang.
“Let’s not lie to each other,” said Balthazar. “All of the international organizations involved in humanitarian aid in Haiti, when they want to access Cité Soleil or Croix-des-Bouquets, ask them with whom they interact to give humanitarian aid in those areas. Let’s suspend the hypocrisy.
“Embassies interact with armed groups,” he added. “There is a phenomenon of illegal armed groups in the country. We must resolve this problem in an adult and pragmatic manner. No one is going to do it for us.”
Balthazar said he personally isn’t in contact with gangs but is “simply listening to what is being said in society.”
He expressed doubts when asked if he saw a possible amnesty for gangs in the future. But he didn’t dismiss the idea of a possible alliance with gangs heading into elections, which are supposed to take place sometime this year in order for Haiti to put a president in office by Feb. 7, 2026.
The gang’s inclusion in the proposal received immediate backlash in some political circles. At the same time it has reigniting a debate about what role gangs, which control large swaths of the capital and parts of the nearby Artibonite region, should play in a crisis they helped create. The violence has led to a humanitarian crisis not seen since the devastating Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake that left more than 1.5 million homeless.
André Michel, a lawyer and spokesperson for the Democratic and Popular Sector, which is part of the December 21 Agreement, said no documents were signed with Viv Ansanm nor is there any ongoing dialogue with the armed group.
“There is no place at the negotiating table. They are criminals and should be destroyed,” he told the Miami Herald.
In a post on his X account, he went further: “The Viv Ansanm gang coalition represents a criminal organization that has murdered, impoverished and humiliated tens of thousands of citizens.”
Still, the question about what role that armed gangs and their leaders should play in helping solve Haiti’s ongoing crisis remains.
Last year, as Caribbean leaders worked with Haitians to set up the political transition, several CARICOM leaders suggested the gangs should be included. Both the United States and France objected.
But the idea that gangs should be included is not novel and has long guided some foreign embassies’ approach in Port-au-Prince, Some political observers have been quietly wondering if the government is seeking ways to negotiate with armed gangs based on certain appointments that were recently made for local mayors offices.
Neither the government nor the ruling council has said they are interested in negotiating with gangs, although others close to the leadership have been accused of having close ties to gang leaders.
For the most part, Haitians in general have shown no interest in amnesty for the gangs, and in many instances communities have fought back against gang invasions by killing suspected gang members rather than letting them be arrested.
“In no instances will gangs ever help resolve the security crisis,” said Pierre Esperance, a human-rights advocate. Involving gang leaders in a political accord “is reinforcing impunity and legitimizing them.”
Esperance said the mere fact that members of Haiti’s political class would even mention Viv Ansamn in their proposal shows “they have relations with the gangs and that they have failed in their mission. It’s a lack of respect for human lives, normalization of the violence and it shows that a lot of people in the political class are comfortable with what is taking place in the country.”
Samuel Madistin, a lawyer and former presidential candidate, said he is just as bewildered as others as to what is driving the inclusion of Viv Ansanm in the political debate. Like Esperance, he rejected the notion that those responsible for the instability and worsening humanitarian crisis can offer peace and stability.
“They are spitting on the memories of a lot of people, people who have been made victims by these terrorists, thousands whom they have assassinated, women whom they have raped, people who have lost their homes, their businesses, thousands who have been forcibly displaced,” Madistin said. “The people whom they massacred — it’s an abuse, disrespect they are showing to all of these victims.”
Madistin said the idea that Haitian politicians believe that a group of terrorists can lend a voice to the political crisis “is unacceptable.”
“It is the government’s role to give itself the means to neutralize the gangs; they have to reinforce the army, the police,” Madistin said. “There cannot be negotiations with the gangs. There cannot be impunity.”
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