Jovenel Moïse: The Misunderstood and Betrayed President
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince
· 3 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
There are men whose destiny seems written in turmoil. Jovenel Moïse was one of them. Contested from the announcement of his candidacy, rejected by the ugliness of a politics without grandeur, he spent two long years trying to convince a people weary of dashed hopes. His detractors, armed with prejudices and obscure interests, strove to tarnish his reputation, to silence him even before he spoke. And yet, despite the storm, he democratically acceded to the presidency, still believing it was possible to serve Haiti differently.
Barely invested, he was engulfed by crises: social, political, economic, institutional. Everything seemed to conspire against him. Questions of interest, class, and origin dominated debates more than ideas or the collective project. Tension rose each time he made a decision that disturbed the established order, each time he reached out to the dispossessed. For in Haiti, touching privileges often amounts to signing one's own death warrant.
And indeed, a brutal death by a heinous assassination awaited him.
On the night of July 6 to 7, 2021, a commando of twenty-eight men, composed of twenty-six Colombian mercenaries and two Haitian-Americans, entered his private residence to execute an abominable crime, meticulously planned with cold precision. President Moïse fell under a hail of bullets after having been symbolically assassinated long before in the media, on social networks, and in the circles where politics is trafficked like conscience. Approximately 48 hours before his tragic end, he had signed a decree granting full and complete discharge to former Prime Ministers who had served the Republic between 1991 and 2017. This gesture of equity and institutional respect was perhaps his last act of national reconciliation. But in a country where virtue disturbs more than corruption, this act became for some proof of an affront. His assassination occurred a few months after the aborted Petit-Bois coup d'état and barely two weeks after his visit to Turkey. A coincidence of timing or the implacable mechanics of destiny? Jovenel Moïse was no saint. No man in power is. He carried his flaws like any human being, but also an unwavering faith in the possibility of another Haiti. What distinguished him was this obstinacy to challenge a system frozen since 1806, this determination to give a voice back to the peasants, dignity to the forgotten, and hope to those who are never heard. But his nationalism was unsettling. His independence was frightening. His ideas of economic reform, energy sovereignty, state modernization, and constitutional referendum clashed with powerful interests, both national and foreign. And while he tried to loosen the chains of a 'peze souse' (sucking press) system, he was encircled, isolated, and then betrayed. His adversaries of yesterday are today the heirs of a country in ashes. The same ones who slandered him now recognize, sometimes reluctantly, that he was right on the essentials. Haiti today reaps the bitter fruits of his elimination: generalized instability, the spiral of gangs, chaos, despair. Those who applauded his fall now mourn the void he left behind. Jovenel Moïse was delivered to his detractors by his own people. Those who were supposed to ensure his protection remained silent or turned away. He paid the price of courage, of free speech, of refusing to submit to the powers of the shadows. He wanted to confront drug mafias, corruption networks, influence peddlers, corrupt oligarchs, and the parasites of a weakened state. He was cowardly and savagely cut down. But ideas do not die with men. History, patient and implacable, always ends up rendering justice. It will remember that Jovenel Moïse, despite his errors, was a misunderstood and betrayed president, driven by a sincere love for the country of Jean-Jacques Dessalines. A man almost alone against everyone, who still believed in the possibility of progress, in the dignity of work, in the sovereignty of the Haitian people. And while the first Black Republic of the New World wanders today in the fog, his voice still resonates, like a reproach and a promise:
"Haiti deserves better than fear. Haiti deserves to live." Pierre Josué Agénor Cadet
On the night of July 6 to 7, 2021, a commando of twenty-eight men, composed of twenty-six Colombian mercenaries and two Haitian-Americans, entered his private residence to execute an abominable crime, meticulously planned with cold precision. President Moïse fell under a hail of bullets after having been symbolically assassinated long before in the media, on social networks, and in the circles where politics is trafficked like conscience. Approximately 48 hours before his tragic end, he had signed a decree granting full and complete discharge to former Prime Ministers who had served the Republic between 1991 and 2017. This gesture of equity and institutional respect was perhaps his last act of national reconciliation. But in a country where virtue disturbs more than corruption, this act became for some proof of an affront. His assassination occurred a few months after the aborted Petit-Bois coup d'état and barely two weeks after his visit to Turkey. A coincidence of timing or the implacable mechanics of destiny? Jovenel Moïse was no saint. No man in power is. He carried his flaws like any human being, but also an unwavering faith in the possibility of another Haiti. What distinguished him was this obstinacy to challenge a system frozen since 1806, this determination to give a voice back to the peasants, dignity to the forgotten, and hope to those who are never heard. But his nationalism was unsettling. His independence was frightening. His ideas of economic reform, energy sovereignty, state modernization, and constitutional referendum clashed with powerful interests, both national and foreign. And while he tried to loosen the chains of a 'peze souse' (sucking press) system, he was encircled, isolated, and then betrayed. His adversaries of yesterday are today the heirs of a country in ashes. The same ones who slandered him now recognize, sometimes reluctantly, that he was right on the essentials. Haiti today reaps the bitter fruits of his elimination: generalized instability, the spiral of gangs, chaos, despair. Those who applauded his fall now mourn the void he left behind. Jovenel Moïse was delivered to his detractors by his own people. Those who were supposed to ensure his protection remained silent or turned away. He paid the price of courage, of free speech, of refusing to submit to the powers of the shadows. He wanted to confront drug mafias, corruption networks, influence peddlers, corrupt oligarchs, and the parasites of a weakened state. He was cowardly and savagely cut down. But ideas do not die with men. History, patient and implacable, always ends up rendering justice. It will remember that Jovenel Moïse, despite his errors, was a misunderstood and betrayed president, driven by a sincere love for the country of Jean-Jacques Dessalines. A man almost alone against everyone, who still believed in the possibility of progress, in the dignity of work, in the sovereignty of the Haitian people. And while the first Black Republic of the New World wanders today in the fog, his voice still resonates, like a reproach and a promise:
"Haiti deserves better than fear. Haiti deserves to live." Pierre Josué Agénor Cadet
