Haiti President refuses to resign

Haiti’s embattled president broke a weeks-long silence Tuesday, telling his protesting nation that while he hears their cries in the streets, he has no intentions of stepping down.

“It would be irresponsible on my part for me to stand here today, to sign and submit a letter of resignation and say ‘I am leaving’ and leave the country like this and the system regenerates itself,” President Jovenel Moïse said during an impromptu press conference on the grounds of the National Palace.

Casting himself as the victim of Haiti’s constitution and “a system” that encourages underdevelopment and misery, Moïse evoked the language of his critics over Haiti’s outgrown system in hopes of quelling tensions as Haiti faced a fifth week of paralysis.

Moïse also blamed the constitution and Parliament for his inability to improve Haitians’ lives.

“Parliament spent eight months refusing to give us a government,” said Moïse, who came to office 32 months ago.

Those calling for Moïse’s resignation have called for a different kind of system to govern the country, arguing that the current one, created after the fall of the 1986 Duvalier family dictatorship, only benefits a few. With 60 percent of the population earning less than $2 a day, and 20 percent of the population controlling 60 percent of the wealth, Haiti, with 11 million people, is one of the hemisphere’s most unequal countries.