Civic leaders hope that in the midst of the turmoil, the country can find a way to reimagine itself for a better future.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Teachers and religious leaders, lawyers and farmers, they are veterans of crisis who thought they had seen it all in recent years, looking on in outrage as the democracy they were fighting for was whittled away, gutted under the watch of President Jovenel Moïse. Then the gunmen struck, and a country that had been adrift now felt rudderless. Mr. Moïse is dead, assassinated in his own bedroom, and the few leaders left in the country have been so busy jostling to take his place that they have not even made a plan for burying him. It took a week just to announce that they had formed a committee to organize the ceremony. “All of this fighting,” lamented Monique Clesca, a former United Nations official gathered with other Haitian civic leaders on Tuesday in the back of a restaurant in the leafy suburb of Pétionville, a 10-minute drive from where the president was killed. For months, as Haiti fell deeper into crisis over Mr. Moïse’s rule, with protests upending the nation and Parliament reduced to a shell in the absence of elections, Ms. Clesca’s group, that has consulted with more than 100 grass-roots organizations, had been meeting regularly, desperate to come up with a plan to get the country functioning again. Health care, a functioning judiciary, schools, food: Their goals were at once basic and ambitious. Now, the crisis is even worse. All the focus seems to be on who will emerge as Haiti’s next leader, she said. But the group wants the country to think bigger — to reimagine itself, and build a plan to get to a different future. As Haitians did in 2010, when an earthquake killed more than 220,000 people and leveled much of the capital, many hope this crisis will offer the country a chance to start over and dream, only this time, with better results. “This is a horrible trauma,” said Magali Comeau Denis, an outspoken local business owner and former minister of culture and communication, addressing the civic gathering. But, she said, “Together, we can become a force.” At the restaurant where the civic leaders gathered in a performance area — sound equipment and drums sitting idle on a nearby stage — the air was close, even with a rainy-season breeze managing to find its way inside.
