WASHINGTON — Minutes after House Democrats announced articles of impeachment on President Donald Trump on Tuesday, Rep. Frederica Wilson entered a meeting room in Washington and asked a group of Haitian activists about efforts to impeach their embattled president, Jovenel Moise.
“We live in the United States and we have corruption … right in our White House just like you have corruption with your president,” said Wilson, D-Fla. “What has happened to the impeachment process in Haiti?”
Emmanuela Douyon, an economist and activist with Petrochallenger and Nou Pap Domi anti-corruption grassroots movement, laid out a scenario that makes the allegations against Trump look minuscule in comparison.
“They voted against (impeachment),” Douyon said of the Lower House of Deputies in the Haitian Parliament that is controlled by the executive. “Parliament members received money for their vote. There is a corrupt Parliament where the majority allies with the president and they are taking money from the president and their party to vote when he needed their support.”
This was the same legislative body that jettisoned the prime minister in March, leaving Haiti without a legitimate government since.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee held its first hearing on Haiti in 20 years amid ongoing political instability and widespread anti-government protests calling for Moise to step down. Wilson, who is not a member of the committee but represents one of the largest Haitian communities in the United States, said she pressured the committee to hold the hearing.
“We have basically put Haiti on the back burner for too long,” Wilson said. “There’s apathy in the United States, there’s apathy in Haiti. Now, we have to put Haiti in the conversation of this committee. I am the genesis of this committee hearing because I said you got to have a hearing on Haiti.”
Wilson also organized a roundtable on Haiti with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in October, where prominent Haitian-American leaders said the U.S. should stop meddling in Haiti and Moise should go.
While subcommittee hearings in Congress usually draw one or two lawmakers, Tuesday’s hearing was attended by three Republicans and 11 Democrats. Four Democrats, Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Wilson attended the hearing and asked questions even though they are not members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which is rare.
