The first «Patriotic Forum for a National Agreement against the Crisis» took place from August 27-31 at the Lakay Centre in Papaye, Haiti.
This initiative of the 4G Kontre platform, which gathers peasant organizations MPNKP, Tèt Kole, KROSE and MPP, brought together several organizations from the civil society, the trade union movement, the student movement, peasant organizations, women’s organizations, human rights organizations, workers’ organizations, working-class neighborhoods and political parties to discuss about the main problems affecting the country.
The gathering allowed participants to analyze the structural and circumstantial reality at international and national level, together with leaders from the MST of Brazil, La Vía Campesina, Alba Movimientos and the International Peoples Assembly.
On August 30, the issued the Papaye Declaration which states that the Patriotic Forum has resolved: to continue the popular mobilization to force the immediate resignation of Jovenel Moïse and parliamentarians; to prosecute those responsible for the embezzlement of public funds (3.8 billion dollars for the development of social programs and energy infrastructure that arrived to the country in the framework of agreements with energy platform Petrocaribe, and were appropriated by the Haitian political elite), as well as those responsible for the massacres of La Saline and Carrefour Feuille; and establish a transitional government for a period of three years to address the urgencies of hunger, misery and unemployment that affect more than 80 % of the population and reform state institutions according to the needs of the population”.
They also plan to organize a Sovereign National Conference, for the right to self-determination of the Haitian people in order to draw up a new Constitution to be passed through popular referendum as well as to define a detailed plan on the characteristics and responsibilities of the next transitional government.
For this, a General Assembly will be created composed of two members from each of the organizations that signed the declaration and a Follow-up Committee with eleven members, which will provide continuity to the strategic reflections. “These representatives of the Patriotic Forum will be responsible for integrating new forces and reinforcing and coordinating the actions defined here”, they explained.