A party spokesman told AFP Saturday that the leader of one of Haiti’s main political parties and a former presidential candidate was assassinated on Friday in the southern suburbs of the capital.
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Ricardo Nordin, a party spokesman, announced that Eric Jean Baptiste, 52, general secretary of the RND, was shot dead Friday night.
“His car was riddled with bullets. His security guard died at the scene. Eric Jean Baptiste died in hospital,” said Mr. Nordin.
The RDNP was founded in 1979 by Christian Democrats Leslie Manigat, who was briefly the president of Haiti in 1988 before a military coup ended his term.
Less than a week ago, Jean-Baptiste and other political parties signed a call for a historic compromise to get Haiti out of crisis.
The impoverished Caribbean nation is faced with terror-spreading gangs and a deteriorating health situation with a strong resurgence of cholera.
The assassination of Eric Jean Baptiste comes a few days after the attempted assassination of an investigative journalist from the Haitian daily Le Nouvelliste, who was killed on the morning of October 25.
Monday, October 24, the body of another journalist, who is also a radio presenter, was found under a bridge in the southern city of Les Cayes, and UNESCO has demanded to shed light on this death.
The Haitian government has appealed to the international community for help, including by sending a peacekeeping force, but this idea is not unanimous either among Haitians or within the United Nations Security Council, and no country has yet offered its leadership.
But last week the Security Council imposed a raft of sanctions targeting the criminal gangs sowing chaos in Haiti.
