PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CMC) — In the nearly two months since Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse took office, ?his administration has made several high-profile moves demonstrating a new willingness by the French-speaking Caribbean country to buck the desires of the international community, including the United States and its allies.

According to a report in the Miami Herald on Sunday, Haiti’s government refused to renew the mandate of the United Nations’ independent expert on human rights as the Moïse administration has appointed the president of a political party tied to accused drug trafficker Guy Philippe as head of public security in Haiti.

On Tuesday, Haiti’s ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Jean-Victor Harvel Jean-Baptiste, accused hemispheric diplomats of orchestrating a “cosmetically disguised” coup in Venezuela by trying to suspend the country from the OAS, “a claim that ran counter to the message the US was trying to send.

Jean-Baptiste was quoted as saying that – “Combined, the actions could strain Haiti’s relationship with the US and others in the region,” it said.

“The US is still the hegemonic power and going against its policies can have a cost,” said Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia. “It seems to me that the Moïse government risks alienating the United States.”

The United States has long had a big stake in Haiti, noted the Herald, stating that the US Agency for International Development is Haiti’s largest donor since the country’s 2010 earthquake. 

The US government has made available US$4.8 billion toward humanitarian relief assistance of which US $3.3 billion went for recovery, reconstruction and development assistance.

On Tuesday, Jean-Baptiste also took a stand against the US position on Venezuela, railing against the OAS and questioning Secretary-General Luis Almagro’s authority to call for Venezuela’s suspension from the hemispheric body, according to the Herald.

“If we authorize the threat of a coup d’etat, cosmetically disguised, against Venezuela, we cannot prevent this from happening against other countries,” Jean-Baptiste said. “What is happening at the OAS at this very moment promises dark days for the hemispheric organization and for our region.”

With the OAS calling for an emergency meeting Monday on the Venezuela crisis on Monday, the US Department of State reiterated that one of the goals of OAS members — including Haiti — is to promote democracy.

“We believe the region has a role to play when a country in the hemisphere experiences the kind of democratic backsliding Venezuela is currently experiencing,” a State Department spokesperson said. “The OAS is the appropriate institution to address these issues. Member states, including Haiti, expressed desire to promote and defend representative democracy and human rights under the Inter-American Democratic Charter.”

Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who had warned the Haitian government that it risked losing US aid if failed to side with the United States, called Haiti’s OAS vote “shameful”.

“President Moïse is going to have to decide quickly whether he wants to stand with the Western Hemisphere’s worst tyrants, or stand on the side of human rights and democracy,” Rubio later told the Herald. “He has placed US aid to his country at serious risk, and if he does not change his approach to foreign policy will soon find himself with fewer friends in Florida and Washington.