A transitional council tasked with choosing new leaders for Haiti is changing the way it operates in a move that surprised many as gang violence consumes the country.
Instead of having a single council president, four veteran politicians are to take turns leading the council every five months, according to two members who were not authorized to publicly share the changes because they had not yet been announced.
The members told The Associated Press late on Wednesday that the nine-member council would also now consider five members a majority, instead of four. Seven of the council’s members have voting powers.
Photo: AP
“That’s a real switch,” Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia, said of the changes. “I think it’s a good thing that they’re really going to share power now... It is something that is very rare in Haitian politics.”
The four members who are to share power are original council president Edgard Leblanc Fils, former senator Louis Gerald Gilles, former presidential candidate Leslie Voltaire and former ambassador to the Dominican Republic Smith Augustin.
The changes follow inner turmoil that threatened to derail the council after it was sworn in on April 25. The bickering began five days later, when four council members announced not only a council president, but also a prime minister to the shock of many.
However, it remains to be seen if former sports minister Fritz Belizaire would remain as the chosen prime minister. One council member said they expect to make an announcement next week.
After a prime minister is announced, the council expects to choose a new Cabinet, a process many expect would involve long and heavy negotiations with powerful politicians.
“That’s going to be the other major issue,” Fatton said.
The changes come as Haiti prepares for the UN-backed deployment of a Kenyan police force to help fight gangs that have decimated swaths of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Gangs launched coordinated attacks in February, burning police stations, opening fire on the main international airport that has remained closed since March 4 and storming Haiti’s two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.
The nation’s largest seaport also remains paralyzed as food, medication and other critical items dwindle.
At least 1.4 million Haitians are on the verge of famine, the World Food Programme has said.
On Thursday, Haiti’s Office of Citizen Protection called on the council to prioritize human rights, and provide victims of gang violence free legal assistance and timely justice.
“The country’s situation ... has never been so alarming,” it said.
The office also demanded that the council establish a truth and justice commission to investigate human rights violations and major crimes. It urged authorities to probe the two prison attacks and provide a detailed report on all those who escaped.
“There is no peace without justice,” it said.
US military planes have landed in recent days with supplies, including medicine and hydration fluids as well as civilian contractors to prepare for the arrival of foreign forces, although it is not clear exactly when the Kenyan police would deploy.
A team of top Kenyan security officials are in Washington this week to finalize deployment plans, including the number of police that are to be sent.
Gang violence has surged in recent days, with several communities attacked near downtown Port-au-Prince, forcing more than 3,700 people to flee their homes.
On Tuesday, at least four people died and several others were injured when someone opened fire on a bus driving through Martissant, a gang-controlled area in southwestern Port-au-Prince.
Kidnappings also have increased, with a female police officer killed on Wednesday morning while trying to fight off gangs who tried to abduct her, police union leader Lionel Lazarre said.
More than 2,500 people have been killed or injured in the first three months of the year, a 50 percent increase compared with the same period last year, the UN said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS