Amid ongoing violence in the streets of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince where armed gangs control much of the city, Haiti’s newly-installed transitional presidential council convened on April 30 and chose former Sports Minister Fritz Bélizaire as the country’s prime minister and Edgard Leblanc Fils, former president of the Haitian Senate, as president of the body. Haiti’s unpopular acting prime minister Ariel Henry had resigned on April 24, after a coalition of armed groups had earlier blocked his return to Haiti. The seven-member council’s mission is to oversee day-to-day governance of Haiti, schedule elections within a year, and prepare for the arrival of a Kenyan police force to quell the violence.
Representatives of the United States, Canada and members of the Caribbean Community regional bloc known as CARICOM, had met last month in Jamaica on March 11 and established the framework for the presidential transition council amid growing food shortages. More than 90,000 people have fled Port-au-Prince over the past month. Some 360,000 Haitians have been left homeless in recent years as battles between rival gangs have destroyed entire neighborhoods.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Kim Ives, a journalist and editor with the weekly newspaper Haïti Liberté. Here he assesses the credibility of Haiti’s new transitional presidential council, and the prospect of another foreign intervention in Haiti’s affairs, the third in the last 30 years.
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