Weekly Report - 01 December 2011 (WR-11-48)

It took Haiti’s President Michel Martelly nearly six months to get his cabinet in place - and less than one month to lose his first minister. Martelly struggled for months on end to persuade parliament to accept his nomination for prime minister, the prelude to forming a cabinet, which he eventually managed by 18 October. He was severely hampered by the fact that his party has virtually no legislative presence. With this in mind, it was unwise, to put it charitably, for his justice and public security minister, Josué Pierre-Louis, to order the arrest of a deputy, Arnel Belizaire, on 27 October. The backlash from the opposition-controlled parliament was such that Pierre-Louis was compelled to resign last week and there is some talk among furious deputies about bringing down the prime minister Gary Conille. If Martelly fails to improve the parlous state of relations between the executive and legislative branches of government, he will spend his entire mandate struggling to advance his agenda.

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