The senate session scheduled this week to ratify Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s pick for prime minister, Fritz William Michel, has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Unprecedented scenes of Senator Jean Marie Ralph Féthière opening fire on a crowd of angry protesters, wounding an Associated Press photojournalist and security guard, indicate escalating tensions over the efforts by the unpopular Moïse to force through Michel’s ratification. Against an existing backdrop of public anger over government corruption, not least stemming from Moïse’s alleged embezzlement of funds from Venezuela’s discounted oil initiative Petrocaribe, recent allegations of bribery and irregularities involving Michel have dealt a further blow to his prospects.End of preview - This article contains approximately 622 words.
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