Caribbean & Central America - August 2008 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Two weeks after Haiti's lower chamber ratified President René Préval's third choice for prime minister, Michí¨le Duvivier Pierre-Louis [RC-08-07], the 18-member senate followed suit on 31 July, with a two-thirds vote in her favour. While Pierre-Louis' ratification was undoubtedly a boost for the country (after nearly four months without a prime minister), she continues to struggle due to disagreements within the government. Most recently, the congressional session during which she was due to announce her new cabinet and legislative agenda was called off on 19 August.

Pierre-Louis' difficulties in drawing up a cabinet - let alone a plan of governance - that satisfies all the members of Préval's disparate coalition government were largely predictable. As she has pointed out, there are 19 different parties and only 18 ministries to distribute among them. The parties' jockeying for ministerial positions threatens to undermine Pierre-Louis' already fragile position: both her proposed cabinet and her legislative agenda must be approved by the two chambers of congress. If they are not, several deputies have said that Préval might have to start looking for (another) new prime minister.

The influential lower chamber faction, Concertation des Parlementaires pour le Progrí¨s (CPP) - which was responsible for vetoing President Préval's two previous proposed candidates for prime minister - is backing Pierre-Louis. The problem is that many other parties are making their vote conditional on being represented in the new cabinet. Meanwhile Préval recently announced that several ministries - including finance, planning, interior and agriculture - would remain in the same hands as before. This caused uproar among the parties, who claim that since the previous ministers proved themselves incapable of doing their job they should not be awarded any posts this time around. CPP leaders point out that Préval promised to give at least eight ministries to senators.

• Senators' threats

A number of senators have threatened to resign if they are not given their preferred ministries, which would render the already seriously underweight senate inquorate. Due to senate elections being long overdue, the upper chamber is currently operating with only 18 out of 30 senators. Senator Jean Hector Anacacis has proposed a reduction of the current quorum of 16 to 10 in order to resolve the problem.