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Reaching 100 days in power is an important milestone for any president, most of whom are keen to lay down markers before the end of what is customarily considered to be a honeymoon period. President Michel Martelly reaches this milestone with little more than air miles to show for his first 100 days in office: he has conducted six foreign trips. This is because he still lacks a prime minister and a cabinet. Parliament rejected Martelly’s second choice of prime minister, Bernard Gousse, in early August, amid mutual recriminations, and he is yet to settle on a third choice. Without a government, Martelly has been unable to present a budget for the 1 October fiscal year.
Martelly bemoaned the status quo during an interview with Radio Canada at the start of the month: “Not having a government is killing us because it is like having a head but with the hands cut off,” he said. He complained that he was a victim of a legislative dictatorship, which he claimed was the fruit of the 1987 constitution, which in its determination to preclude the emergence of a dictatorship comparable with the Duvalier dynasty, had stripped the executive of power and invested it in the legislative branch of government instead.
Deputies, unsurprisingly, had a different interpretation of events. Several of them argued that Martelly was in fact hell bent on establishing an executive dictatorship by bulldozing through nominees for prime minister who were wholly inappropriate, without making any effort to win a prior consensus. The president of the lower chamber, Sorel Jacinthe, implied that the resulting deadlock provided him with the excuse to act like a dictator by threatening to rule by decree.
The secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, sought to defuse the political tension by issuing a statement urging political leaders in Haiti to seek consensus in order to forge a new government. Insulza intimated that failure to do so would jeopardise foreign aid: “international partners wish to continue with aid for the development which the country needs,” he said. “We need a government in a hurry,’’ said the UN special envoy for Haiti, former US President Bill Clinton, who co-chairs the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), charged with the task of reconstruction after last year’s devastating earthquake.
Haitian civil organisations are accusing Uruguayan peacekeepers from the UN stabilisation mission (Minustah) of sexually abusing minors, engaging in prostitution and even taking pictures of naked children on their phones to show other soldiers. The Uruguayan blue helmets are based in the south-western coastal town of Port-Salut.
The allegations come as the online journal mBio published the results of a study into the cholera outbreak in Haiti in July 2010. The study used “whole-genome sequence typing (WGST), pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and antimicrobial susceptibility testing” to compare 24 Nepalese samples of Vibrio cholerae with 10 samples of the bacteria from Haiti. It argues that all of the samples were very similar, with some that “were almost identical”.
A panel of experts appointed by the UN released a much more equivocal report in May. It argued that the Haitian strain of cholera was “very similar, but not identical, to the South Asian strains of cholera”. It also concluded, vaguely, that the outbreak was caused by “the confluence of circumstances… and was not the fault of, or deliberate action of, a group or individual”. It did argue elsewhere, however, that “evidence overwhelmingly supports” the conclusion that the epidemic began via the contamination of the Artibonite River, near the Mirebalais base where Nepalese UN peacekeepers were stationed.
Despite the recent travails of Minustah, President Martelly has expressed his hope that the UN stabilisation mission will stay on in Haiti. He wants the mission to change, however, from one of providing security and training security forces to a development mission in the not too distant future. Martelly aired his proposal during a visit to Chile, where he thanked his Chilean counterpart Sebastián Piñera for his country’s contribution to Minustah. Martelly has previously argued for the restoration of Haiti’s army. He said Haitians should “look after their own country”, adding that “The very fact that Minustah is here implies that we need one [an army].”
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