Weekly Report - 30 March 2004

A serious challenge to the legitimacy of the new Haitian authorities has emerged from a quarter virtually everyone had overlooked: the 14 senators whose mandates did not expire in January. They have announced that they will resume their function as the legislative power — just as the seven-strong Council of Wise Men, the ad-hoc body set up under the wing of the intervention force, has begun to consider adding more members and to assume an oversight role akin to that constitutionally entrusted to the legislature.