Two weeks after tapping a politically unknown government bureaucrat to run Haiti’s day-to-day affairs, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse is appealing to Parliament to ratify the new prime minister and 18-member cabinet.
But with five months left before the terms of one-third of the Senate, the entire lower chamber of Deputies and all locally elected posts expire, there are questions about whether Moïse — whose allies claim would be allowed to rule by decree in the absence of a Parliament — really wants to form a government. In the meantime, the ratification of Fritz William Michel, Moïse’s nominated prime minister, by Parliament doesn’t appear to be certain.
“The president really doesn’t want to have a government,” said Abel Descolines, an opposition lawmaker in the Lower Chamber of Deputies, where Moïse supporters over the weekend decided to boycott a commission tasked with investigating Michel’s paperwork after they lost a vote to preside over the process.
Read more at our news partner the Miami Herald.
