Haiti's new prime minister chose a Cabinet on Tuesday that did not include any allies of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and which is likely to prolong tensions in the revolt-torn country.
"The government has been selected this afternoon," an aide to Prime Minister Gerard Latortue told Reuters. He said it would be sworn in yesterday at the National Palace.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Not one of the 13 ministries was handed to members of Aristide's Lavalas Family party, a move likely to fire up anger among his supporters, already galvanized by his proximity 185km away in Jamaica.
Moderate Lavalas members, who remained behind after a month-long rebellion and US pressure drove Aristide into exile on Feb. 29, had warned that national reconciliation would be impossible unless they, and the poor majority they represent, were given a voice.
But Latortue said no political parties were represented in the lineup, and that Lavalas had not presented any candidates.
"Had there been an organization that sponsored a Lavalas member, I would have been happy. But there weren't any," Latortue said.
In Washington, the White House blasted Jamaica's decision to allow the former slum priest turned president to visit, a move that made Haiti's new government recall its ambassador and reconsider relations with the Caribbean Community bloc.
Aristide, who returned to the Caribbean on Monday from Africa after being forced out of office on Feb. 29, was in seclusion at a country house northeast of the capital, Kingston.
His spokesman in Jamaica said Aristide had no intention of causing trouble. Aristide "is just hoping that there is peace everywhere, in the region. He wouldn't do anything to jeopardize that," Huntley Medley said.
But in the slums of Port-au-Prince, where many see Aristide as a champion of the poor and believe he was kidnapped in a US-backed coup, the exclusion of Lavalas from the new government was likely to inflame passions.
It might also increase anger at US Marines leading a 2,700-strong UN-sanctioned peacekeeping force.
US Marines raided one of the capital's most dangerous slums on Monday night in a crackdown on gunmen who injured a Marine on Sunday. It was the US force's first casualty.
A column of 120 Marines swept through Belair, an Aristide stronghold, on foot and in armored vehicles mounted with machine guns. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Lapan said they and Haitian police raided two buildings. No arrests were made and the Marines did not open fire.
US forces have fought half a dozen battles with Aristide loyalists -- killing six people -- since they landed hours after Aristide left the country.
Residents in Belair were defiant and angry at the raids.
"This is not Kosovo. This is not Iraq. This is not Chechnya. They have to withdraw their war tanks because we are not terrorists," Wilgo Supreme Edouard said outside a church where huge bullet holes pocked the walls of buildings.
Latortue, selected by a US-backed council of leading Haitians, had pledged to include Lavalas members in order to form a government of national reconciliation.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
SECRETIVE SECT: Tetsuya Yamagami was said to have held a grudge against the Unification Church for bankrupting his family after his mother donated about ￥100m The gunman accused of killing former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe yesterday pleaded guilty, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a nation with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. “Everything is true,” Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting to murdering the nation’s longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials. When the judge asked him to state his name, Yamagami, who
RSS