The Cabinet holds meetings outdoors on an uncovered concrete slab under the broiling tropical sun. The communications office is a folding table beneath a tree and the president greets dignitaries inside a drab, one-story building.
The earthquake that destroyed the Haitian capital’s most prominent institutions, including the now-crumpled presidential palace, has left the top layer of government for a country of 9 million people operating in a tiny police station.
Struggling with a massive humanitarian crisis, officials say they barely notice the humble surroundings.
“I am serving the nation. I don’t have any time to make any comment about the location of the president’s office,” said Yves Mazile, chief of protocol, who was ushering foreign delegations in to see Haitian President Rene Preval.
A Haitian flag flies at half-mast inside the driveway of the judicial police headquarters, one of the many reminders of the estimated 200,000 people killed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.
A Haitian Foreign Ministry worker with a string of pearls around her neck smiles for visitors, keeping up appearances despite the loose ceiling panels and hanging wires in the concrete police building.
The staff was busy on Wednesday with visits from Dominican, Korean and Israeli delegations, all of them coordinating aid.
The Haitian Cabinet met outside on Wednesday morning to discuss aid because there was no room inside the cramped building. After Preval arrived, his visitors passed through the lobby of flaking blue paint for private meetings.
In a capital that is burying tens of thousands of people in mass graves, officials say they are grateful the Cabinet still is intact.
“We are alive but each of us, like people across the country, have people in our lives who died,” said Communications and Culture Minister Marie Laurence Jocelyn-Lassegue, who was attending to a couple of dozen local and international reporters in one corner of the driveway.
The police station was chosen because of its proximity to Port-au-Prince’s international airport, the entry point for a stream of aid.
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