News Information
- NEWS_POSTED_BY: Haiti Place
- NEWS_POSTED_ON: Feb 07, 2015
- Views : 791
- Category : Haiti News
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Description :
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES, JCHARLES@MIAMIHERALD.COM
01/23/2015 3:03 PM 01/24/2015 8:50 AMProtesters in Port-au-Prince on Friday call for President Michel Martelly to resign. JACQUELINE CHARLES / MIAMI HERALD STAFF
- Location : Port-au-Prince, Ouest, Haiti
- Website : http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article8009664.html
Overview
PORT-AU-PRINCE - President Michel Martelly said Friday he doesn’t relish ruling by decree and would like to have legislative elections as early as the end of May to fill the institutional void created after parliament dissolved last week.
“I want to reinforce the institutions,” Martelly said at the National Palace after welcoming a 15-member delegation from the United Nations Security Council, which is on a three-day mission. “I don’t want to hold the power just for myself.”
Council members planned to examine how the country is doing five years after a devastating 7.0 earthquake toppled homes and government buildings, left more than 300,000 dead and an equal number injured, and forced 1.5 million Haitians into camps.
As part of the evaluation, they are also looking at security, development and the ongoing political impasse between Martelly and the opposition that has plunged Haiti deeper into political turmoil.
The country now has no elected mayors, no head of the Supreme Court and no Chamber of Deputies or working Senate. Last week, on the fifth anniversary of the quake, lack of elections overdue by more than three years caused the terms of the entire lower house to expire as well as a second-tier of the 30-member Senate.
Despite the crisis, Chilean U.N. Ambassador Christian Barros Melet and U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power, who led the delegation, said they were encouraged. The pair commended Martelly for his efforts in trying to break the impasse by reaching out to the opposition and promising to continue the dialogue to bring opponents demanding his resignation off the streets and to the negotiating table.
“We are very encouraged by the effort at consultations with the opposition, with civil society that the president has made and out of this meeting, even more encouraged by his determination to continue those consultations even after the lapsing of the parliament,” Power said.
“The democratic contract between the government and the governed is a critical part of Haiti’s development and we on the U.N. Security Council want to offer Haiti all of the support we can,” she said.
Power said members were further encouraged by Friday’s installation of a new nine-member Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) to organize the balloting. It is the fifth since Martelly’s 2011 election, and was sworn-in just hours before the delegation touched down.
During the installation ceremony at the council’s headquarters in Petionville, recently installed Prime Minister Evans Paul said, the international community does not have to direct Haitians to hold elections.
“We have to do it,” he said. “Elections are indispensable for the stability of Haiti.”
As Paul spoke, across town thousands of anti-government demonstrators took to the streets in the second day of consecutive protests demanding Martelly’s resignation and accusing him of foot-dragging on elections and of trying to be a dictator.