Haiti’s interim president names new Electoral Council
PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti (CMC) — Haiti’s Interim President Jocelerme Privert has named a new Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) as the French-speaking Caribbean Community country moves towards staging presidential elections.
In a television broadcast on Sunday night, he said that “the nine members of the electoral council have already been chosen”.
“Revival of the electoral process is essential for a definitive resolution to the institutional and electoral crisis,” he added.
Opposition parties had called for the establishment of an interim administration to oversee fresh elections in the country and had taken to the streets, protesting the outcome of the first round of balloting on August 24 last year as well as preventing the staging of the second round of the presidential elections on January 24 this year.
Under an agreement signed hours before President Michel Martelly’s departure on February 7, the interim president chosen by parliament will serve for up to 120 days.
The agreement proposes a new presidential election on April 24, with a new president installed on May 14.
In his broadcast, Privert said he has a mandate to complete the elections for “the remaining seats in the House of Deputies by the election of 27 deputies and at Senate by the election of 6 senators.
“Still, it will be necessary to finalise the election of all organs of municipal authorities, carry out the election of members of the 575 communal sections and finally complete the presidential election as scheduled in the agreement of February 5, 2016.”
He said the completion of “these elections and these objectives require the establishment of a government and the holding of a Council of Ministers to see the setting in place of the CEP in order to revive the electoral process”.
Privert reminded parliamentarians that “the principle of separation of powers does not imply a logic of permanent confrontation between the different bodies of the State… but the republican spirit of constant collaboration and functional interdependence between institutions in statutory autonomy”.
“The separation of powers implies first and foremost a break with authoritarianism and arbitrariness. In these difficult times we are required to move forward together,” he said, inviting his “former colleagues to share my concerns about the deteriorating living conditions of our people, for that I have to have for bias, that of the collective and general interest”.
“I ask you to give the benefit of the doubt, even better of credit to all the members of the Consensus Government in voting favourably the declaration of general policy of the Prime Minister Fritz-Alphonse Jean.
“I am launching a patriotic appeal to parliamentarians so that they play their part for this week we have a Government,” he added.