Haiti’s transitional council unexpectedly elected obscure former Sports Minister Fritz Bélizaire as prime minister on Tuesday, dividing the council 4 to 3. Gangs, meanwhile, threaten chaos if they are excluded from government.
Didn’t Haiti just get a new PM? Yes, Michel Patrick Boisvert, the well-known finance minister, briefly took the premiership after Ariel Henry stepped down last week.
The appointment of Bélizaire came as a surprise, with four of the transitional council’s seven voting members suddenly revealing their consensus. The new PM has not held any political office in over a decade, and Leslie Voltaire, one of the council members, told the Guardian “I don’t know him.”
Some believe Voltaire’s appointment was orchestrated by former Senator Jean-Charles Moïse. Moïse had to be persuaded to join the council while he also flirted with an alternative transition plan proposed by former coup leader and convicted drug trafficker Guy Philippe. Appointing a nobody like Bélizaire could leave Moïse in a position to call shots.
What about the gangs? All the politicking feels farcical in the face of facts on the ground. The council was sworn in secretly last month as powerful coalitions of armed gangs hold most of the capital, Port-au-Prince. They’ve already toppled one government, and warlord Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier threatened to do it again if they aren’t brought in: “Either we are all at the table, or the table gets destroyed with all of us,” he said.