Haitian President Jovenel Moïse on Monday appointed a new Prime Minister to lift the country out of the institutional, humanitarian and security crisis in which he is sinking. The presidential decree appointing Joseph Jouthe was published in the Haitian official journal Le Moniteur on Monday afternoon, confirming the morning announcement of Jovenel Moïse, but using a different spelling. “Following consultations I had with different sectors of the country, I made (the) choice of citizen Joute Joseph as the new Prime Minister. The latter is called to form, as soon as possible, a government of openness and consensus, capable of responding to the emergencies of the day, " had tweeted the head of state.
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Since September 2018, Joseph Jouthe has held the post of Minister of the Environment and also became Acting Minister of Economy and Finance in September 2019. He replaces Jean-Michel Lapin, who has never passed the interim stage.
Haiti is plunged into an intense political crisis since the resignation, in March 2019, of Prime Minister Jean-Henry Céant. Joseph Jouthe is the third head of government that Jovenel Moïse has appointed since this departure. The legislature has never ratified any of these choices, preventing a government from taking office. The legislative elections not having been organized in the fall of 2019, the parliament has been inoperative since January: the ratification of Joseph Jouthe cannot therefore be carried out according to constitutional rules.
Negotiations initiated since last summer within the political class to form a new government ended in failure. The opposition calls for the resignation of Jovenel Moïse as a prerequisite for the opening of any discussion. The Haitian president has concentrated popular anger since the May 2019 announcement by the Superior Court of Accounts of his alleged involvement in a large corruption scandal spanning the past ten years in the country.
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This deep political crisis aggravates the economic crisis by curbing any national or international investment. Faced with massive unemployment, faced with inflation above 20%, the population is impoverished. A third of Haitians today find themselves in a situation of severe food insecurity, a step which precedes famine according to the classification used by the World Food Program.
In this context of socio-political crisis, Haiti has been recording for several weeks an increase in kidnappings for ransom, which are added to the usual violence of armed gangs in poor neighborhoods. A French employee of the World Food Program was released Thursday evening, two days after her kidnapping in the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, said the UN agency in a statement on Friday.