New Haiti PM to be sworn in

There had been no doubt that Bellerive, 51, who has served in several government positions over the past 20 years, would get the green light.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, November 9, 2009 – A new Prime Minister will be sworn-in in Haiti this week. He is former Planning and External Cooperation Minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, who got the expected nod from both Houses of Parliament to fill the post left vacant by Michèle Pierre-Louis who was fired by the Senate at the end of last month.

Bellerive is expected to form a Cabinet and submit his government plan for formal approval by parliament this week as well.

The lower House of Parliament – the Chamber of Deputies – ratified Bellerive on Saturday in a 52-2 vote, a day after the Senate gave him its unanimous approval.

There had been no doubt that Bellerive, 51, who has served in several government positions over the past 20 years, would get the green light.

His ratification came much quicker than that of his predecessor, Pierre-Louis who was actually President René Préval’s third choice for the position, following the Senate firing Jacques Eduoard Alexis on April 12th on the heels of food riots which left seven people dead.

Préval's first and second choices – Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) economist, Ericq Pierre, and security expert and presidential adviser, Robert Manuel, respectively – did not get the support of the Senate and it was only five months later, after a long nomination process, that Pierre-Louis was given the necessary approval to fill the spot.

The Senate voted out Pierre-Louis over her failure to promote economic recovery on the heels of four storms last year, which devastated the already impoverished Caribbean nation.