Haiti’s Prime Minister Installs a Nearly Nonpartisan Cabinet

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Pledging to rebuild his ravaged nation, Prime Minister Gerard Latortue on Wednesday inaugurated a Cabinet nearly devoid of partisan politicians in an effort to get past the divisions that have torn this tiny country apart.

After several days of negotiations, Latortue installed 18 men and women whose chief qualifications appeared to be competence and distance from the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the president who resigned Feb. 29 after an armed revolt.

To the dismay of some, Latortue avoided appointing ministers with overt ties either to Aristide’s Lavalas Party or to the myriad opposition groups that succeeded in forcing him out of office.

“I know the composition may cause some talk among those who ... would have preferred a distribution of portfolios that would give priority to those who were in the streets leading the struggle for the change of regime,” Latortue said at the installation ceremony in the National Palace.

But “the success of this difficult and delicate transition is better guaranteed by the formula of a nonpartisan government, which I invite everyone to judge by its results.”

Some members of Lavalas and former opposition groups were not mollified, however, saying that Latortue’s team could not be a true government of national reconciliation without their participation.

Latortue, who returned to Haiti from Florida to become interim prime minister after Aristide’s departure, had indicated that he would include both Lavalas and opposition figures in his Cabinet.

“The decision not to let in anyone from the political parties hadn’t been mentioned to us. I heard it on the radio as everyone else did this morning,” said Leslie Voltaire, a Lavalas member and a former minister in Aristide’s Cabinet.

“You cannot call this a government of national unity,” Mischa Gaillard, of the opposition coalition Democratic Convergence, declared on Haitian radio.

As of Wednesday evening, discontent over the makeup of the government had not translated into violence or public protest by either Lavalas’ backers or adversaries. Exhausted by the unrest that has driven poverty-stricken Haitians into further misery, the country has been relatively quiet over the last few days, even after Aristide returned to the region Monday at the invitation of Jamaica, less than 200 miles to the west.

Earlier in the day, Haitian National Police, backed by French troops, confiscated about 50 guns turned over by Aristide followers in Cite Soleil, one of this city’s slums, where strong -- and often armed -- pockets of support for the ousted leader still exist. Disarming such groups presents a major challenge to both the new government and the international peacekeeping force here, which includes 1,700 U.S. troops.

U.S. Army Col. Thomas Schoenbeck acknowledged that the multinational force has seized only “a handful of weapons,” mostly after skirmishes with gunmen during patrols.

To bring order to the streets, Latortue appointed Herard Abraham as minister for public security. Abraham is a retired general who, in a rare act in Haitian history, voluntarily turned over power to a civilian in 1990.

Other members of the technocrat-heavy Cabinet include Foreign Affairs Minister Yvon Simeon, a friend of Latortue, and Finance Minister Henri Bazin, a well-known economist who faces the daunting task of helping Haiti to lose its distinction as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

There was one eyebrow-raising choice -- that of Alix Baptiste as secretary of state for Haitians living abroad. Baptiste was the No. 2 man in the Foreign Affairs Ministry during the final year of Aristide’s administration, leading some to question Latortue’s claim that the new Cabinet was completely nonpartisan.

Baptiste insisted that he was picked because of his abilities. “I was not recruited on the basis of my political affiliation,” he said. But he declined to state whether he was or had been a Lavalas member, adding that his former job as director-general of the Foreign Affairs Ministry was only an administrative post.

Justice Minister Bernard Gousse said the new government would go after those suspected of having committed human-rights abuses during Aristide’s rule, such as the bands of thugs he employed to crush opposition, but he promised to mete out justice in a careful, deliberate manner.

“We’re not out for revenge and won’t go after people without strong cases,” he said. “We don’t want trials for the sake of lynching people just because of what we think they did or because they were in the previous government.”