Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis is the new prime minister of Haiti. On Thursday, her nomination was ratified by the Senate. The vote, Le Nouvelliste reports, was 12 in favour, 5 abstentions and none against.

However, all is not necessarily rosy in the prime ministerial appointment garden. Mme Pierre-Louis now has to present her declaration of general policy to both houses. Art. 158 of the 1987 constitution states: “With the approval of the President, the Prime Minister shall choose the members of his Cabinet of Ministers and shall go before Parliament to obtain a vote of confidence on his declaration of general policy. The vote shall be taken in open ballot, and an absolute majority of both Houses is required.”

Given the Senate has 30 seats, even though only 17 senators are currently in office, Mme Pierre-Louis will require the support of 16 of them. So, never mind whether the Chamber of Deputies approves the declaration, it may still prove difficult for her to stay in office.

In Haiti the the nomination of the prime minister-designate, Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, has been ratified by the Chamber of Deputies. The vote, in the end, was overwhelming (60 in favour, one against and 20 abstentions – possibly the expectation of future government benefits was a motivation behind the party discipline on this occasion).

The nomination of Ms Pierre-Louis must now be ratified by the Senate if she is to take office. However, all Haitian newspapers report that this will be no easy matter. Recall that the Senate is very small with, I believe, only 30 members. The party system is extremely fragmented anyway and the small number of Senators tends to make them particularly independent-minded. Also, the Senate has lost a portion of its members, because their terms have come to an end and a new election has not yet been held. In addition, a leading Senator is currently under investigation for a criminal offence. This makes the ratification process difficult to predict. What is more, there is the inevitable politicking over governmental office. The proposed government will include representatives of a number of different parties and agreement over the coalition and the benefits that would ensue seemed to be a reason for the overwhelming vote in the Chamber of Deputies. However, other parties in Senate may want their share of the cake and may block an appointment if they feel they are missing out.

Recall that in Haiti two prime ministerial nominees have already been rejected since the government of Jacques-Édouard Alexis was dismissed by the Senate in early April. The current nominee is Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis.

As per the constitution, Ms Pierre-Louis has submitted her credentials to the lower house. The Assembly will vote on the prime minister tomorrow. I will report on what happens. President Préval seems to have been lobbying hard to have Ms Pierre-Louis accepted. However, apart from any other issues, her nomination has been hampered by rumours that she is homosexual. Le Nouvelliste is reporting that, even if she is accepted by the Assembly, a number of senators have stated that they will not support her for this reason.

In the meantime, Haiti’s semi-presidential system is coming under attack. For me, it is not a question of semi-presidentialism to blame (and, contrary to what many people probably assume, I am not particularly in favour of semi-presidentialism – I just really like studying it). Instead, in this case, governmental instability seems to be more of a question of a fractionalised party system where there seems to be little party discipline, as well as a constitution that makes the PM responsible to both houses, plus a PM ratification procedure that requires the agreement of not just both houses but also, in effect, of committees in both houses. There are plenty of semi-presidential countries that do not require dual responsibility and plenty where the process of appointing the PM is much simpler. Haiti may be suffering under semi-presidentialism. However, it may not be semi-presidentialism per se that is the problem, but some of the specific procedures that Haiti adopted in its 1987 constitution.

In Haiti, Le Nouvelliste reports that President Préval has nominated another prime ministerial candidate. This time it is Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis.

The Chamber of Deputies has begun the process of getting together the necessary documents for Mme Pierre-Louis’s ratification.

Haitiprogrès reports that Mme Pierre-Louis caused a certain sensation when she mentioned in an interview after her nomination that George Soros had encouraged her to try to take up the post. Mme Pierre-Louis works for an NGO that is funded by the Soros Foundation. For some, this is a sign that she has organisational abilities. For others, there is a worry that Mr Soros may wish to influence events in Haiti.

In Haiti, Robert Manuel, the now former prime minister-designate, has had his nomination rejected by the lower House. The House appointment’s committee had recommended that M. Manuel be rejected because he was constitutionally “ineligible”. The House accepted the committee’s recommendation by a vote of 57-22. Representatives from President Préval’s Lespwa movement were instrumental in the rejection.

Article 157 (5) of the 1987 Haitian constitution states that the PM must have “resided in the country for five (5) consecutive years”. Alterpresse reports that the committee recommended M. Manuel’s rejection because for a period in the 1980s he fled the country following the outbreak of violence. He has since been back for more than five years. However, the clause seems to have been interpreted – fairly liberally – to mean that there was a time when he was not resident in Haiti for five consecutive years.

Given there is no Constitutional Court in Haiti, the interpretation of the constitution is left to political actors and their various interests.

A couple of weeks ago I envisaged only a couple of postings on Haiti, but there have already been more than that and current events suggest there may be quite a few more still to come.

According to Le Monde, President Préval’s nomination as prime minister, Ericq Pierre, has been rejected by the Chamber of Deputies. M. Pierre’s nomination was approved by the Senate on 7 May. However, he was not so fortunate when it came to the lower house. Haiti en Marche reports that M. Pierre’s nomination was rejected by 51 to 35 with 9 abstentions.

The official reason was that M. Pierre’s personal details were not in order – his identity cards showed him as both Ericq Pierre and Pierre Ericq. A number of years ago, his nomination had been rejected because the birth details of his grandparents and great-grandparents could not be validated. These problems are apparently due to the absence of certain records in the Haitian system, but they are enough for M. Pierre’s prime ministerial ambitions to have been stymied twice.

The party situation in Haiti is complex, but it has been noted in a number of Haitian newspapers that L’Espoir (LESPWA), the party close to the President Préval, refused to vote for M. Pierre. This raises the issue of whether the president ever wanted or expected M. Pierre’s nomination to be ratified and, if so, why not? However, Haiti en Marche puts forward the theory that the Chamber of Deputies wanted to get its own back on the Senate. A few weeks prior to the dismissal by the Senate of the previous prime minister, the Chamber of Deputies had overwhelmingly voted in favour of him during a confidence vote. Given M. Pierre had just been ratified by the Senate, Haiti en Marche theorises that a game of tit-for-tat was being played. Alternatively, party discipline in Haiti may have, in effect, completely broken down, which, if so, does not bode well for the appointment of a new prime minister any time soon.

Presumably one of the reasons why we study semi-presidentialism is so that we can try to learn some general rules about the ways in which particular institutions affect political life. Obviously, we do not want to make any such generalisations on the basis of evidence from one case, but it is difficult to avoid the temptation when it comes to the case of Haiti.

I reported the dismissal of Prime Minister Alexis a while ago. I also reported President Préval’s nomination of a new prime ministerial candidate, Ericq Pierre. Bearing in mind that it took nearly 18 months to appoint a prime minister from 1997-99, it is not difficult to see why this is case on the basis of M. Pierre’s current experience and some of the problems are associated with Haiti’s institutional structures.

The president’s prime ministerial nomination has to be sent to both chambers of the legislature for ratification. While there is inevitably a lot of politicking behind any such appointment in any county, Le Nouvelliste is reporting that some Senators are questioning M. Pierre’s Haitian origins, seemingly as a pretext for his rejection. It seems as if M. Pierre has not furnished the birth certificates of his grandparents as part as part of the nomination dossier that the Senate is currently discussing. Yet the Haitian constitution requires a prime ministerial candidate to be of Haitian and for his parents and grandparents to be Haitian too. So, M. Pierre’s ratification may be denied on these constitutional grounds.

Let us just assume this is a delaying tactic, perhaps because the mandate of a number of Senators is due to end in a couple of days. When it does, there will have to be new elections and it is not clear to me whether the remaining senators can make a decision about M. Pierre’s appointment prior to the convening of the new Senate. So, the delay may be quite considerable. Anyway, even if the Senate ratifies M. Pierre in the next couple of days, the same process has to be completed by the National Assembly. Again, the prime minister’s dossier, with details of his nationality, his financial propriety and so forth, will be the subject of intense scrutiny. Finally, even if (when?) M. Pierre’s appointment has been ratified by both houses, then he has to submit a declaration of general policy to both houses as well. In order for him to remain in office, this will have to be approved by both chambers, which will be no mean feat.

The bottom line is that the constitution of Haiti provides a large number of veto points when it comes to appointing a new prime minister. Given the party system is fractionalised and individual parties are factionalised, this makes it very difficult to make an appointment. Also, presumably, the appointee will only be approved if s/he has made promises to a number of groups. Some of these promises may be contradictory. They are all also likely to involve the distribution of resources that the Haitian government does not have in abundance. So, not only is appointment difficult, but subsequently the appointee is likely to be a hostage to parliamentary fortune because of the nature of the appointment process.

At the risk of generalising from one case, this does not seem to me to be the best type of institutional design for a new democracy. While the presence of many veto points is almost certainly motivated by a desire to prevent autocracy, there is the potential for the stalemate and/or crisis caused by the veto points to lead to the very thing that it is trying to prevent, namely the autocratic seizure of power as a way of reasserting political authority.

President Préval has nominated Ericq Pierre as prime minister. M. Pierre is an agronomist who is currently Haiti’s councillor at the Interamerican Development Bank.

Haiti Info reports that President Préval made the announcement on Suday after a meeting with the president of the Chamber of Deputies. This suggests that M. Pierre’s nomination is likely to be ratified. This likelihood is increased by the statement that the Lavalas party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide will support M. Pierre’s nomination. However, M. Pierre was nominated as prime minister in 1999, but his nomination was never ratified. Moreover, his nomination has to be approved by both houses of the legislature, which makes the situation very difficult.

Various Haitian newspapers are reporting that President Préval is under pressure to nominate a prime minister as soon as possible.

Radio Kiskeya reports that he has received a ‘deadline’ of the end of week from the 16 senators whose votes resulted in the dismissal of the prime minister just over a week ago. It is also reported by Haiti progrès that that he is under pressure to make an appointment from the international donor community who want to ensure that there is no leadership gap.

There seems to be pressure on President Préval to appoint a non-partisan prime minister. In part, this is because there is no clear party or coalition majority in either house of the legislature. However, Radio Kiskeya is reporting a rumour that President Préval is deliberately taking his time over the appointment because the mandates of eight of the 16 opposition senators expire on 9 May. If he can wait until then, he may end with more room for manoeuvre in terms of the appointment.

Currently, Haiti is experiencing what Skach calls divided minority government. In other words, neither the president nor the prime minister has a parliamentary majority. Skach associates this form of government with democratic breakdown, citing the example of the Weimar Republic and, more recently, Russia. Therefore, the stakes appear to be high in Haiti at the moment.