by Kim Ives

Haiti’s Senate dismissed Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis on Friday, Oct. 30, 2009 at half past midnight. The vote came after a raucous debate that began at about 1:00 p.m. the day before. Senators opposed to Pierre-Louis’ dismissal – Rudy Hériveaux, Youri Latortue, Evaliere Beauplan, Edmonde Supplice Beauzile and Andris Riché, among others – stormed out of the Senate chamber. The remaining senators voted to remove the Pierre-Louis’ government by a vote of 18 in favor with one abstention. Most of the remaining 10 senators claim that the vote was “illegal” and plagued by procedural irregularities.

The campaign to remove Pierre-Louis’ government was mounted quickly. Sen. Jean Hector Anacacis, a leader in President René Préval’s Lespwa coalition, told the Miami Herald that a group of senators held “three days of meetings at a hotel near the palace” and then decided to summon the Prime Minister for a no-confidence vote.

“We are the ones on the ground who hear the people’s cry, who hear them criticizing us, the government, saying nothing has been done,” Anacasis said. “We have to replace the woman.”

Most of the Senator’s leading the charge were from Lespwa, prompting suspicion that the move to oust Pierre-Louis originated with Préval himself.

After the Senate issued its summons and word of the impending ouster spread through alarmed diplomatic circles, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Préval on Oct. 23. A State Department spokeswoman would not give details of the call but told the Associated Press: “We have made it known to the Haitian government that the perception of instability could be very damaging to Haiti at this time.”

Clearly, the U.S. and Europe liked working with Pierre-Louis, formerly the head of a large NGO heavily funded by billionaire financier George Soros. “Clinton spoke of her concerns and reiterated U.S. support for Pierre-Louis, according to several sources privy to the conversation,” the Herald reported. “Préval, in turn, told Clinton that he was not behind the move to oust Pierre-Louis and has no control over the lawmakers.”

But many observers think that Préval feared Pierre-Louis was beginning to supplant him as the Haitian leader to whom the “international community” was turning to have their agenda carried out.

“Préval was threatened by the growing power and connections of Pierre-Louis, particularly after the visits of [U.N. Special Envoy] Bill Clinton,” said Mario Joseph, Haiti’s foremost human rights lawyer with the International Lawyers Office (BAI). “She was becoming the darling of the donors, who called her capable, and I think he felt she was getting too big for her britches.”

Furthermore, Pierre-Louis may have been an obstacle for the political agenda Préval is trying to push through Parliament and with elections before he leaves office in February 2011, Joseph speculated.

The ousting senators, including Anacacis, Yvon Buissereth, Wencesclass Lambert, and Joseph John Joel, played on popular anger over the lack of transparency in the spending of $197 million taken from Venezuela’s PetroCaribe fund for Haiti last autumn after four storms devastated the country.

“Prime Minister Pierre-Louis proved she did not have the capacity nor the leadership to meet the population’s expectations and satisfy its basic needs,” said Lespwa Sen. Joseph Lambert. “She doesn’t have social and economic policies. It’s the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank that are making economic decisions.”

The Lespwa senators made it known before the Oct. 29 session that they would vote Pierre-Louis out. “She is like an animal being led to the slaughterhouse,” said Lambert, who also declared he would resign if she were not removed.

Pierre-Louis, however, did not attend the session, responding to the summons with an Oct. 28 letter to Senate president Kely Bastien. Saying the senators “lacked elegance,” she touted her government’s accomplishment in finding international funding during her 14 months in office and concluded that “my government decides not to participate in this hearing,” saying she would leave her post with her “head high.” She proposed two national and one international audit of her government’s books.

On Oct. 30, Préval nominated Pierre-Louis’ Planning Minister, Jean Max Bellerive, to be Prime Minister. He is a veteran of previous Préval governments and of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s second coup-shortened administration. Senate president Kely Bastien predicted that Bellerive, whom both houses of the Parliament must approve, would be installed in office before Nov. 18, the 206th anniversary of the Battle of Vertieres, where Haitians won their independence from France.

“The ouster of the Pierre-Louis government does not signify any change in political or economic policy,” writes Haiti Liberté political analyst Hervé Jean Michel. “The new government will be formed by the Lespwa majority and will pursue, without a doubt, a neoliberal line.”

Haiti’s masses greeted Pierre-Louis’ ouster with indifference. She was viewed as an Aristide opponent for signing a petition of the Collective Non! in 2003 which called for a boycott of Haiti’s bicentennial celebration, presided over by Aristide, on Jan. 1, 2004.