Port-au-Prince: Haitian Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant resigned Saturday during a session in the lower house of the Parliament in which he was to have faced a no-confidence vote. The session was held after violent protests erupted last weekend over fuel-price hikes, which the government later scrapped, Efe reported. Once the Prime Minister’s resignation was announced, the speaker of the lower house, Gary Bodeau, posted a message on Twitter asking President Jovenel Moise “to choose a Prime Minister by general consent, bearing in mind the hopes of all sectors of national life.” Saturday morning, before the session got underway, Bodeau had already expressed in a statement his wish that Lafontant would resign “for the good of the country”. Because of the parliamentary session, which has sparked great expectations, and following the disturbances last weekend, the authorities deployed a strong police presence around the Haitian capital, especially outside the Parliament, the target of another protest called by the opposition. The Prime Minister’s performance has been questioned for some time, and a few days before the violence broke out he was called by legislators to discuss where he was taking his government. He never showed up for that session.
