Unrest Forces Shake-Up in Haiti : 4 Government Officials Resign; Ruling Council Cut to 3

The armed forces reorganized the country’s interim government Friday after four of the six provisional council members resigned, said Council President Henry Namphy, revealing that the military is running Haiti after the downfall of the Duvalier regime.

Earlier Friday, police fired on protesters disrupting traffic with flower planters in the capital’s main boulevard.

Radio Antilles reported Friday evening that people with gunshot wounds were being taken to the General Hospital. An unidentified doctor interviewed by the radio station said several people were wounded, but did not give numbers.

Namphy announced the shake-up, said he would remain as president and named a new member of the council, giving it three members.

Who chose the council members had never been revealed before.

Namphy said on Radio National: “Because of the climate of unrest and uncertainty reigning in the country, the armed forces of Haiti decided to restructure the National Government Council after the resignation of some of its members.”

Namphy repeated the council’s promise to eventually hold elections and appealed to the population to “engage in reconstruction of the nation.”

Namphy announced the resignations of Alix Cineas and of army colonels Max Valls and Prosper Avril from what had been a six-man, civilian-military council. Another council member, Gerard Gourgue, who also served as minister of justice, resigned Thursday.

Namphy said the new three-man council consisted of himself, Col. Williams Regala and the new member, Jacques A. Francois, the minister of foreign affairs.

Francois is a career diplomat who served during the 1950s as Haiti’s ambassador to Italy, Colombia and the Organization of American States in Washington. Since then, he has been practicing law and was not associated with the Duvalier regime.

The reorganization appeared aimed at appeasing public demands for the resignation of the council’s two most unpopular members, Avril and Cineas.

The council was formed to replace President Jean-Claude Duvalier when he fled to exile in France on Feb. 7.

Demands that Avril and Cineas resign began in the first days after the council took power. Both men were close to the authoritarian Duvalier family regime that ruled this Caribbean republic for 28 years.

Radio Soleil, the Roman Catholic Church station that broadcasts in Creole, reported at 4 p.m. that 3,000 protesters marched peacefully in Jacmel, a southern coast resort area of 10,000 to 15,000 people. The protesters were demanding that three remaining members of the governing council be replaced by a civilian interim government.

It was quiet but tense in the capital as dusk fell.

Earlier, a taxi drivers’ strike was augmented by small bands of protesters who shoved large concrete flower planters onto Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard, causing major traffic snarls on the business district’s main boulevard.

Blue-uniformed police fired shots to disperse the demonstrators and clear the street.

Five People Killed

The taxi drivers were protesting the death of five people killed when soldiers fired into an angry crowd Wednesday afternoon.

Drivers of the city’s 600 colorful “tap-tap” taxis stayed off the streets for the second day Friday to protest the action taken by an off-duty army captain, who attempted to arrest a bus driver Wednesday after the driver allegedly cut him off in traffic.

The captain, run off by protesting bystanders, returned with two truckloads of soldiers. When the protesters began throwing rocks, soldiers fired into the crowd, killing five people and injuring 10, witnesses said. The death toll was confirmed by the University Hospital.

The shootings led to a bus strike Thursday that virtually paralyzed this capital city of 1 million people, making it nearly impossible to get to work or school. Police estimated that about 5,000 automobiles and trucks are registered in Haiti, a country of 6 million people who share Hispaniola island with the Dominican Republic.

Strikers erected barricades of tree stumps, old tires and garbage, closing off three of the four main streets in the capital on Thursday afternoon, but within an hour the army cleared the streets and the nightly curfew was extended four hours, from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. instead of midnight to 5 a.m., as it had been.