Haitian senators took no chances in censure vote

By Jim Loney

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - The band of senators who ousted Haiti's latest government took no chances. They stayed together, ate together and even slept in the same place to keep defection or mishap from derailing their plan.

The 16 opposition senators announced a day in advance they intended to fire Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, the head of a coalition Cabinet that was supposed to bring stability to the poor Caribbean nation whose intrigues were captured in Graham Greene's novel "The Comedians."

But in Haiti's quicksand politics, replete with murky, shifting alliances, anything can happen.

"So we decided to spend the night together," said Sen. Evaliere Beauplan.

They called Alexis into a Saturday session of the Senate to defend his record in two years at the helm of a country perhaps best known for its impoverished masses and the widespread practice of voodoo.

The fact the Senate even had the temerity to demand the prime minister face a censure vote spoke volumes for Haiti's attempts in the past two years to establish democracy, after being run by ruthless military dictators and despots for most of the 200 years since a slave revolt freed the country from French rule.

Needing all 16 votes to oust Alexis, who was under fire after a week of riots and angry demonstrations over rising food prices, the senators were on guard against accident, illness or any intrigue that might have interfered.

"We didn't sleep at home. We all slept in the same place. We ate the same food to make sure no one got sick. We all went down to parliament in a convoy," Beauplan said.