Haiti’s presidential council dissolves after rocky tenure as unelected US-backed ruler remains

Haiti’s pres­i­den­tial coun­cil stepped down on Sat­ur­day af­ter al­most two years of tu­mul­tuous rule along­side a U.S.-backed prime min­is­ter, who is ex­pect­ed to re­main in pow­er as the coun­try pre­pares for the first gen­er­al elec­tions in a decade.

Days be­fore the nine-mem­ber coun­cil was dis­solved, the U.S. de­ployed a war­ship and two U.S. Coast Guard boats to wa­ters near Haiti’s cap­i­tal, where gangs con­trol 90% of Port-au-Prince.

“The naval pres­ence ap­pears to pro­vide the lat­est proof of Wash­ing­ton’s will­ing­ness to use the threat of force to shape pol­i­tics in the West­ern Hemi­sphere,” said Diego Da Rin, an an­a­lyst with the In­ter­na­tion­al Cri­sis Group.