PORT-AU-PRINCE, May 17, 2006 (AFP) -
Haiti’s newly elected President Rene Preval nominated on Wednesday former minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis for the post of prime minister, officials close to the president said.
Alexis, 58, served as minister of education and of youth and sports in 1998 and was a senior aide to Preval when he held the prime minister’s job from March 1999 to February 2001.
Parliamentary elections held on February 7 and April 21 produced no clear candidate for prime minister as no party or coalition secured a majority.
The parliament must ratify Preval’s choice.
An agronomist by training, Alexis helped shape Preval’s political platform and is a former dean of the faculty of agriculture and veterinary medicine at the State University of Haiti.
According to Haitian media, Alexis said last month that former president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who fled the country two years ago in the face of an armed rebellion and the loss of international support, was free to return to his country if he wanted.
Preval, once a close ally of Aristide, has distanced himself from the former president.
Preval was elected president on February 7 with 51 percent of the vote and enjoys wide support among the poor in the nation of eight million. He served as prime minister under Aristide and as president from 1996 to 2001.
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