Former Haiti PM Michel dies

(Jamaica Gleaner) Former Haitian prime minister Smarck Michel has died. He was 75.

Smarck Michel

Mr Michel, a businessman, served for almost a year as Haiti’s prime minister in the mid-1990s. He was appointed prime minister in 1994, one month after Jean Bertrand Aristide resumed the presidency after three years in exile.

But Mr Michel resigned almost a year later over opposition to his economic reforms, which advocated a privatization plan that was unpopular with Haiti’s poor majority.

After his brief stint in politics, Mr Michel returned full-time to the family grocery store until he closed it in 2010 and retired.