Prime Minister Rosny Smarth resigns and leaves the state headless

Rosny Smarth was born at Cavaillon on 19 October 1940, an agronomist trained in Chile who had worked on Salvador Allende’s land reform. Rene Preval named him prime minister on 27 February 1996. On 9 June 1997 he resigned, broken by the fight over the fraudulent April elections and by his split with Preval. He stayed on as caretaker until 20 October. After him Haiti went twenty-one months with no head of government at all. Smarth died on 15 January 2025.