Michele Pierre Louis

Haitian Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis

Haitian Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis

This recent government handout shows new Haitian Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis pictured at her office desk in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. Haiti has been gripped by a political stalemate for three months, since prime minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis was ousted on April 12 amid riots over skyrocketing food prices. Pierre-Louis is the third candidate to be submitted for the job by President Rene Preval since Alexis quit, after the previous two were rejected by the legislature. Pierre-Louis studied economics at Queens College in New York and airport management in France. Since 1995 she has headed FOKAL, a non-governmental organization financed by US billionaire George Soros. She also teaches education at a private university in Port-au-Prince. In early April, thousands of people took to the streets around Haiti in violent demonstrations against food and fuel price rises that forced UN peacekeepers to intervene. Seventy percent of Haiti's population lives on less than two dollars per day and half of its 8.5 million people are unemployed. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

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