PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Haiti’s leader and opposition lawmakers are locked in negotiations, trying to forge a last-minute deal to resolve a standoff stalling elections in the troubled country.
President Michel Martelly and opposition officials have been embroiled in a showdown over legislative elections due in 2011. On Sunday, they again met behind closed doors at a Port-au-Prince hotel trying to end the impasse a day before Parliament is dissolved.
Martelly will rule by decree if they don’t resolve the political crisis by the end of Monday.
He was supposed to call elections in 2011 for a majority of Senate seats, the entire Chamber of Deputies and local offices. But a group of opposition senators used parliamentary procedure to prevent a vote authorizing the elections. They accuse Martelly of trying to undermine the Constitution.
