Top Haitian lawmakers voice support for new leader

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Parliamentary leaders said on Monday Prime Minister-designate Ericq Pierre was a "technician" with the right experience to lead Haiti's new government after violent protests triggered by rising food prices in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Senate leader Kelly Bastien said Pierre, who was nominated by President Rene Preval on Sunday, had the expertise to lead a broad-based effort to meet the economic and social challenges Haiti faces.

"Ericq Pierre might not have been the right man to solve political problems because he is not a politician," Bastien told Reuters on Monday. "But the urgent priority is to address economic and social problems and Pierre is the right man to do so as a non-politically biased technician," he said.

Pierre, a 63-year-old agronomist and agricultural economist, has served as an Inter-American Development Bank adviser for Haiti and Argentina.

He was picked by Preval to succeed former Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, who was dismissed on April 12 in a vote by lawmakers who blamed him for failing to boost food production and reduce the cost of living.

Alexis' departure followed a week of riots and looting over food prices in the poorest nation in the Americas. The violence took at least six lives.

Public unrest has erupted in several countries as bad weather, competition with biofuels, market speculation and rising demand in Asia send the price of many staple foods skyrocketing.

The president of the lower house of parliament, Pierre Eric Jean-Jacques, said he immediately agreed when Preval first told him he was considering Pierre as Alexis' replacement on Sunday. The appointment must still be ratified by parliament.

"My answer was immediately yes, because I know Ericq Pierre as a patriot, an honest and competent technician," Jean-Jacques told Reuters.

"Now that we, as leaders of parliament, have given our OK for Ericq Pierre, we will work at convincing other colleagues that he is he is right man," he added.

Some lawmakers have expressed reservations about Pierre, however, saying his background suggested he might adhere blindly to "neo-liberal" policies laid down by the International Monetary Fund, which they see as inappropriate for Haiti's weak economy.

"We don't want to judge Ericq in advance, but we know he is part of neo-liberalism machinery and could be tempted to fully comply with IMF injunctions," said lawmaker Jean Beauvoir Dorson of the lower chamber.

Preval, who took office in 2006, also served as president from 1996 to 2001, and is the only elected Haitian leader to serve a full term and successfully hand over power to a democratically elected successor.

In his first term, it took Preval 21 months to put a new government in place after then-Prime Minister Rosny Smarth resigned in June 1997.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Eric Walsh)