Above: a rendering of the project

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Haiti has laid the first stone on a new planned Parliament building in Port-au-Prince.

The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by Haiti Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe and other Haitian government officials and diplomats.

Haiti’s previous Parliament building was destroyed during the earthquake in January 2010. Since that time, Haiti’s lawmakers have been meeting in provisional space.

In a statement, Lamothe said his administration sought to “provide the country with modern public buildings to strengthen republican institutions and to improve the image of the state.”

The move comes less than a month after demolition was completed on Haiti’s National Palace.

A spokesperson for Sean Penn’s J/P HRO charity, which had been handling the demolition process, told Caribbean Journal that it had been completed Dec. 10.