Above: Regine Godefroy (CJ Photo)
By Alexander Britell
Haiti’s Cabinet saw its second high-profile departure in as many days Thursday, as Regine Godefroy, the country’s Minister of Communication, left the government.
Godefroy issued a letter to Haiti Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe explaining her resignation on Thursday; a source familiar with the situation told Caribbean Journal that the Minister had been “asked to leave” the government.
In the letter to Lamothe, Godefroy said her “journey in the industry has been the opportunity for me to serve my country and the Haitian state,” calling the post “the opportunity to manage an institution found in a state of total dilapidation and re-established in its entirety in a short time.”
Godefroy had been serving as Minister of Communication since she took over for Ady Jean Gardy in a Cabinet reshuffle by Lamothe in January.
The former Minister’s letter criticized the the “minimum of available resources,” at the Ministry, calling it “virtually without budget.”
“I fought internal and external adversity to define a clear vision, set precise objectives and straighten out the administration for the sole purpose of creating cohesion and harmony in the dissemination of government action,” she wrote in the letter.
While the Ministry had been regularly updating its social media for much of the period of Godefroy’s tenure, the Ministry’s Facebook page, its main avenue of communication, was free of posts from March 20 to March 31, perhaps presaging the departure.
The Minister had professed broad goals for improving the way Haiti’s various Ministries distributed information, but those changes will now have to wait.
She said that, despite just three months in office, there had been a “new breath of communicative dynamism,” with a “palpable” enthusiasm for communication in the government.
“But given the obvious overlap and actions and the adversity of creating this cohesion in promoting government action, I am unable to perform my duty with rigour, honour and integrity,” she wrote. “I find myself obliged to submit my resignation, effective immediately”
The news comes one day after Finance Minister Marie Carmelle Jean-Marie resigned.