A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Haiti's transitional government was supposed to create stability. It has not. The country's chaos has only increased. Haiti's international airport shut down yesterday after gangs opened fire on a commercial flight trying to land. Also yesterday, the transitional government installed a new interim prime minister after firing the previous one. For more on this, we turn to freelance journalist Harold Isaac. He joins us now from Port-au-Prince. Harold, so that Spirit Airlines flight that tried to land yesterday, what happened? Is everyone OK?
HAROLD ISAAC: So as the Spirit Airlines, the 951, was attempting to land in Port-au-Prince, it got struck by gunshots and had to abort the landing and reroute to Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So do you know if anyone was hit, or it just hit the plane?
ISAAC: So, as per reports, the only injury reported was a flight attendant that got grazed by a bullet.
MARTÍNEZ: Wow. All right. Tell us about this new prime minister that was also sworn in on Monday, because his appointment, from what I understand, was an attempt to bring some peace to Haiti.
ISAAC: It's been a rocky time in Haiti in the past few weeks, at least politically, with an internal feud between the two branches of the executive that were fighting over pretty much who has the control of the executive branch. And what happened is the then-Prime Minister Garry Conille got sacked in favor of businessmen and political neophyte Alix Didier Fils-Aime, who was tapped by the transitional council to take over Garry Conille.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, I'd like to get your reaction, Harold, to something that we heard yesterday on All Things Considered. NPR's Eyder Peralta spoke with Robert Fatton, who studies Haiti at the University of Virginia. Let's hear that.
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ROBERT FATTON: After each crisis, I always thought that the country had reached bottom and that some sense would come out of that, sense that things were really falling apart, but that does not happen. So I don't see why this would be any different, unfortunately.
MARTÍNEZ: I mean, you're there, Harold. I mean, do you see any reason for Haiti to be optimistic right now, I mean, a sense that something or anything at all could get better?
ISAAC: Honestly, it is a shared sentiment by many, many people today, as we've been six months into that new phase of the transition and nothing has yet to yield, especially on the security front and on the humanitarian front, where you have over 700,000 people that are displaced. You have a countless amount of people that have been murdered, and half of the population is facing famine-like conditions today.
MARTÍNEZ: One more thing. How do the gangs view the transitional council's decision to fire the old prime minister and pick a new one?
ISAAC: Well, sadly, they've protested that measure from the transitional council essentially by wreaking havoc into the capital yesterday, which led to the incident with the airline, the Spirit Airline that was trying to land in Port-au-Prince.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. Harold Isaac is a freelance reporter based in Port-au-Prince. Harold, thank you very much.
ISAAC: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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