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Haitian Police Chief Battles Widespread Corruption

As Haiti's president-elect Rene Preval takes power, the man who must try to keep order during this transition is considered a reformer and rarely grants access to Western media. Mario Andresol is the recently appointed chief of the Haitian National Police.

Andresol has started a purge of the force. At considerable risk, he has arrested dozens of officers he says are involved in drug trafficking, organized kidnapping rings and politically motivated killings. His efforts to clean up the police force have made him a symbol of reform.

"The system is corrupted," Andresol says. "The system is spoiled. You cannot have a new government in the same system as we have now. Unfortunately, everyone only thinks about elections and how to become president. And yet at the same time, our system that we have now, the establishment, is spoiled, and corrupt."

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Lorne Matalon is the 2016-2017 Journalism Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and a Vermont resident. Prior to his fellowship, he was the Texas correspondent for the Fronteras Desk, a collaboration of NPR member stations focused on the Mexico-US border and Latin America. He is currently a contributor to CBC Radio and files regularly for Marketplace.
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