Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille was fired by the country’s ruling council less than six months after he took office.
An executive order, signed by eight of the council’s nine members, named businessman and former Haiti Senate candidate Alix Didier Fils-Aime as Conille’s replacement.
Conille, a former United Nations official, was brought in to lead Haiti through an ongoing, gang-led security crisis and had been expected to help pave the way for the country’s first presidential elections since 2016.
He described his ousting as illegal, saying in a letter that it raised “serious concerns” about Haiti’s future.
Haiti currently has neither a president nor parliament and, according to its constitution, only the latter can sack a sitting prime minister.
Conille was sworn in on 3 June.
“This resolution, taken outside any legal and constitutional framework, raises serious concerns about its legitimacy,” Conille’s letter was quoted as saying.
The move will have reverberations at both the U.N., where there is currently a draft resolution for the Security Council to vote on deploying a U.N. peacekeeping operation to Haiti to replace the multinational security force.
Officials in Washington, who have publicly supported Conille and his government, have for weeks been calling on members of the transitional council to focus on Haiti’s pressing concerns.
On Friday, State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who is trying to get more security assistance to Haiti, spoke with Guterres about the security situation in Haiti and underscored the gains made by the multinational mission led by Kenya.
The day before the call with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Blinken also spoke with President William Ruto, who is currently preparing to send an additional 600 police officers to Haiti to join the 416 already there from Kenya, Jamaica, Belize and The Bahamas.
“In the call Blinken thanked Ruto for Kenya’s continued leadership of the mission “as it works with its Haitian counterparts to restore peace and security to the Haitian people,” Miller said.
Kenya leads the mission and has already secured a number of places where gangs occupied.
Conille was in Kenya in October to push for deployment of more police officers to his country.
The council reportedly met with the national security forces in which leaders were informed of changes, and decided among themselves a replacement for Conille.
The decision came after hours of discussions and political wrangling Friday, and after weeks of disagreement between the prime minister and Leslie Voltaire, the president of the nine-member council, which after taking the leadership reins last month demanded a cabinet reshuffle that Conille resisted.
Haiti’s transitional presidential council (TPC) was created in April after Ariel Henry, Conille’s predecessor, was forced from office by a network of gangs that had taken over parts of the capital Port-au-Prince.
Henry left Haiti to attend a summit in Guyana on 25 February 2024 and gang members subsequently seized the city’s international airport, preventing him from returning.
The TPC was tasked with restoring democratic order to the Caribbean country, where such violence is rife.
More than 3,600 people have been killed in Haiti since January and more than 500,000 have had to leave their homes, according to the UN, which describes Haiti as being one of the poorest countries in the world.
Two million Haitians currently face emergency levels of hunger, UN data shows, while almost half the population “do not have enough to eat”.
One of the country’s most powerful gang leaders, Jimmy Chérizier, also known as Barbecue, previously said he would be prepared to end the violence if armed groups were allowed to be involved in talks to establish a new government.
Presidential elections were last held in Haiti eight years ago, when Jovenel Moïse of the Tèt Kale party was elected.
Since his murder in July 2021, the post of president has been vacant.
Gangs in Haiti have capitalised on the power vacuum and expanded their control over swathes of the country, which has effectively been rendered lawless in places.
Last month, it was reported that hundreds of police officers had been deployed to Haiti from Kenya, with hundreds more set to join them.
On Friday, the U.N. Human Rights Office in Port-au-Prince said nearly 4,900 people have been killed between January and September.
Kenyan police are in Haiti to help stabilize the country from gangs. There are 400 police officers in Haiti and have been joined by pockets others from Bahamas, Jamaica and Belize.
More than 600 others are set to be sent to Haiti by end of November.
