Haiti’s presidential council fires prime minister, names businessman in controversial move

Haiti’s ruling presidential council has fired Prime Minister Garry Conille after barely six months and named businessman Didier Fils-Aimé to replace him in an act that some political leaders say is illegal.

This marks the second time in a dozen years that Conille, 58, a career civil servant and development expert with the United Nations, has been forced from the top government job in Haiti.

In 2012, he was forced to step down by then-President Michel Martelly after only four months in office.

This time the pressure is coming from the nine-member Transitional Presidential Council currently being led by Leslie Voltaire, an urban planner and the representative of the party Fanmi Lavalas.

An executive order by the council was published in the country’s official gazette, le Moniteur, on Sunday afternoon naming Fils-Aimé, a Port-au-Prince entrepreneur, as his replacement. Eight out the nine council members signed the order. Former Sen. Edgard Leblanc Fils, who recently headed the council, did not sign.

Fils-Aimé, 52, who ran an unsuccessful 2015 campaign to join the Senate and is a former president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Haiti, was abroad when his name was being considered on Friday and Saturday. He quickly returned to Haiti on Sunday morning from an overseas trip and after landing in Port-au-Prince was picked up at the airport by a police and diplomatic service escort.

His swearing-in could come as early as Monday morning, prompting a situation where an already politically unstable Haiti could find itself with not just nine presidents but two prime ministers if Conille opts not to relinquish power.

In a letter dated Sunday to Ronald Saint-Jean, the director of the national press, Conille warned that only the government has the right to order the publication of any official acts and the publication of a resolution putting the end to the prime minister’s function in the government’s official journal “is illegal.”

“Considering that the publication of official acts in the official journal, Le Moniteur, is the responsibility of the Government … I, Garry Conille, Prime Minister, enjoin you not to publish the resolution taken by the Presidential Transition Council to terminate the functions of the Prime Minister,” Conille said in the signed letter.

On Sunday, several sectors that had named people to the presidential council as part of a political accord worked out with the U.S. and the Caribbean community were working on issuing a statement criticizing the move, while also showing support for Conille and his government, two people involved in the process told the Miami Herald.

Constitutionally, only the Haitian Parliament can fire a prime minister, and presidents in the past have done so through political maneuvering by getting supporters in one of the two chambers of government. Haiti, however, is in the throes of a constitutional crisis where there is no Parliament and no democratically elected leader in the entire country.

This has led to divergent views about whether the council, which was put in place to help restore security and oversee the transition back to elections, can fire the prime minister, who runs the day-to-day operations of the government and usually answers to a parliament.

Conille was appointed by the council in May after its seven voting members and two observers considered several applicants, which also included Fils-Aimé, for the job. By June, Conille had put in place a new cabinet. But since then he has struggled to get along with much of the council, whose members represent parties preparing to go into the next election.

Though each side blames the other for the lack of progress in Haiti, the council and the prime minister have failed to make significant inroads in the country’s deepening humanitarian, economic and security challenges. A wave of gang violence has more Haitians facing famine, thousands forced into displacement camps and and increasing number of neighborhoods falling under gang control despite the presence of an armed international force in the country.

The latest crisis has been brewing for weeks, with members of the transitional council failing to heed calls by the Biden administration to end the political infighting. The tensions finally hit a peak Thursday and Friday after an attempt by the Organization of American States to broker talks between Conille and Voltaire went nowhere.

The two men have been at odds for weeks now over two central issues: a reshuffling of the cabinet and the removal of three members of the presidential council named in a bank bribery scandal. The division has led to a stalemate in which some members of the council had refused to meet with Conille, who had been resisting the reshuffle because it turns over control of key government ministries, if not all, to the presidency and political parties.

Conille had issued his own demands, beginning with the removal of the three council members under criminal investigation over the bribery allegations.

The latest crisis could not have come at a worse time for Haiti, where thousands of people continue to be forced out of their homes by armed gangs and at least 4,900 have already died due to the violence. The Biden administration, which has been a backer of both the transition and the U.N. authorized multinational security force led by Kenya, is in itself a transition after former president Donald Trump won the White House.

The change in U.S. administrations has meant that any future support for Haiti’s security challenges remains unclear. Key Republican lawmakers in Congress earlier this year opposed State Department funding for the Kenya-led mission, which forced Biden to use executive authority to get the money and equipment needed for the force’s deployment. In the past Trump has shown he is not a supporter of the U.N., and some people expected to have an influential role in his administration share that view.

In the meantime, efforts to raise between $400 million and $600 million to fund the security mission, which was recently renewed by the U.N. Security Council for a year, have fallen short.

Martin Kimani, Kenya’s former ambassador the U.S. who led the effort to get his East African nation involved in assisting Haiti following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, told the Herald that he is “dismayed by recent political moves that disrupt this essential path.”

“The world needs to see a Haiti that upholds democratic principles, stability and unity,” Kimani said. “It’s essential that Haitian leaders understand how their choices impact the international response, especially as countries weigh their commitment and as funding remains uncertain.”