Haiti fires Prime minister Garry Conille

Monday, 11 November, 2024 

McCreadie Andias 

Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille has been fired by the country's ruling council less than six months after he took office.

Haiti’s transitional council named Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, a former candidate for the Haitian Senate, as his replacement, according to an executive order published Sunday afternoon in the country’s official gazette, Le Moniteur.

The executive order is said to have been signed by eight of the council's nine members. 

Conille, 58, a medical doctor who previously ran UNICEF’s Latin America regional office, was hired in late May to serve as interim prime minister of Haiti. He and the country’s ruling council are supposed to pave the way for elections next year to choose a new president for the first time since 2016.

He was brought in to lead Haiti through an ongoing, gang-led security crisis.

Cornille's purge follows a political power struggle that unfolded amid a wave of kidnappings and killings.

He described his ousting as illegal, saying in a letter that it raised "serious concerns" about Haiti's future.

"This resolution, taken outside any legal and constitutional framework, raises serious concerns about its legitimacy," Conille's letter was quoted as saying.

Haiti currently has neither a president nor parliament and, according to its constitution, only the latter can sack a sitting prime minister.

Haiti’s last president was murdered in July 2021 and no elections have been held since. The prior prime minister was forced from office earlier this year by a coalition of gangs that had taken over the capital, Port-au-Prince, waging attacks on a range of targets, from police stations to prisons to hospitals.

Unable to even return home from an overseas trip, the previous prime minister, Ariel Henry, stepped down in April as killings soared and thousands of people were forced from their homes because of gang violence.

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.

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.

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.

Kenya has since deployed more than 400police officers in a Multinational security mission blessed by the UN and US with an aim of restoring peace,with more set to join them in November.