Haiti’s transitional council moves to replace PM in contentious move

Council sets out to replace interim Prime Minister Garry Conille, marking more political turmoil and instability.

A transitional council tasked with re-establishing democratic order in Haiti has signed a decree sacking interim Prime Minister Garry Conille, in a contentious move that highlights deepening political turmoil in the Caribbean nation.

The decree, seen by The Associated Press, Reuters and AFP news agencies and set to be published on Monday, sets out to replace Conille with Alix Didier Fils-Aime, a businessman previously considered for the job.

The nine-member council, which was formed in April to try to help Haiti chart a path forward amid surging gang violence and years of instability, appointed Conille as prime minister in May.

But the council has been plagued by infighting and has long been at loggerheads with the prime minister, a longtime civil servant who previously worked with the United Nations.

The Miami Herald reported that Conille and Leslie Voltaire, who leads the council, are at odds over a cabinet reshuffling and the removal of three council members named in a bribery scandal.

Last month, anticorruption investigators accused those three council members of demanding $750,000 in bribes from a government bank director to secure his job.

The report was a significant blow to the council and is expected to further erode public trust in it.

The three members accused of bribery – Smith Augustin, Emmanuel Vertilaire and Louis Gerald Gilles – were among those to sign Sunday’s decree.

Only one member of the council, Edgard Leblanc Fils, did not sign the order.

Still, there are “divergent views” on whether the transitional council – whose members represent various political and civil society groups – has the power to remove Conille, the Miami Herald reported.

“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,” the newspaper explained.

“Haiti, however, is in the throes of a constitutional crisis where there is no Parliament and no democratically elected leader in the entire country.”

The political turmoil comes as Haiti continues to reel from widespread gang violence, with armed groups exerting control over 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s John Holman noted that a multinational, UN-backed policing mission in Haiti – deployed earlier this year and led by Kenya – “doesn’t seem to have made a dent” in the power of the armed groups.

The gangs routinely use murder, kidnappings and sexual violence in their fight for control of territory across Port-au-Prince and other parts of the country.

“It seems that the gangs are as powerful as ever right now,” Holman said.

Last month, the UN warned that nearly half of all Haitians – some 5.41 million people – were experiencing acute food insecurity as a result of the violence.

More than 700,000 people, more than half of whom are children, have been displaced from their homes, according to the International Organization for Migration.