Haiti council fires prime minister, boosting chaos

What happened

Haiti's transitional ruling council fired interim Prime Minister Garry Conille Sunday and replaced him with Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, a businessman. Conille, a longtime civil servant, was installed in June to work with the new council to stabilize Haiti and hold the country's first elections since 2016. He called his ouster illegitimate.

Who said what

The dismissal decision was "taken outside any legal and constitutional framework," Conille told Haitians in an open letter, adding he plans to "challenge any illegal action motivated by narrow political interests that only add to the suffering of our people." Haiti's constitution allows parliament to fire a prime minister, but the country's National Assembly has been empty since early 2023. There has been no president since the unsolved assassination of Jovenel Moïse in 2021.

The nine-member council, drawn from a spectrum of Haitian political and civil groups, has "long been at odds with Conille and mired in political infighting," The Wall Street Journal said. Conille recently refused a request from the council to reshuffle his Cabinet, The New York Times said, but the "last straw appeared to be" his efforts to push out three council members accused by anti-corruption investigators last month of seeking $750,000 in bribes from a government bank director to secure his job.

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What next?

Public trust in the U.S.-backed transitional council was already "waning" as Haiti remains in the "grip of gang violence" and an increasingly "dire humanitarian crisis," The Washington Post said. The new turmoil has "raised fears" the "heavily armed gangs" will "exploit the political chaos to sow even more mayhem."