(Washington) Garry Conille says he did not hesitate to accept the post of prime minister. Despite an “extremely complex” situation, particularly due to gang violence, he promised action and “transparency” to the population, exasperated by decades of instability, on Tuesday.
This doctor by training, former regional director for UNICEF, was visiting Washington this week. There he spoke with the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken about the multinational force led by Kenya, a first contingent of which arrived on June 25 in Haiti to support the police against armed gangs.
PHOTO KEVIN MOHATT, REUTERS
On the left, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Haiti’s new interim government inherited an “extremely difficult” situation, Conille said, with a capital 80 percent in the hands of gangs, nearly “600,000 displaced people, infrastructure that practically no longer exists, ministries that no longer have offices, staff that are very demobilized, a police force that needs to be reinforced.”
But he welcomed the “understanding” that allowed the formation of transitional authorities after the resignation of the controversial former prime minister Ariel Henry: a transitional presidential council born of arduous negotiations, but which ended up appointing a government responsible for restoring security and leading the country towards elections – the last ones date back to 2016.
“Haitian responsibility”
A second contingent of the multinational mission should arrive “very quickly”, “in the coming weeks”, according to Mr. Conille, who did not wish to say more about the expected numbers “for security reasons”.
But to reassure the population, scalded by the memory of past foreign interventions, he insisted that the role of this force was “to support the police”.
“The responsibility to restore security is first and foremost a Haitian responsibility,” insisted Garry Conille, who was already prime minister for a short period in 2011-2012.
The mission “does not replace the police. It is really an immediate support that gives us time to strengthen the capacity of the police and the army so that these two institutions can effectively play their role,” he explained.
“Everything that is planned and designed will be designed and prepared by the Haitian authorities,” in consultation with the multinational force, he said.
And “we have set up a task force between the police and the army which is currently considering concrete strategies to be able to move forward on security issues,” he continued.
Trust
The Prime Minister said he understood that the population was “impatient” to see progress on the ground.
But “we must put in place the instruments we need to be able to move forward in a prudent manner, obviously protecting our officers, but in a resolute and deliberate manner so that, in a not too distant time, we can first recover the territories that we have [perdus] And […] “probably at the same time, to ensure that we definitively resolve the gang problem,” he said.
And “in this kind of situation, transparency is our greatest ally,” he said. The Haitian population, “who historically have lost confidence in their institutions,” “are watching us closely,” they want to see “how these different interventions will improve their living conditions.”
That is why “we will communicate regularly. We will tell her very clearly what we can achieve. We will also share with her when the experiments do not work out,” said Mr. Conille.
Regarding the elections, which according to the authorities’ roadmap must be held before February 7, 2026, the Prime Minister said that they were “the very definition of the success of the transition.”
The presidential council is “actively working” on the appointment of members of the Provisional Electoral Council, according to Mr. Conille.
“We are already putting in place the system and the instruments needed to be able to move forward quickly,” he said.