Haiti names transitional council to handle crisis

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Haiti has named the members of the transitional council expected to take over government of the Caribbean nation and try to deal with a deepening security and humanitarian crisis.

The council is set to take power once acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigns, following a pledge he made last month after violent gangs blocked his return from a trip abroad.

The nine-member council, made up of politicians, business figures and civil society leaders, will have a mandate until February 2026, during which time it is expected to appoint a new prime minister and convene Haiti’s first elections since 2016.

The council — which includes Fritz Alphonse Jean, a former central bank governor, former senate president Edgard Leblanc, and insurance businessman Laurent Saint-Cyr — will also wield limited presidential powers by majority vote.

Its biggest task will be to tackle the security crisis that has wreaked havoc in the western hemisphere’s poorest country since president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021.

Dozens of violent gangs have thrived in the absence of political leaders, and are estimated to control about 80 per cent of the capital Port-au-Prince, with more than 360,000 people displaced nationwide, according to the UN.

The violence escalated in February when an alliance of rival gangs launched a series of co-ordinated attacks while Henry was on a trip to Kenya.

Hospitals and schools have been forced to close while the airport and seaport have been shut down by gangs. Humanitarian groups have warned about the risk of famine.

Henry, a former neurosurgeon who assumed power after Moïse’s murder, has not returned to the country and said in March that he would resign once the transitional council had been set up, following pressure from the US and Caricom, the Caribbean Community trade bloc.

His government published the framework for the transitional council on Friday, without specifying who had been nominated to sit on it.

“The government was trying to impose that each member of the council complies with the constitutional requirements to become president,” said Jacky Lumarque, the rector of the private Université Quisqueya in Port-au-Prince. “This condition is unrealistic because the state institutions in charge of producing the required documents are not functioning.”

The announcement of the council members was published in the government’s official gazette on Tuesday, though it did not give a date for the body’s installation.

Judes Jonathas, a former humanitarian worker and Haitian consultant, said the installation of the council would be fraught with risk. 

“The nomination is easy, it’s something published in an official paper,” Jonathas said. “But the installation at the national palace, surrounded by gangs, is where it poses a real problem.”