(CNN) — The transitional council charged with electing Haiti’s next leaders named one of its members president and proposed a new interim prime minister, amid efforts to control gang violence in the Caribbean nation.
The council, charged with paving the way for holding elections and addressing the country’s deteriorating security situation, on Tuesday named Edgard Leblanc Fils president and proposed former Sports Minister Fritz Bélizaire as the new interim prime minister.
The nine-member Council, sworn in at the National Palace last week, consists of seven voting members and was created with the help of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). He has been given the responsibility of appointing a new prime minister and a new cabinet.
The committee will exercise certain presidential powers until the inauguration of a new elected president, which must take place no later than February 7, 2026.
The country’s former Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, resigned last week at the time of the Council’s inauguration, and former Finance Minister Michael Patrick Boisvert has been filling the role on a temporary basis.
Still ahead are the tasks of appointing a new head of government and a cabinet, coordinating the arrival of a multinational security force to retake the capital and, finally, holding the long-awaited elections.
But Haiti’s gangs maintain they deserve a seat at the negotiating table. One of their leaders, Vitel’homme Innocent, recently told CNN that if the gangs don’t get a position, they will try other means.
The gangs oppose the council, he added, saying it was more of the same and that it was time for the old political elites to leave, a view shared by many Haitians.
Since February, attacks by an insurgent alliance of gangs in the capital, Port-au-Prince, have caused the city’s international airport and seaport to cease functioning, disrupting vital food and aid supply lines and sparking an exodus of evacuation flights for foreign citizens.
With the city virtually cut off from the outside world, hospitals have been vandalized, while warehouses and containers holding food and essential supplies have been broken into as the social fabric fragments.
According to the UN, nearly 5 million people in Haiti suffer from acute food insecurity, defined as a person’s inability to consume adequate food, posing an immediate danger to their life or livelihood.
News in development…
