The challenges are enormous and the expectations immense
After Garry Conille was sworn in as Haiti’s new Prime Minister, his cabinet members were installed on June 12 and 13, 2024. The formation of this government that features both fresh faces and promoted officials involved tough negotiations. However, some appointments have sparked protests, due to concerns over the appointees’ qualifications and commitment. Conille has formed an inclusive government with women, young people, and diaspora members, partially fulfilling his promise. Key positions are held by individuals with international experience, highlighting the international community’s influence in Haiti. Despite the cabinet’s flaws, citizens are relieved to see new leadership, hoping for concrete actions to address the country’s challenges. Conille has vowed to combat gangs, restore state authority, and regain control of “lost territories,” earning support from the international community. Conille has also to address urgently the humanitarian crisis, with over 500,000 displaced people. The government must reorganize and rebuild quickly to restore hope without repeating past mistakes.
After Garry Conille was sworn in as Haiti’s new Prime Minister, all the members of his cabinet were installed in their posts on 12 and 13 June 2024. Negotiations to form this government were tough, and some of the political groups that were party to the agreement that gave rise to the Conseil Présidentiel de Transition (CPT), which is currently steering the country’s destiny, were dissatisfied and did not participate. Their grievances: the tendency of some political groups to consider the allocation of ministerial portfolios as a form of “cake sharing”, when this is not what was agreed between the parties. The Bureau de Suivi de l’Accord Montana (BSA) has stated in a public notice that it was not involved in any way in the formation of this government, and it is critical of the process, which did not respect previous agreements. However, the representative of an association participating in the Montana Accord has been promoted to Minister of Education, Culture and Communication and appears to have the support of several members of the Accord.
The new cabinet comprises 14 ministers, including 4 women. Initially, Mr Conille had wanted to reduce the number of ministries, allegedly to save resources. Some sectors had to fight to keep their ministries. This was the case for Women and the Environment. The merger of ministries did not take place as announced, however, three ministers hold at least two portfolios.
Old and new
The new government includes several new faces, as well as senior officials from ministries that have been promoted. This is the case for the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Religious Affairs, who represented Haiti at UNESCO and whose advocacy led to the inclusion of Soupe Joumou, the traditional Haitian dish eaten especially on January 1, the country’s Independence Day, on the World Heritage List. But some of the appointments have been the talk of the town and have even provoked protests and well-founded concern. This is the case for the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of the Environment. According to the comments pouring in on social networks, the people chosen are not up to the important tasks entrusted to them, as they are known for their lack of commitment to the sectors for which they are responsible. Others are criticised for their lack of experience or, according to some, their lack of competence.
Prime Minister Garry Conille has kept the post of Minister of the Interior and Territorial Collectivities for himself. Some people are wondering, with all the other responsibilities he has, how he is going to manage this important structure responsible, among other things, for local government? Mr Conille had promised to form an inclusive government that would include women, young people and members of the diaspora. He seems to have more or less honoured this commitment, as his cabinet does indeed include some young people, some women and people from the diaspora. The international community, which is very influential in Haitian politics, does not seem to have been outdone, as the Finance and External Cooperation posts are held by a former executive of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Prime Minister himself is a former United Nations official. He was most recently UNICEF’s Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean and had to leave that post after his appointment to take up his seat as Haiti’s Prime Minister.
Attempts were made to reappoint some ministers from the outgoing government, notably the Minister of Education, Mr Nesmy Manigat. But there were many protests and the Prime Minister seems to have 
backed down. Around him, however, are some familiar faces from the former PHTK regimes of Joseph Martelly and Ariel Henry. They may well be at the very heart of the kitchen, and therefore even more influential than ever.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating
Despite these imperfections in the constitution of this cabinet, citizens are relieved to see new faces at the highest level of the State and the withdrawal of the figures who sat alongside the much-maligned former Prime Minister Ariel Henry, under whose government the Haitian State completely collapsed. Now everyone is waiting for concrete action to begin to emerge from the tunnel into which the armed groups have plunged the country. Mr Garry Conille has already made a few promises to this end, including putting the gangs out of action, restoring the authority of the State, regaining control of the “lost territories” and allowing the population to breathe. He appears to have the support of the international community, with several influential ambassadors in attendance at his installation ceremony. They all wished him success and said they were looking forward to working with his government.
Mr Conille and his team are therefore enjoying a moment of grace, and it is important that he uses it well. The first major challenge he must tackle quickly is insecurity. He does not yet have all the levers needed to tackle this issue, and the gangs continue to impose their laws. On Monday 11 June, they massacred a dozen civilians in a working-class district of Port-au-Prince, and the weekend before they had murdered three police officers, set fire to an armoured tank and seized several weapons from it. The National Police has lost many members and is very weakened morally by the repeated failures of its interventions against the gangs. The Multinational Security Force, led by Kenya, which is supposed to come to Haiti’s aid, has been slow to deploy, despite the many flights (around a hundred) of American military aircraft that have come to Port-au-Prince to “bring non-lethal equipment in preparation for the arrival of this force”. Meanwhile, police unions, civil society organisations and the general public are constantly calling for the dismissal or resignation of Police Director General Frantz Elbé.
The second major task facing the new government is the humanitarian crisis, with thousands of displaced 
people having lost their homes, livelihoods, businesses and workplaces. According to the latest figures published by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the number of people displaced by the insecurity in Haiti has already reached more than 500,000. Several regions of the country are in the process of counting the number of displaced people who have taken refuge in their homes. This large-scale movement of people is having a serious impact on the infrastructure available in these areas and on the peasantry, which is having to take in large numbers of relatives.
How can all this be reconstituted or reorganised quickly to enable people to start hoping again, without reproducing the same conditions that allowed armed groups to be deployed throughout the capital? We are therefore waiting for concrete signs.
