{"id":18419,"date":"2024-11-23T01:56:02","date_gmt":"2024-11-23T01:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=18419"},"modified":"2024-11-23T01:56:02","modified_gmt":"2024-11-23T01:56:02","slug":"haitis-unelected-prime-minister-ousted-amid-surging-gang-and-state-violence-increasing-social-misery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=18419","title":{"rendered":"Haiti\u2019s unelected prime minister ousted amid surging gang and state violence, increasing social misery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Haiti\u2019s interim prime minister was ousted last week by the Transitional Council\u2014the government \u201coversight mechanism\u201d that the US, Canada and various factions of the country\u2019s bourgeois elite put together earlier this year to provide a fig leaf of \u201cpopular\u201d legitimacy for the latest imperialist-sponsored military intervention in the Western Hemisphere\u2019s poorest country. <\/p>\n

The Council\u2019s sacking of Garry Conille came amid rampant gang and state violence and ever widening social misery. <\/p>\n

Conille was sworn in as head of Haiti\u2019s government last June just weeks before the international police-military \u201cstabilization\u201d force organized, financed and, to a large degree armed, by Washington, Ottawa and their allies began to deploy in Port-au-Prince, the country\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n

Six months on, the Kenyan-led \u201cstabilization force\u201d has failed to make any discernible progress in disarming the gangs that have overrun some 60 percent of Port-au-Prince and much of the country over the past year.<\/p>\n

In a clear sign that the situation on the ground is spiralling out of control, the US Federal Aviation Administration has instituted a temporary ban on flights to Haiti, after gangs opened fire on commercial airlines on Monday, November 11. At least three planes were targeted by gunfire from below, including a Spirit Airlines plane that was about to land in Port-au-Prince, and departing JetBlue and American Airlines jets. A Spirit flight attendant was injured in the attack.<\/p>\n

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Police officers near the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, November 12, 2024. [AP Photo\/Odelyn Joseph]<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The FAA decision also temporarily grounded United Nations humanitarian flights, restricting much needed supplies. UN flights were only permitted to resume on Wednesday, November 20. <\/p>\n

The same day as the attack on Spirit Airlines also saw a widely reported attack by law enforcement officers and aligned vigilantes on Doctors Without Borders\u2019 (MSF) operations in Port-au-Prince. Citing this incident, as well as a \u201cseries of threats\u201d by local police, MSF announced the suspension of its activities in Haiti on Tuesday, further compounding Haiti\u2019s isolation and privation from urgently needed humanitarian assistance.<\/p>\n

According to the MSF, members of a vigilante group and law enforcement officers stopped their ambulance, which was transporting three young people with gunshot wounds. Police attempted to arrest the patients and when MSF personnel objected they escorted the ambulance to a public hospital, where law enforcement officers and vigilantes surrounded the vehicle, slashed its tires, and tear-gassed MSF staff. At least two of the wounded patients were then summarily executed.<\/p>\n

The gruesome attack on defenceless patients and MSF ambulance personnel by the Haitian police highlights once more that the very forces supposed to fight the gangs are themselves the source of like violence and criminality. <\/p>\n

Haiti\u2019s government and state are mired in corruption and violence, widely unpopular, and have been operating outside constitutional bounds, without an elected parliament and president, since 2020. The Transitional Council is entirely subordinated to the interests of the North American and European imperialist powers and torn by bitter factional conflicts between the political representatives of rival capitalist cliques. The gangs have been able to flourish and wield effective control over much of the Haitian-half of the island of Hispaniola because they enjoy the patronage of, and are tied to leading elements within Haiti\u2019s ruling class and its state.<\/p>\n

In a continuation of the rapid succession of corrupt and unelected leaders installed at the behest of Washington and Ottawa, the Transitional Council fired interim Prime Minister Garry Conille, whose family had close ties to the US-backed three-decade long \u201cPapa and Baby Doc\u201d Duvalier dictatorship, on Nov 10. In his place it his named Alix Didier Fils-Aim\u00e9, a businessman and former president of Haiti\u2019s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who ran for the Senate in 2015. Not unlike the numerous pretenders to Haiti\u2019s leadership before him, Fils-Aime has promised to work towards the holding of elections, which have not taken place in Haiti since 2016. At that time, the Obama administration and the Trudeau government intervened and manipulated the process to ensure the election of Jovenel Mo\u00efse, the prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of the outgoing right-wing president, Michel Martelly.<\/p>\n

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Ex-Haiti Prime Minister Garry Conille, speaks during a joint press conference with Kenya’s President William Ruto at State House in Nairobi, Kenya, Friday, October 11, 2024. [AP Photo\/Brian Inganga]<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Transitional Council\u2019s ouster of Conille came after it had attempted to change the heads of several ministries in defiance of his advice. The governmental reshuffling is occurring only six months after Conille replaced his disgraced predecessor, Ariel Henry, whom the US coerced into stepping down<\/a>, without even the pretense of legal or democratic processes, by preventing his return to Haiti. Conille, for his part, has denounced his own dismissal as \u201ctainted by illegality.\u201d<\/p>\n