Haiti officials announce plan to oust prime minister, deepening US standoff 

Members of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) have announced plans to remove Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime, flouting warnings from the United States against doing so.

The announcement on Friday further deepens a standoff with Washington over the leadership of the crisis-wracked Caribbean country, which has repeatedly delayed elections due to spiralling gang crime and instability.

“We are the ones who appointed ⁠Didier Fils-Aime in November 2024,” council member Leslie Voltaire said at a news conference. “We are the ones who worked with him ​for a year, and it is up to us to issue ‍a new decree naming a new prime minister, a new government and a new presidency.”

Five of the nine-member panel had voted in favour of removing Fils-Aime and replacing him within a 30-day period, several members said. However, the vote had yet to be ​published in the country’s official gazette as of late Friday, a necessary step before ‌the decision becomes legally valid.

The TPC was established in 2024 as the country’s top executive body, a response to a political crisis stretching back to the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. It quickly devolved into infighting, questions over its membership and allegations of corruption.

The council ousted Prime Minister Garry Conille just six months after being formed, selecting Fils-Aime as his replacement.

Despite being tasked with developing a framework for federal elections, the council ended up postponing a planned series of votes that would have selected a new president by February.

Instead, tiered federal elections are now expected to start in August. Meanwhile, the council’s mandate is set to dissolve on February 7.

On Friday, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that he had spoken to Fils-Aime and “emphasised the importance of his continued tenure as Haiti’s Prime Minister to combat terrorist gangs and stabilise the island”.

Rubio added that the TPC “must be dissolved by February 7 without corrupt actors seeking to interfere in Haiti’s path to elected governance for their own gains”.

In addition, on social media, the US embassy in Haiti issued several statements in both French and Haitian Creole, warning that the politicians could face a steep cost.

“To the corrupt politicians who support gangs and sow trouble in the country: the United States will ensure they pay a heavy price,” the statement said, though some social media users interpreted the Creole phrase “pri final” or “final price” to imply even more dire consequences.

The volley of stark statements is being seen as a reflection of US President Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive actions in Latin America.

The heightened tensions come one day after the US embassy in Haiti warned that Washington would “regard any effort to change the composition of the government by the non-elected Transitional Presidential Council” as an “effort to undermine” Haiti’s security.

The US has not clearly articulated its issues with the council, but it had previously imposed visa restrictions on an unnamed Haitian official for “supporting gangs and other criminal organizations, and obstructing the government of Haiti’s fight against terrorist gangs designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations”.

TPC member and economist Fritz Alphonse Jean later revealed he had been the one targeted with the visa restrictions.

Jean, however, denied the US allegations and claimed the council was being pressured to acquiesce to the wishes of both the US and Canada.

The latest back-and-forth comes as more than 1.4 million Haitians remain internally displaced due to gang violence, with millions suffering from a lack of access to sufficient food as transport routes remain constricted.

Earlier this week, a United Nations report said that an estimated 8,100 people were killed in violence in the country between January and November of last year, a major uptick from 5,600 killed overall in 2024.

In a statement, Carlos Ruiz-Massieu, who leads the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), said the country had entered a “critical phase” in the push to restore democratic institutions that can properly respond to the nation’s woes.

“Let us be clear: The country no longer has time to waste on prolonged internal struggles,” he said.