As the new prime minister of Haiti, a country without a president or parliament and where gangs have destroyed dozens of police stations and killed thousands, it is no exaggeration to say that Garry Conille has one of the toughest jobs of any leader in the Western Hemisphere.
He attended the funeral of a slain police officer and met with his widow, fired the police chief for failing to fight gangs and appointed a new one, and brought in a contingent of police officers from Kenya tasked with helping to reduce violence. He went door-to-door in Washington last week to promote his urgent message.
“Now is not the time for Haiti fatigue.”
Conille, 58, a longtime United Nations official who has lived outside Haiti for more than a decade, took over the reins of government five weeks ago in a country hit by one of its worst crises in decades.
The post became vacant after militants joined forces to attack prisons, hospitals and entire communities, leaving the former prime minister, who was on a business trip abroad, unable to return to his home country due to the escalating violence.
Conir was selected by the Presidential Transition Council, which is helping oversee the country.
Conille, a licensed obstetrician-gynecologist, must restore order in Haiti so that presidential and parliamentary elections can be held in an orderly and fair manner. He is seen as an outsider, appointed with the support of the Biden administration and the international community, untainted by Haiti's notorious graft and chronic corruption.
Haitians are wondering: After years of political turmoil, corruption and a murder plot that saw the death of their former president at the hands of Colombian mercenaries, can this mild-mannered technocrat turn around a country where millions live in extreme poverty and more than half a million have been forced from their homes?
The situation is already dire: Within days of taking office, he was briefly hospitalized with an unexplained illness.
“First of all, what I need is a functioning justice system, and frankly, we don't have that right now,” Conille told The New York Times in an interview. “We have 40 police stations that have been destroyed. We need to be prepared to fix them.”
His priorities are long: retaking territory from the control of gang leaders, reopening schools and hospitals, rebuilding roads, etc. He envisions a Haitian government that can provide basic services like education and health care to its 11 million people, especially the millions who suffer from hunger.
Conille noted that Haiti received much more international aid in previous years when the situation was less dire, and said the international community needs to provide more funding to make this happen.
“I think the crisis that we're facing now is definitely more complex than the one we faced after the earthquake,” he said, “and after the earthquake we engaged with many more partners and engaged in much more significant ways.”
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, killing 316,000 people, according to the Haitian government's estimate. Despite billions of dollars in aid from around the world, the country has struggled to recover.
After the earthquake, Conille worked for former President Bill Clinton, who was Haiti's UN envoy. He had previously served as prime minister under President Michel Martelly but resigned after just four months in the post after a dispute between the two over corruption allegations in post-earthquake contracts.
Mr. Conille met last week with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, members of Congress, international lenders and Haitian migrants to make the case that aid is needed now more than ever.
Wolf Pamphile, founder of the Haiti Policy House, a Washington research institute, said he was impressed by the prime minister's approachable and “down-to-earth demeanor.” At a cocktail-hour meeting in Washington, Mr. Conille wore a guayabera and spoke Creole and English, but not the French preferred by Haiti's educated elite, Mr. Pamphile said.
Coneille said he is enjoying married life but is unsure how long it will last.
“When you first start out, everybody likes you,” Pamphile said. “He's off to a good start. He's delivering what people wanted: communication.”
Experts debate how Haiti's situation got so bad. Billions of dollars in earthquake aid have failed to pay for the massive redevelopment needed. There have been no elections in eight years, so parliament and most other elected offices remain vacant.
Three years have passed since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his home, and the three years since have seen a wave of gang violence that has led to a massive increase in kidnappings and murders and the seizure of large parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
In late February, gangs conspired to overthrow the government and forced then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign. Henry had flown to Kenya in East Africa to formalize an agreement to send police officers to curb gang violence. Gang leaders took advantage of his absence to attack police stations, prisons and health facilities.
Nearly 600,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in recent days, and the UN recorded 3,252 homicides from January to May, up from 2,453 in the previous five-month reporting period.
When asked why he left his previous job as UNICEF regional director to take on such a challenging job, Conilles borrowed an expression he learned in Africa: “If I don't do it, who will? If not now, when?”
Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder of The Haitian Times, a New York online newspaper that covers Haiti and its diaspora, said Conille garnered support by publicly meeting with the widow of a slain police officer shortly after taking office to show empathy.
“Haitian leaders would never do that,” he said.
The prime minister called Conille's ten years ago under Martelly a “huge failure” because he simply wasn't the type of person to play politics.
“He was politically naive,” Pierre-Pierre said, “and he didn't participate in, and he wasn't prepared for, the petty games that populist politicians, especially Haitian politicians, play.”
Indeed, multiple media outlets reported last week that Conille had left for Washington, announcing his departure in a text message at midnight, just hours before his departure, angering members of the Transitional Presidential Council that now governs Haiti. The council's president, Edgar Leblanc Fils, did not respond to requests for comment.
But experts say Conille's image as a policy wonk removed from Haiti's politics was exactly what Haitians expected, weary of the country's politicians, who are often embroiled in allegations of corruption and gang ties now wreaking havoc.
The United Nations accused Mr. Martelly of providing funds and weapons to gangs. The United States imposed sanctions on former Venezuelan Prime Minister Laurent Lamotte for misappropriating $60 million in government aid for personal gain. Mr. Henry, who took over as prime minister after the president's assassination, was dogged by accusations of ties to the main suspect in the case.
All three politicians denied the allegations.
“The politicians are not leaving a good impression on the people. I think we were looking for someone who is competent, has a track record of managing things and being able to deliver results,” said Executive Director Ariel Dominique. “We are anxiously awaiting the results. We don't know yet whether he is that person,” said the head of the advocacy group Haitian American Democracy Foundation.
