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Haiti: Prime Minister Garry Conille resigns
Immediate Haiti Prime Minister., Garry Conille. PHOTO/File
Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille abruptly resigned Friday after less than five months on the job in a political setback for President Michel Martelly, whose struggle to fill the top government post has hampered earthquake reconstruction and other development efforts.
The government announced Conille’s resignation in a brief statement and said Martelly would address the nation in a live, televised speech later Friday. The president did not immediately announce his proposed replacement for the top administrative post in the government.
Conille’s resignation, which came after weeks of rumors of strife between him and other officials in the administration and in Parliament, poses a new challenge to a government struggling to rebuild much of the capital and surrounding region after a devastating January 2010 earthquake. The government has also sought to address the widespread poverty and weak civic structure that have long been hallmarks of the country.
The president of Haiti’s Senate, Simon Dieuseul Desras, warned that the loss of the prime minister would create a political vacuum.
“This is not what the population was waiting for, that the National Palace and president’s office are in conflict,” Desras told The Associated Press at Parliament. “Today is a waste of time. We must start all over again and we don’t know how long it will take to have another prime minister again.”
At least two candidates were being considered as a replacement, including Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Lamothe and Ann-Valerie Milfort, the interim head of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, according to a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Conille, a physician who previously served as an aide to Bill Clinton in the former U.S. president’s role as U.N. envoy to Haiti, was ratified by the opposition-dominated Parliament in October after Martelly’s two previous picks for prime minister failed to win support from lawmakers.
The absence of a prime minister could discourage donors from fulfilling pledges to help Haiti rebuild from the 2010 earthquake, which could delay reconstruction efforts further. Donors promised US$4.5 billion to help Haiti recover but only half of that amount has been released, according to the U.N. Office of the Special Envoy.
