PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Haitian economist and former central bank chief Fritz Alphonse Jean took over the rotating presidency of Haiti’s transitional presidential council on Friday, taking the top executive role in a country battling a devastating conflict with armed gangs.
Jean took over from architect Leslie Voltaire in a friendly ceremony, following a more fraught transition in October when the first president refused to sign the transition decree over an unresolved corruption scandal.
Jean thanked Voltaire at a ceremony at the Villa d’Accueil, which is now serving as the government headquarters, instead of the National Palace in downtown Port-au-Prince that is the now site of frequent gun battles.
“Today our country is at war, and we must unite to win,” he said in a speech, pledging a “corrective war budget” and to train more than 3,000 new police and army recruits this year to address endemic shortfalls in personnel.
The government spent some $227 million, or 9% of its 2024/25 budget, on the national police, according to U.N. data, though it remains underfunded and under-gunned.
A U.N.-backed mission, with approximately 1,000 mostly Kenyan troops, has partially deployed to Haiti to help boost police, but since its arrival gangs have continued to gain territory, forcing hundreds of thousands more from their homes.
Over 1 million people are now internally displaced, nearly 10% of the Caribbean’s most populous nation.
Last month, the U.N. said in a letter seen by Reuters that Haiti’s request for a more financially robust peacekeeping force is not considered feasible if it does not first substantially reduce gangs’ existing control, but proposed a hybrid model to boost the scant voluntary security support received so far.
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