In a country without a president or parliament, where gangs have destroyed dozens of police stations and killed thousands of people, Haiti’s new prime minister, Gary Cornille, may have had the toughest job of any leader in the Western Hemisphere.
He attended the funerals of the slain officers and met with their widows. He fired the police chief, criticized him for failing to fight gangs, appointed a new chief, and sent in officers from Kenya to defuse the violence. He knocked on doors in Washington last week, delivering an urgent message.
“Now is not the time to suffer from Haiti fatigue.”
Mr. Cornil, 58, is a former United Nations official who lived outside Haiti for more than a decade and took over as head of government five weeks ago as the country grapples with its most serious crisis in decades.
The post became vacant when the former prime minister, who was on a trip abroad, was unable to return home due to the uprising, which saw armed groups join forces to attack prisons, hospitals and entire neighborhoods.
Mr. Cornille was chosen by the presidential transitional council that oversees the country.
Mr. Cornille, an obstetrician and gynecologist, must now restore order to Haiti and organize orderly and fair elections for the president and parliament. He is seen as an outsider who is not tainted by Haiti’s notorious dirty politics and chronic corruption, and he was appointed with the blessing of the Biden administration and the international community.
Haitians are wondering: After years of political turmoil, corruption and a murder plot by Colombian mercenaries that killed their former president, can this gentle techie turn a country around where millions of its people live in extreme poverty and more than half a million have been forced to flee their homes?
He was already going through a difficult time. Just days after taking office, he was briefly hospitalized for an unknown reason.
“First, what I need is a functioning criminal justice system, and frankly, we don’t have one right now,” Cornill told The New York Times. “There are 40 police stations that are broken. We have to get ready to fix them.”
His list of priorities is long: reclaiming territory from the hands of gang leaders, reopening schools and hospitals, rebuilding roads. He envisions a Haitian government that can provide basic services like education and health care to the country’s 11 million people, especially the millions who are starving.
Mr Cornille said the international community needs to provide more funding to do this, noting that Haiti received much more international support in recent years when the situation was not so dire.
“I think the crisis we face now is much more complex than the crisis we faced after the earthquake,” he said. “And after the earthquake, we had a lot more partners involved and in a much more significant way.”
In 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, killing 316,000 people, according to government estimates. Despite billions of dollars in aid from around the world, Haiti struggled to recover.
After the earthquake, Mr. Cornille worked for former President Bill Clinton, who was the UN special envoy to Haiti. He had previously served as prime minister under President Michel Martelly, but he only served four months as the two clashed over allegations of corruption in post-quake contracts.
Last week, Mr. Cornille met with Secretary of State Anton J. Blinken, lawmakers, international creditors and Haitians living abroad to stress that support is needed now more than ever.
Wolf Pamfil, founder of the Haiti Policy House, a Washington research institute, said he was struck by the prime minister’s inviting and “calm demeanor.” At a Washington cocktail party, Mr. Conil wore a guayabera and spoke Creole and English, but not French, the preferred language of Haiti’s educated elite, Pamfil said.
He said Mr Cornill was enjoying his honeymoon, but it was unclear how long it would last.
“When you first get into a job, everyone likes you,” said Mr. Pamphil. “He’s off to a good start. He’s delivering what people have been asking for, which is communication.”
Experts debate exactly when things got so bad in Haiti. Billions of dollars in earthquake aid never achieved the massive redevelopment needed. Eight years of no elections left parliament and most other elected positions vacant.
Three years ago this week, President Jovenel Moise was assassinated at his home, and the three years since have been marked by a surge in gang violence, kidnappings and murders, and the occupation of much of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
In late February, several gangs joined forces to overthrow the government. They succeeded in forcing the resignation of then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Mr. Henry flew to Kenya to formalize an agreement for the East African country to deploy police 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 from their homes in recent years. The UN recorded 3,252 homicides between January and 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 task, Conil borrowed an expression he said he had learned in Africa: “If not me, then who? If not now, then when?”
Gary Pierre-Pierre, founder of The Haitian Times, a New York-based online newspaper covering Haitians and Americans living abroad, said Mr. Cornille scored points by publicly meeting with and sympathizing with the widows of the slain police officers shortly after taking office.
“Haitian leaders would never do something like that,” he said.
He called Prime Minister Cornil’s previous term under Prime Minister Martelly a decade ago a “catastrophe” because he was not a politician.
“He was politically naive,” said Pierre-Pierre. “He didn’t play the petty games that politicians, especially Haitian politicians, play, and he wasn’t prepared to play them.”
In fact, several news outlets reported last week that Mr. Cornill had left for Washington and had angered members of the interim presidential commission by sending a late-night text message hours before his departure. The commission’s chairman, Mr. Edgar LeBlanc Peace, did not respond to requests for comment.
But experts say Mr. Cornille’s profile as a policy nerd with no connection to Haitian politics was exactly what people were hoping for. Haitians were tired of the country’s political class, which was often accused of being involved in crime and the gangs that were causing the chaos.
that much The UN condemned it Mr. Martelly, who funds and arms the gang. USA Sanctioned former Prime Minister Laurent LamotheHe was accused of embezzling $60 million in Venezuelan government aid for personal gain. Since the assassination of the president, Mr. Henry has been dogged by accusations that he was linked to the main suspect in the case.
All three politicians denied the accusations.
“The political establishment has left a bad taste in the mouths of the people, and I think we’re looking for someone who is competent, has a track record of managing and getting things done,” said Ariel Dominique, founder of the advocacy group Haitian American Foundation for Democracy. “We’re hungry for results. We don’t know yet if he’s that guy.”
