Fritz Alphonse Jean became the new head of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council on Friday, March 7, 2025. Haiti's Transitional Presidential Council
A U.S. educated economist and former head of Haiti’s Central Bank assumed the presidency of the country’s embattled transition council on Friday, pointing fingers at the economic elite and blaming “the cannibal” of chaos Haitians are living in on the country’s collapsing economic system.
That system, Fritz Alphonse Jean said, has fueled immense misery and social inequalities as well as the current gang violence that has a desperate population urgently calling for help.
“There are people in politics and in the private sector who have managed to put weapons in the hands of the country’s youth,” he said during the handover ceremony at the Villa d’Accueil in Port-au-Prince. “Today, too many people are being kidnapped, woman are being raped. Many people have lost their lives and property.”
Jean replaced Leslie Voltaire, the representative of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas political party on the council. He is the third leader of the ruling council to assume the reins of power as part of a rotating presidency. His term will end on Aug. 7.
His leadership of the vexing nine-member Transitional Presidential Council comes at a difficult time. The transition has been marred by turmoil, escalating gang violence and great uncertainty.
U.S. foreign aid cuts risks leaving both the government and the United Nations without the necessary funds to help more than 1 million people who have been displaced by gangs, and the thousands being forcibly returned to the country by the neighboring Dominican Republic and the United States. Meanwhile, an international armed mission led by Kenya is struggling to put down criminal groups amid its own lack of resources and conflicts within Haiti’s security apparatus.
Late Friday, residents in several Port-au-Prince neighborhoods reporting hearing “bombs” going off. The sounds were likely detonations from explosive drones that a new Haitian police task force has been dropping on some gang strongholds.
During his speech, Jean, who served as governor of the Central Bank between 1998 and 2001, stressed the urgency of a rapid intervention by the government, particularly for those living in the West and Artibonite regions. Among his promises: 3,000 new recruits to be enlisted in the country’s small army and police.
“Our country is at war today. We must absolutely win this battle,” he said, as he called on Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé to refocus the nation’s finances to a “warfare budget.”
The council is also grappling with an ongoing corruption scandal and growing disenchantment with the transitional entity, formed last year at the urging of the U.S. and the Caribbean community bloc CARICOM.
A year later the transitional government is struggling to carry out its main task of reestablishing democratic order in Haiti, which hasn’t had an election since 2016.
During his speech, Jean announced a citizen’s hot line to report abuse and made a list of promises that included returning Haiti to “good governance,” relaunching the economy and working on holding elections.
“Insecurity is paralyzing all sectors of national life. The country’s economy is on its knees, and we must commit to getting things back on track,” he said.
Jean studied economics and mathematics at Fordham University and the New School for Social Research in New York before pursuing his professional career in Haiti. During the last transition in 2016, he was briefly named prime minister but was forced to vacate the position after less than a month when lawmakers in the Lower Chamber of Deputies rejected his policy statement on his priorities for running the government.
Now, he steps into a leadership role in a situation where he is among nine so-called presidents in a transition that has been marked by alarming violence, political turmoil and tensions. His own sector, the Montana Accord, is among those that have been calling for a reconfiguration of the transition. The coalition of civil society groups has been critical of the council’s governance and has repeatedly called for the resignation of three members implicated in a corruption scandal. The three council members have insisted on their innocence. They are accused of demanding more than $750,000 from the director of the government-owned National Bank of Credit to secure his job.
In a post on X, the French Embassy said it welcomee the transfer of power and “the commitments made to strengthen security forces, fight corruption and all forms of trafficking. France will continue to support Haiti toward peace and security.”
The French ambassador to Haiti, Antoine Michon, was joined by U.S. Ambassador Dennis Hankins and the head of the Kenya forces, Godfrey Otunge, among others.
More than 42,000 Haitians displaced
The primary task of the council remains restoring security in order to prepare for elections, a point Jean emphasized during his address. But he needs to figure out how to navigate the transition amid rising doubts about whether the panel will be able to pull off elections by Nov. 15 to put a new president and parliament in office by Feb. 7, 2026.
In the last few months alone, clashes between armed gangs and security forces have led to gangs seizing more control of key axis roads and communities. The surge in violence has exacerbated an already deteriorating humanitarian crisis as newly displaced Haitians join others in overcrowded camps where access to clean water and sanitation are limited.
In addition to continuing their repeated assaults against the municipality of Kenscoff in the mountains above Port-au-Prince, gangs have also started to target Saut d’Eau, in the center of the country. Those attacks alone have led to the displacement of 6,642 people.
In metropolitan Port-au-Prince, ongoing violence since Feb. 14 has forced at least 42,538 people to flee their homes, the U.N. International Organization for Migration said Thursday. The agency described it “the largest mass displacements” in metropolitan Port-au-Prince since it began tracking the figures.
At least half of the people displaced had lived in the municipality of Delmas, hard hit by recent gang violence.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, a security expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said given the weaknesses in both the Kenya-led mission and the Haiti National Police, “it is not surprising that the security situation has been deteriorating since October.”
Felbab-Brown said the force continues to show weaknesses that go beyond manpower and staffing and equipment, such as tactical operations.
Voltaire, the outgoing head of the council who thanked the security forces in his remarks, acknowledged that more effort is needed to combant violence. He devoted much of his speech, however, to highlighting his accomplishments during the past five months after starting his tenure with the firing of interim Prime Minister Garry Conille and the naming of Fils-Aimé, a businessman who had previously applied for the job, as his replacement.
Voltaire also touted his visits to France, the Vatican and Colombia, whose president, Gustavo Petro, later made a historic visit to the city of Jacmel in January; the inauguration of the airport runways in the coastal cities of Jacmel and Les Cayes; and diplomacy efforts to broaden cooperation with Venezuela, Cuba and African nations.
Voltaire also highlighted the arrival of hundreds of additional troops from Kenya, Guatemala and El Salvador during his watch, the naming of government agency heads and the inauguration of an army base, even though it has yet to start training local Haitian troops.
Miami Herald
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Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.