June 9, 2024
Haiti’s New Prime Minister Hospitalized For ‘Slight Illness’
It's been less than a month since Garry Conille assumed the role.
Garry Conille, Haiti’s newly selected prime minister, was hospitalized late June 8 for an unknown issue a few days after he arrived in the country.
“Following a week of intense activities, the Prime Minister … had a slight illness on the afternoon of Saturday June 8, 2024 and went to the hospital for treatment,” Conille’s office said in a statement, Reuters reported. “His situation is stable for the moment.”
According to the Associated Press, a source close to the prime minister, speaking anonymously due to a lack of authority to address the press, reported that he appeared to have difficulty breathing before being taken to the hospital. The source noted that Conille, who suffers from asthma, sometimes uses an inhaler.
Officials, including Frantz Elbé, Haiti’s national director of police, and Bruno Maes, UNICEF’s Haitian representative, were seen entering the hospital. In addition, several SUVs with tinted windows were seen blocking the street as onlookers gathered.
Following a complicated selection process, Conille was chosen as Haiti’s Prime Minister and faces a difficult set of tasks, including addressing widespread violence initiated by the country’s gangs, whose members have increasingly advocated for a voice in decisions affecting the country. Although the arrival of a Kenyan-led UN peacekeeping force is imminent, The Guardian reports that some are critical of yet another foreign force on Haitian soil.
Conille, a former UNICEF regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, was previously Haiti’s Prime Minister from October 2011 to May 2012 and also served as a top aide to former President Bill Clinton after Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake.
Conille was voted in as Prime Minister in late 2011 by Haiti’s parliament, but tensions with the president at the time, Michel Martelly, forced Conille to resign, Haitian Times reports.
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