Haiti is closing another chapter without resolving the one crisis that made the chapter necessary. AFP reported that the nine-member Transitional Presidential Council is ending its work after nearly two years, and the country is no closer to stability than when the body was created to try to restore order.
The immediate political burden now falls on Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. He is expected to steer parliamentary and presidential elections in August, which would be Haiti's first national votes in nearly a decade. Washington backs him, but support from the United States is not a substitute for the divided domestic coalition he needs if a vote is to happen at all.
The security numbers in the report are stark. AFP said gangs control about 90 percent of Port-au-Prince. It said nearly 6,000 people were killed in 2025 and more than 2,700 injured, with around 1.4 million people displaced. Nearly half the population is facing acute food insecurity, including about 1.2 million children under five. Those figures turn the council's end date into more than a legal milestone; they define the scale of the vacuum it leaves behind.
The council itself has been hobbled by infighting, corruption allegations and attempts by some members to push Fils-Aimé out. Former officials and civil society figures quoted by AFP described the body as a failure and said its members had dragged the country deeper into crisis. The United States responded by sanctioning two council members and a minister, and by sending three warships to Haiti as it tried to avoid an institutional collapse.
Police have also been attacking the gangs more aggressively, including an operation in central Port-au-Prince that damaged the house of Jimmy Cherizier, better known as Barbecue. But the violence and the political calendar are still running together. The council is handing off power while the state remains under pressure from armed groups, a broken economy and a population that has not been given the chance to live under normal democratic rules for years.
The political stakes are just as important as the security ones. If August elections are to happen, the council's departure must be followed by a working arrangement that can keep institutions functioning long enough for ballot planning, campaigning and security preparation, none of which are easy in a city so dominated by armed groups.
The handoff also means Haiti is trying to organize a vote while it still struggles to control roads, offices and public space. If the election slips, the country stays trapped in the same loop of interim authority and street-level insecurity; if it goes ahead, it will still happen under conditions that make legitimacy hard to build and harder to defend.
