It’s a little sentence that should get a lot of people talking. “They are completely stupid,” declared Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, during a trip to Rio, Brazil. Who was the French president talking about? Haitian officials whom he accuses of having dismissed their Prime Minister Garry Conille, appointed five months ago in order to stabilize his country.
These comments are visible on a video filmed on the sidelines of the G20 and which has since been circulating on social networks. In this video, the Head of State responds, according to his entourage, to a Haitian who calls on him “insistently” by accusing him and France “of being responsible for the situation in Haiti”.
“There frankly, it was the Haitians who killed Haiti, leaving drug trafficking behind,” Emmanuel Macron replied. “And there, what they did, the Prime Minister was great, I defended him, they fired him! », he added in reference to this famous dismissal by the Haitian presidential transition council.
“It’s terrible. It’s terrible. And I can’t replace him. They are complete idiots, they should never have released it, the Prime Minister was great,” he continues before the video cuts off.
Plagued by political, security, socio-economic and humanitarian crises, fueled by the violence of gangs who control 80% of the capital Port-au-Prince, this Caribbean country is in complete chaos.
The decision to dismiss Garry Conille from his functions came on November 10 when the Transition Council wanted to change officials in the ministries of Justice, Finance, Defense and Health, against its advice. For Mr. Conille, “the resolution of the Presidential Transitional Council (…) is clearly tainted with illegality”.