Haiti has a prime minister but no president. As of February 2026, executive power sits with one person: Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. The last elected president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in July 2021, and no presidential election has been held since. The nine-member Transitional Presidential Council that governed alongside the prime minister dissolved on February 7, 2026, leaving Fils-Aimé as the country’s sole governing authority.
Who Alix Didier Fils-Aimé Is
Fils-Aimé is a businessman and former senate candidate. He was appointed prime minister in late 2024 by the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC), replacing Garry Conille after internal disputes within the council led to Conille’s removal six months into his tenure. On February 7, 2026, when the TPC formally stepped down in a ceremony held under heavy security, Fils-Aimé became the only person in Haiti holding executive power.
He governs without a parliament, without a president above him, and without the collective council that created his position. The United States, Canada, and other international partners have backed his continuation as sole executive, largely because the infighting that crippled the TPC made a return to collective leadership unappealing.
Inside Haiti, the arrangement is contested. Critics across the political spectrum have pushed back against concentrating power in one unelected figure, especially someone from the business elite with no prior governing experience. Even opponents of the TPC have urged Fils-Aimé to bring political parties and civil society groups into the conversation, warning that isolation was what forced his predecessor, Ariel Henry, to resign in 2024. In his first public remarks after assuming sole authority, Fils-Aimé framed his priorities as “security, dialogue, elections, stability.”
Why There Is No President
The presidency has been vacant since gunmen stormed Jovenel Moïse’s Port-au-Prince home in the early hours of July 7, 2021, and killed him. His wife was critically injured in the attack. Moïse was already a contested figure at the time of his death, governing by decree after failing to hold legislative elections, with large parts of Haitian society disputing whether his term had legally expired months earlier.
The assassination produced no clear successor. Under Haiti’s constitution, the head of the Supreme Court would normally step in, but the chief justice had recently died of COVID-19. The head of the Senate would have been next, but the Senate was largely non-functional. Ariel Henry, whom Moïse had named prime minister just days before the killing but who had not yet been sworn in, took over. Henry then governed for nearly three years without elections, without a legislature, and with steadily eroding control over the country.
In early 2024, a gang alliance called Viv Ansanm launched coordinated attacks on government buildings, police stations, and the main international airport. Henry was traveling abroad and could not return. Under intense international pressure, he resigned in March 2024, clearing the way for the Transitional Presidential Council.
What Happened to the Transitional Presidential Council
The TPC was established in April 2024 through negotiations among Haitian political factions, civil society groups, and international partners. It had nine members: seven with voting power and two non-voting observers, drawn from political coalitions, the private sector, religious communities, and civil society. Its mandate was to appoint a prime minister, form a government, and organize elections before its authority expired on February 7, 2026.
It managed the first task, appointing Garry Conille as prime minister in June 2024, then unraveled. Within six months, the council removed Conille and replaced him with Fils-Aimé. Haiti’s anti-corruption agency accused three council members of taking bribes, specifically alleging they tried to trade favors with the chairman of Haiti’s National Credit Bank to keep him in his position. Operating costs drew public anger as well: each member’s expenses ran over 1.4 million gourdes per month at a time when much of the population faced starvation.
The council’s central failure was its inability to curb gang violence or lay the groundwork for elections on time. It postponed the votes that would have selected a new president by February 2026. When it dissolved on schedule, it left behind no elected successor, and power passed entirely to the prime minister it had appointed.
When Haiti May Elect a New President
Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), led by President Jacques Desrosiers, has set a first round of presidential and legislative elections for August 30, 2026, with a second round on December 5, 2026. The CEP opened formal registration of political parties in late February 2026, giving parties and coalitions until March 12 to submit their files at CEP headquarters in Pétion-Ville. The final list of approved parties is expected by March 26. If the votes go ahead, they would be the first elections held in Haiti in over a decade.
The timeline is uncertain. A previous target of November 2025, originally floated by the TPC, was scrapped when it became clear that security and logistical conditions were nowhere close to being met. Criminal groups now control an estimated 90 percent of Port-au-Prince and its surrounding metropolitan area, and have expanded into parts of the Artibonite, Centre, and Northwest departments. Voter registration cannot reach communities under gang control, candidates cannot campaign safely in those areas, and polling infrastructure has to be built or rebuilt where government presence has essentially vanished. Each of those requires progress on security that has proven elusive for years.
One constitutional point shapes who can compete for the presidency whenever the vote happens. Haiti’s 1987 constitution was amended in 2011 to allow dual nationality, but dual nationals remain barred from running for president, prime minister, police chief, or Supreme Court justice. Given how much of Haiti’s politically engaged diaspora lives in the United States and Canada, that restriction narrows the field for the top office. Until the vote is held and certified, though, the answer to who leads Haiti stays the same: a prime minister, appointed rather than elected, governing alone.