The Transitional Presidential Council’s internal divisions worsened significantly through the second half of 2025, with competing political factions within the council engaging in increasingly open conflicts over resources, appointments, and the direction of transitional governance. The divisions undermined the council’s ability to make the collective decisions that effective transitional governance required and provided fuel for critics who had argued from the beginning that a collective governing body composed of representatives with competing political interests could not function effectively under crisis conditions.
Specific flashpoints included disputes over the appointment of security and finance ministry officials, disagreements over the relationship between the council and Prime Minister Fils-Aimé’s government, and conflicts over the management of international assistance flows. Each dispute reflected underlying tensions between council members who were simultaneously members of a collective governance body and political actors preparing for the electoral competition that the transitional period was supposed to lead toward.
International partners that had facilitated the council’s creation expressed frustration at the internal conflicts, calling on council members to prioritize Haiti’s governance needs over their individual political positioning. CARICOM, which had brokered the arrangement, renewed its engagement to try to manage the most damaging disputes.
Haitian civil society organizations that had cautioned from the beginning about the risks of a politically composed governing council found their warnings validated by events. They called for the council’s disputes to be managed through formal internal governance mechanisms rather than public confrontation, and for the council to maintain its focus on the security, humanitarian, and electoral commitments that were its reason for existing. The approaching February 2026 mandate expiration was adding urgency to disputes that in calmer circumstances might have been manageable.