Preval, Rene

▪ 2007

 In elections held on Feb. 7, 2006, René Préval trounced 33 rivals, earning 51% of the vote to become Haiti's 57th president. On that date five years earlier, Préval had handed over power and become Haiti's first elected president to leave office after a full term. He then retreated from public life to the family farm in the village of Marmelade. There Préval remained above the fray as he witnessed Haiti's descent into the political chaos and violence that saw the forced exile in February 2004 of his successor, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and that continued unabated under an appointed government. In mid-2005, however, after several hundred peasant leaders visited Marmelade and insisted that he run in the upcoming election, Préval reluctantly returned to public life. He and his allies formed Lespwa (“Hope”), a political coalition, and Préval emerged as the front-runner; he was widely viewed as the only candidate who could genuinely represent Haiti's poor and mediate an end to the country's violence. On May 14, 2006, the “reluctant president” was sworn in to serve a five-year term.

      René García Préval was born on Jan. 17, 1943, in Port-au-Prince. In 1963 he left Haiti for Belgium, where he studied agronomy. Following his studies and five years spent in New York, Préval returned to Haiti, and in Port-au-Prince he opened a bakery that provided bread to poor children. He became acquainted with Aristide, a charismatic Roman Catholic priest working in the slums. When Aristide was elected president in 1990, Préval became prime minister. He followed Aristide into exile following a military coup in 1991 and returned with him in 1994 following the ouster of the regime. In 1995 Préval was easily elected to succeed Aristide.

      Préval's ability to govern was hindered, however, by Aristide's dominant presence. When Aristide formed a new political party in 1997, Préval refused to join. With political infighting paralyzing the country, he could manage only modest achievements during his first term; his rural and neighbourhood projects benefiting the poor earned him the endearment ti (“little”) René. A quiet and unpretentious man, he also earned a reputation as an honest leader.

      Though Aristide remained in exile, Préval nevertheless faced daunting challenges as the leader of one of the world's least-developed and most-impoverished countries. Two of his top priorities were to reach across political and class divides that continued to paralyze Haiti and to create a consensus-driven government. This, he believed, would allow him to “open doorways on a brighter future: less poverty, less inequality, more wealth, more hope.”

Robert Maguire

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