René Préval

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René Préval
(Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR, 2006)
Incumbent
Assumed office 2006
Preceded by	Boniface Alexandre
Succeeded by	incumbent

Born	January 17, 1943 (age 64)
Political party	Lespwa

René Garcia Préval (born January 17, 1943 in Port-au-Prince) is currently the President of Haïti. He previously served as president from February 7, 1996 to February 7, 2001 and Prime Minister from February 1991 to September 2, 1993.

1 Career
2 First presidency
3 Second presidency
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Career

Préval studied agronomy at the College of Gembloux and the University of Louvain in Belgium.[1] He left Haïti with his family in 1963.

Préval's father, an agronomist too, had risen to the position of Minister of Agriculture in the government of Général Paul Magloire, the predecessor of Duvalier. Leaving Haïti because his political past presented him as a potential opponent, he found work with UN agencies in Africa, more specifically in Belgian Congo, where he raised his family.

After spending five years in Brooklyn, New York, occasionally working as a restaurant waiter, Préval returned to Haïti and obtained a position with the National Institute for Mineral Resources. After a few years as a civil servant, he opened a bakery in Port-au-Prince with some business partners. While operating his company, he continued to be active in political circles and charity work. Providing bread to the orphanage of Salesian Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, with whom he developed a close relationship.

After the election of Aristide as president in 1990, Préval served as his Prime Minister from February 13 to October 11, 1991, going into exile following the September 30 1991 military coup.

[edit] First presidency

In 1996, Préval was elected as president for a five-year term, with 88% of the popular vote. Upon his 1996 inauguration, Préval became the second democratically elected head of state in the country's two-hundred-year history. In 2001, he became the first President of Haïti ever to leave office as a result of the natural expiration of his term.

As president Préval instituted a number of economic reforms, most notably the privatization of various government companies. Some have suggested that these privatizations were a result of Préval bowing to the pressure exerted on him by external entities including the IMF. The unemployment rate (though still quite high) had fallen to its lowest level since the fall of Duvalier by the end of Préval's term.

As president, Préval was a strong supporter of investigations and trials related to human rights violations committed by military and police personnel.

Préval dissolved the parliament in 1999 and ruled by decree, namely, as a dictator, for the duration of the final year of his presidency.^[1]

[edit] Second presidency

Préval ran again as the Lespwa candidate in the Haïtian presidential election of 2006. The election took place after nearly two years of international peacekeeping, which some described as an unelected dictatorship. During this time, human rights groups accused the government of responsibility for the deaths of thousands of Haitians in poor slums. Partial election results, released on February 9, indicated that he had won with about sixty percent of the vote, but as further results were released, his share of the vote slipped to 48.7% – thus making a run-off necessary. Several days of popular demonstrations in favour of Préval followed in Port-au-Prince and other cities in Haïti. On February 14, Préval claimed that there had been fraud among the vote counts, and demanded that he be declared the winner outright of the first round. Protesters paralyzed the capital with burning barricades and stormed a luxury hotel to demand results from Haiti's nearly week-old election as ex-President Rene Preval fell further below the 50 per cent needed to win the presidency. On February 16, 2006, Préval was declared the winner of the Presidential Election by the Provisional Electoral Council with 51.15 percent of the vote, after the exclusion of "blank" ballots from the count. Upon his taking office he immediately signed an oil deal with Venezuela and traveled to the United States, Cuba, and France.

Préval draws much of his support from Haïti's poorest people; he is especially widely supported in the poorest neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince. However, many of the poor demand that the former President Aristide be allowed to return and that civil enterprise workers fired by the Latortue government be reinstated. This has caused increasing tension in the poor slums of Port-au-Prince.^[2] Preval has promised to build a massive road system which would boost trade and transportation around the country.

Préval was sworn in on May 14, following Haïti's legislative run-off vote in April. ^[3]

Preceded by Martial Célestin	Prime Minister of Haïti 1991–1993	Succeeded by Jean-Jacques Honorat

Preceded by Jean-Bertrand Aristide	President of Haïti 1996–2001	Succeeded by Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Preceded by Boniface Alexandre	President of Haïti 2006–	Succeeded by Incumbent

[edit] References

^ Peter Greste. Haiti goes to the polls. BBC. Retrieved on August 13, 2006.
^ Thompson, Ginger. Candidate of Haiti's Poor Leads in Early Tally With 61% of Vote. The New York Times, February 10, 2006.
^ Haitian president-elect takes power. Jamaica Observer / Associated Press. Retrieved on August 13, 2006.