René Préval

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René Préval (2006)

René Garcia Préval (born January 17, 1943 , officially in Port-au-Prince , according to other information in Marmelade ; † March 3, 2017 in Port-au-Prince) was a Haitian politician . He was President of his country from February 7, 1996 to February 7, 2001 and again from May 14, 2006 to May 14, 2011.

family

His father was Minister of Agriculture in the government of General Paul Magloire in the 1950s , is an agronomist and landowner in the town of Marmelade , the family ancestral home in the Artibonite department . René Préval studied agriculture at the Agricultural College of Gembloux in Belgium . In 1963 he and his family were forced to leave Haiti under the then dictator François Duvalier . After five years in the New York district of Brooklyn , he returned to Haiti in 1975 returned and was given a job at the National Institute of Natural Resources and later received a one-year scholarship to in Pisa in Italy geothermal study. He finished his studies in 1978. In 1988 he opened a large bakery in Port-au-Prince.

On December 6, 2009, René Préval married Elisabeth Delatour, the daughter of an industrialist (Culligan Water, Haiti) and widow of Leslie Delatour, the former World Bank economist, President of the Central Bank and Minister of Finance of Haiti. Leslie Delatour had three children with the former Treasury Secretary. Preval's first marriage to Guerda Benoit remained childless and the second marriage to Solange Lafontant resulted in two children.

Political career

René Préval was a colleague of the then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide . From February 13 to October 11, 1991, Préval was Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior and Minister of Defense of Haiti . However, after the bloody military coup of September 30, 1991 - led by General Raoul Cédras  - he had to leave the country with Aristide. Préval fled to Washington. He stayed there until October 1994. In order to restore a constitutional government, René Préval became President of Haiti again on October 15, 1994 through US intervention under Bill Clinton (20,000 Marines landed on the island on September 18, 1994 ) - Appointed Director of the Fond d'assistance économique et sociale (FAES), an agency funded with US $ 20 million loans from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (BID).

First term 1996-2001

On December 17, 1995, René Préval was elected with 88% of the vote - with an extremely low turnout of 28% and sworn in as President on February 7, 1996 for five years. He became the second democratically elected head of state in the almost 200-year history of Haiti . Préval became the first President of Haiti to step down at the end of his regular term on February 7, 2001. As president, under pressure from international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he implemented a series of reforms, in particular the privatization of numerous state-owned companies. The high unemployment rate fell towards the end of Préval's tenure to its lowest level since Duvalier left. This trend continued during President Aristide's subsequent tenure until the 2004 coup .

Second term since 2006

Préval ran as an independent presidential candidate in the 2006 elections and was ahead according to polls. During his election campaign, he tried to distance himself from the Fanmi Lavalas party. Préval supports the occupation of Haiti by UN troops , unlike Aristide and many members of Lavala, who accuse the UN troops of campaigning for repression and violence under pressure from the US, France and Canada . The election was very controversial and characterized by accusations of fraud, it was not clear until February 17th whether - with a turnout of around 63% - Préval would receive a majority of 50% of the votes or whether a runoff would have to be scheduled. Ultimately, the election commission declared him the election winner with 51.15% of the vote.

On May 14, 2006, René Préval took over the office of President from his predecessor, Boniface Alexandre , and on May 17, 2006, he nominated Jacques-Édouard Alexis as Prime Minister .

Repeated unrest in Haiti, caused by excessive food prices, forced Alexis to step down as Prime Minister on April 12, 2008. The Senate, the second chamber of parliament, dismissed the entire Haitian government under Alexis.

In view of the hunger riots, the World Bank pledged immediate aid of US $ 10 million (around 6.3 million euros).

At the end of April 2008, Ericq Pierre was nominated by President René Préval as the new Prime Minister, but the nomination was not confirmed by the Houses of Congress. At the end of July 2008, Michèle Pierre-Louis was confirmed as the third nominee by both chambers. On September 5th, when the composition of her cabinet and her government program were approved, she succeeded Alexis. On October 30, 2009, however, the Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis was overthrown by the Senate and replaced by Jean-Max Bellerive .

René Préval headed the moderate left party Lespwa ("Hope") , which was the strongest force in the parliamentary elections before 2009.

The presidential palace destroyed by the earthquake on January 13, 2010

In the penultimate year of his second term, on January 12, 2010, a devastating earthquake struck. a. the Palais national , the official residence of the President, and several ministries collapsed. After that there was no longer a functioning government. A large part of the administration was taken over by the staff of the United Nations Stabilization Mission . The presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for February 28, 2010 , for which Préval could no longer run according to the constitution, had to be postponed. In the runoff election on March 20, 2011, Michel Martelly won , who succeeded René Préval as President on May 14, 2011.

“He towers above [Préval] the usually incompetent or criminal rulers of Haiti over the last few decades. ... That he brought both terms of office to an end and properly handed over the business of government to his elected successor is a statesmanlike achievement in the notoriously unstable Haiti. "

Web links

Commons : René Préval  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ René Préval in the Munzinger archive , accessed on January 19, 2010 ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  2. ^ Ex-Haitian President Preval dies, first to peacefully hand over power. Reuters, March 3, 2017, accessed March 4, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Biography of His Excellency René Préval, President of Haiti. Republic of Haiti, archived from the original on June 13, 2010 ; accessed on March 4, 2017 (English).
  4. ^ Roberson Alphonse: Préval, l'hommage unanime . In: Le Nouvelliste of March 10, 2017, accessed on March 13, 2017.
  5. ↑ Daniel Roussière, Gilles Danroc: Haiti's rocky roads to justice. Le Monde diplomatique , May 15, 1998, archived from the original on August 4, 2012 ; accessed on March 4, 2017 .
  6. ↑ David W. Dent / Larman C. Wilson: Historical Dictionary of Inter-American Organizations , Lanham (MD): Scarecrow Press 2014, p. 197.
  7. ↑ Harald Neuber: René Préval declared the winner of the Haiti election . WG Peace Research , accessed on March 4, 2017.
    Arnold Antonin: Haiti: Elections on the Abyss. (pdf, PDF; 284 kB) Nueva Sociedad , January 2006, archived from the original on December 8, 2011 ; accessed on March 4, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Ulli Kulke: Hunger shock: Why food is too expensive for many . Die Welt , April 1, 2008, accessed March 4, 2017.
  9. ↑ Jonathan M. Katz: Desperation in Haiti: The people eat dirt . AP article on Spiegel Online , January 29, 2008, accessed March 4, 2017.
  10. ↑ Groceries : In Haiti, the government is falling over rice prices . Die Welt , April 12, 2008, accessed March 4, 2017.
    Hunger riots in Haiti: Government sacked . Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 13, 2008, accessed on March 4, 2017.
  11. ↑ World Bank responds to hunger riot in Haiti with financial commitment. (No longer available online.) Netscape news, April 13, 2008, formerly in the original ; accessed on March 4, 2017 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.netscape.de  
  12. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Dillmann: The little princes lowered their thumbs: Haiti's Senate overthrew the head of government . Article Neues Deutschland , November 3, 2009 on the website of the Peace Research Working Group , accessed on March 4, 2017.
  13. ↑ Haiti. Federal Foreign Office , November 2009, archived from the original on November 18, 2010 ; accessed on March 4, 2017 .
  14. ^ Matthias Rüb : René Préval died . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 6, 2017, p. 4.
predecessor Office successor
Jean-Bertrand Aristide President of Haiti
February 7, 1996–7. February 2001 		Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Boniface Alexandre President of Haiti
May 14, 2006-14. May 2011 		Michel Martelly
personal data
SURNAME Préval, René
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Préval, René Garcia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Haitian politician, President of Haiti
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Port-au-Prince
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 2017
Place of death Port-au-Prince