Boss Titid: The Third Aristide Presidency (2001–2004)

Abstract

On February 7, 2001, ten years to the day after he was First inaugurated as president, Aristide was sworn in as Préval’s successor. Major foreign officials were conspicuously absent. Neither U.S. president George W. Bush nor his secretary of state were present, leaving U.S. ambassador Brian Dean Curran as the sole representative of the United States. The heads of states of other countries closely involved in Haitian affairs, such as France, Canada, and Venezuela, had also refused to come, as had UN secretary general Kofi Annan. Joyous Aristide supporters took to the streets, though the absence of any major candidate in the November 2000 election made it impossible to know how popular Aristide really was six-and-a-half years after his return from exile. This was another historical first in his short political life. Aristide, the first president to be democratically elected and the first president to return from exile, was the First president ever to enter the presidential palace for the third time. He was forty-eight years old.