Reply #5: maybe they are for once uncorrupted nt ?

[tocqueville]

René Garcia Préval (born January 17, 1943 in Port-au-Prince) is currently President-elect of Haiti. He previously served as president from February 7, 1996 to February 7, 2001.

Préval holds a degree in agronomy from the College of Gembloux in Belgium. He was forced to leave Haiti with his family in 1963 after being targeted by the then-dictator, François Duvalier aka "Papa Doc".

Préval's father, an agronomist too, had risen to the position of Minister of Agriculture before the arrival of Duvalier. Exiled from Haiti because his political past presented him as an opposant, he found work with UN agencies in Africa, more specifically in Belgian Congo, where he raised his family.

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. This trend toward a decreasing unemployment rate continued during the subsequent tenure of Aristide until the 2004 coup.

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

Préval ran again in as an independent candidate in the Haitian presidential election of 2006. 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 population demonstrations in favour of Préval followed in Port-au-Prince and other cities in Haiti. 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. 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.

Préval draws much of his support from Haiti's poorest people; he is especially widely supported in the poorest neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince.<1>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Pr%C3%A9val