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1996-02-07

1996-02-07: (René Préval Takes Office as President, the First Peaceful Transfer of Power Between Elected Presidents in Haitian History, a Milestone 192 Years…

Haitian

1996-02-07: (René Préval Takes Office as President, the First Peaceful Transfer of Power Between Elected Presidents in Haitian History, a Milestone 192 Years in the Making): On February 7, 1996, René Préval took office as president of Haiti, marking the first peaceful transfer of power between two democratically elected presidents in Haitian history. The milestone had taken 192 years to achieve. Born on January 17, 1943, in Marmelade, Préval had studied agronomy in Belgium and established a bakery in Port-au-Prince with Michèle Pierre-Louis. He had served as Aristide’s prime minister before the 1991 coup and won the December 1995 elections with eighty-eight percent of the vote. Préval implemented International Monetary Fund economic reforms and began privatizing state-run industries, policies that put him at odds with Aristide, who formed Fanmi Lavalas in late 1996 to oppose the neoliberal program. The fracture between the two men who had built Haiti’s democratic movement would define the next decade of political life.