2000-11-26: (Aristide Wins a Second Presidential Term With Ninety-Two Percent of the Vote in Elections Boycotted by the Opposition, the Mandate Overwhelming …

2000-11-26: (Aristide Wins a Second Presidential Term With Ninety-Two Percent of the Vote in Elections Boycotted by the Opposition, the Mandate Overwhelming on Paper and Contested in Practice): On November 26, 2000, Aristide won a second presidential term with ninety-two percent of the vote in elections boycotted by the opposition. The boycott meant that the landslide was mathematically impressive but democratically hollow: Aristide’s opponents had refused to participate, and the turnout was low. The priest who had been elected as a liberator in 1990 returned to power a decade later under conditions that his critics called fraudulent and his supporters called a mandate. The contradiction between the democratic aspirations that Aristide embodied and the authoritarian tendencies that his opponents perceived would define his second term and lead to his second overthrow.