Former president Aristide to return to Haiti from Cuba after Covid-19 treatment

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is scheduled to return this Friday to his country after having been treated for covid-19 in Cuba in the last three weeks, according to sources of his party quoted by local media.

Sources at the Port-au-Prince airport confirmed that the arrival of the flight of the charismatic former president is expected in the early afternoon.

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Aristide, 67 years old, traveled to Cuba last June 24 in an executive plane, to which he arrived on a stretcher and carrying an oxygen cylinder.

The former ruler is both one of Haiti’s most loved and hated leaders, he won elections twice with overwhelming support, especially from the poorest, and was deposed by arms on two occasions, in 1991 and 2004.

His expected return to the country comes in the midst of the political crisis opened by the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, perpetrated last July 7.

Aristide was the first democratically elected president in the history of Haiti in the elections held in 1990 after the dictatorial regime headed by François Duvalier and later continued by his son Jean-Claude Duvalier.

He became head of state twice but was overthrown on both occasions, the first time in a military coup d’état in September 1991, seven months after coming to power.

After the 1991 coup, he went into exile in Venezuela and the United States. He returned to Haiti in 1994, accompanied by a multinational troop led by U.S. forces, which restored him to power.

He won the elections again in 2000 in a landslide. Still, after a period of strong instability marked by violent protests, he was overthrown in an armed uprising in 2004, after which he went into exile in South Africa.

Aristide, a former priest, and advocate of Liberation Theology, returned to his country in 2011 and has since moved away from the front line of politics. However, his party, Familia Lavalas, continues to be a force with weight on the left.