WASHINGTON POST: By Associated Press, Published: September 13
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide will make his first major public appearance since his triumphant return to Haiti in March after seven years in exile, a close ally said Tuesday.
Former Sen. Louis Gerald Gilles told The Associated Press the former leader planned to attend a ceremony in October to inaugurate the expansion of his university and will deliver a speech on education. Gilles, a physician who served as a senator from Aristide’s Lavalas party during the leader’s second term, did not provide the exact day in October when the event would take place.
Upon his March return at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Aristide denounced the exclusion of his political party from a recent presidential election.
Since then, he has avoided making public appearances and remained in his private compound on the northeastern end of the capital. He has also declined numerous media requests to be interviewed.
Aristide said from South Africa that he was eager to return to his homeland so that he could focus on rebuilding his university and work as an educator. The University of the Aristide Foundation closed in 2004 after he was toppled in a violent rebellion but reopened four years later. Its 200 students take computer courses and Spanish taught by Cuban instructors.
Aristide has been a divisive figure since he emerged as a fiery priest in the 1980s. Some 30 years later, he remains beloved by much of the poor, loathed by a tiny elite, and distrusted by foreign governments, namely the U.S.
In the seven years he’s been gone, Aristide returns to a Haiti much different from the one he left. The country was devastated by massive earthquake last year and a cholera epidemic has killed more than 6,200 people, according to health officials.
Maryse Narcisse, a Lavalas leader who was a spokeswoman for Aristide while he was in exile, could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.
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Kite neg la anrepo.
What about the hundreds of other Murders from Aristide and Preval?
They must not be forgotten
Aristide is almost forgotten by the mass of our people. Few were at the airport to welcome him, although media lies would make you think different.
He has remained a recluse and no one really cares.
He is really the past and people are interested in the future.
Aristide’s formula is turmoil and we have had too much of that.
I am not a politician and I do not intend to become one. Writting my comment on a website is just throwing rocks into the sea water. Ninety pour cent of haitians do not use computers or do not have access to one and even do not know how to read and write English or French and those are the people the haitian politicians use by giving them twenty gourdes to manifeste in the street and to create unrest in Port-au-Prince and other cities.
As for Aristide, he is an non-important subject but he is dangerous because he can use the money stolen from the time of his government and his drug trades to create problems in the Country. HE IS A NEGTIVE ELEMENT. He had nothing planned for Haiti but destructions
Unfortunately, I am not in Haiti and I do not see myself living in a country with basic security.
I wish I could talk and make myself hear by the exploited and suffering citizens who are living out of the Capital as I did in Jeremie, Abricot (Grand’Anse) under Duvalier’s regime in the year 1966-1967.
We need to go forward with Martelly…. Not to think about Aristide or Preval with their stupid ideas to return Haiti
to corruptions and drugs.