Haiti pays last respects to Preval, champion of rural poor

PORT-AU- PRINCE: Former Haitian President Rene Preval was buried Saturday after a state funeral in Port-au-Prince, a final tribute to a beloved champion of the rural poor.

Preval, who served two terms as president, died on March 3 at age 74. His sister told local media that he had suffered a heart attack.

In stands draped in Haitian flags, family and close colleagues of the former leader gathered at the funeral. Sitting in full sunlight, guests who had arrived early in the morning were given straw hats typical of rural areas beloved by the former president.

Later, as rain fell, a funeral procession took the body 200 kilometres north to Preval’s father’s native village of Marmelade. There, the late president was laid to rest at the edge of a lake located on a farm – a fitting place for an agronomist by trade who was always deeply attached to the land and the people who worked it.

With a reputation as an honest and efficient administrator, Preval served as president of Haiti – the poorest country in the Western hemisphere with a long history of political violence – in 1996-2001 and again from 2006-2011.

He remains the only leader in Haiti’s history to have completed his two terms – the constitutional limit – without suffering a coup d’etat or being forced into exile.

“During his two terms, Rene Preval managed to keep a degree of balance in Haitian political life,” the current president, Jovenel Moise, said at the funeral ceremony.

“He is a man who gave so much of himself that it would be impossible to imagine the history of these last 30 years without him,” he added.

Jocelerme Privert, who held office as interim president from 2016 to 2017 during the country’s electoral crisis, was an adviser to Preval’s cabinet and stressed the importance of maintaining the consensus promoted by the leader known to the population as “Ti Rene.” — AFP