Supporters beat drums in the slums while workers spruced up his private villa as Haitians prepared on Tuesday for the possible return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide with feverish anticipation.<\/p>\n
“Some people are cleaning the streets, others are getting the residence ready, and we are making preparations for a beautiful party,” Rene Civil, a die-hard follower of Haiti’s first democratically elected leader, told Agence France-Presse.<\/p>\n
“There is a real feeling of expectation among the people,” Civil said, desperate to see his beloved “Titid” — or little Aristide — walk once again on Haitian soil.<\/p>\n
Haiti has cleared the way for Aristide’s return from exile in South Africa by issuing him with a new passport, despite warnings from the United States (US) that the move would only add to the quake-hit nation’s political turmoil.<\/p>\n
The once firebrand man of the cloth, who rode his reputation as a champion of the poor to become president, fled in 2004 aboard a US plane, accused of massive corruption and rights abuses.<\/p>\n
In a chequered political career, Aristide served as president on three occasions and was ousted from office twice, once in a 1991 military coup and then in 2004 in a popular uprising.<\/p>\n
‘Excitement’<\/strong><\/p>\n As masonry workers repaired cracks in the walls of his once splendid villa, some residents dusted off their portraits of the diminutive, bespectacled leader.<\/p>\n Door-to-door canvassing has been organised to recruit the biggest possible turnout whenever Aristide finally makes his return to Port au Prince’s Toussaint Louverture airport.<\/p>\n Ancyto Felix, another tireless Aristide partisan, said there were plans to hold a massive rally in the Haitian capital on Friday.<\/p>\n Haiti, long the poorest country in the region, is in dire circumstances following last year’s earthquake, which killed more than 225\u00a0000 people, rendered 1,3-million homeless, and left much of the capital in ruins.<\/p>\n Fervent Aristide supporters, who include many of this impoverished Caribbean nation’s most desperate slum-dwellers, are convinced he is uniquely positioned lead the restoration of their battered country.<\/p>\n “Even if there isn’t an official date, people are getting ready for his return with excitement,” Civil said.<\/p>\n ‘Unfortunate distraction’<\/strong><\/p>\n Shortly after former strongman Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier made a surprise return to Haiti last month, the 57-year-old Aristide announced that he too was “ready” to move back and dispatched his Miami attorney to Port-au-Prince to pick up his diplomatic passport.<\/p>\n Like Duvalier, Aristide insists he will stay out of politics — a statement viewed with suspicion both by political opponents in Haiti and by observers abroad.<\/p>\n “As I have not ceased to say since February 29 2004, from exile in Central Africa, Jamaica and now South Africa, I will return to Haiti to the field I know best and love: Education,” he told Britain’s Guardian<\/em> this month.<\/p>\n The United States has warned Aristide’s return could upset a tenuous political equilibrium ahead of the March 20 second round run-off elections to replace current President Rene Preval.<\/p>\n “If former president Aristide returns to Haiti before the election, it would prove to be an unfortunate distraction,” State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley said at a press briefing last week.<\/p>\n Vote rigging and political violence<\/strong><\/p>\n Aristide has spent his exile as a visiting fellow at a university in Pretoria, where he has lectured and presented research papers, biding his time for his possible comeback.<\/p>\n Aristide first came to prominence as a young priest, using his oratorical skills in powerful sermons to plead the case of Haiti’s poor and downtrodden.<\/p>\n In 1990, the diminutive cleric swept to victory, riding a wave of support from Haiti’s millions of poor, devout Catholics.<\/p>\n Just eight months later he was ousted in a bloody military coup led by General Raoul Cedras.<\/p>\n Aristide returned to office three years later with backing from the United States, but later fell out of favour with Washington, amid claims of vote-rigging in the 2000 elections and political violence.<\/p>\n Four years later, during a 2004 uprising, he was forced out of office for a second time, and was encouraged to leave the country for his own safety. — Sapa-AFP<\/p>\n