Jean Bertrand Aristide

While cameras Saturday focused on the front door of the airplane from which Jean-Bertrand Aristide was disembarking, a crew was unloading a big, blue-upholstered armchair through the rear door. It was built by the youths of La Fanmi Se La Vi, Creole for The Family Is Life, an orphanage founded by the priest-president, who said he would never sit in a chair occupied by one of Haiti's previous, undemocratic presidents.

Haitians will head to the polls Sunday to elect a new president who, it is hoped, will begin to pull the country out of its perennial state of misery. But the obstacles are substantial. The impoverished Caribbean nation has been struggling to recover ever since a massive earthquake leveled much of it in January 2010. Today, millions remain homeless or living in tattered tents. A cholera epidemic has further crippled the already wounded nation. Botched elections in November, marred by significant fraud, led to this month's runoff, which will determine whether Michel Martelly, a popular musician, or Mirlande Manigat, a former first lady and academic, should lead the country.

The return to Haiti of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide inspired expressions of joy, gratitude and hope. "The 15th of October. What a beautiful day this is . . . a day to celebrate, a day of deliverance, a day of nonviolence." --Jean-Bertrand Aristide, arriving at the Haitian airport in Port-au-Prince after three years of exile * "His message of no vengeance, no violence, is the right thing to heal Haiti, attract investment and create jobs to break the cycle of poverty." --The Rev.

Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returns home from exile in South Africa to boisterous throngs despite international pressure to keep him away before Sunday's elections. Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose tortuous life saga is sprinkled with comebacks, returned home Friday to boisterous throngs, defying international pressure to keep him away before Sunday's election. Aristide arrived on a flight from South Africa, where he had lived in exile since soon after being flown out of Haiti on a U.S.-supplied plane amid turmoil in 2004.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the exiled priest who is scheduled to reclaim Haiti's presidency in less than six weeks, called on the United Nations on Tuesday to reimpose economic sanctions until Haitian army chief Raoul Cedras and other military "killers" relinquish power and leave the island.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted as Haiti's president in a coup five months ago, urged religious and community leaders in Los Angeles on Friday to lobby U.S. politicians to pressure the Haitian military to return democratic rule. "The more you talk about that, the more you can help us," Aristide told about 75 people at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in the West Adams district. "A lot of people really don't know what is going on."

First word came as the shrill morning calls of roosters were echoing off the walls of shantytowns and villas in this still-slumbering Caribbean city Sunday. Within minutes, there were explosions of celebratory gunfire, happy cries of "Ca y est!" -- "It's over!" -- and outbreaks of looting. In the wealthy hillside suburb of Petionville, scores of boys and young men sacked an abandoned police station, carrying away police helmets and shields, thermos bottles and battered file cabinets.

On the broken streets of this capital, they don't call him the Little Priest anymore. Many don't even call him Titid, the term of endearment Haiti's poor gave "Little Aristide" when he delivered them from dictatorship in 1990. Now many Haitians have taken to calling him Tabarre. That is the name of the booming exurban district that some see as a metaphor for the new Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

I've known Jean-Bertrand Aristide since 1986, though we're not on speaking terms right now. In Haiti in the old days, his enemies pointed trembling fingers at me, accusing me of being responsible for his rise to power. Now his supporters are also pointing, accusing me of being responsible for his downfall. But they're wrong on both counts. I met Aristide by accident.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide tapped his natural intellect and deep sympathy for his desperate countrymen to propel himself out of the abject poverty of this capital's sprawling slums to the presidential palace. A devoted man of the people, Aristide became Haiti's great hope to reverse 200 years of poverty and dashed expectations.

Grammy Award-winning hip-hop singer Wyclef Jean isn't going to be president of Haiti. Not now, anyway. The country's Provisional Electoral Council has rejected his candidacy along with 14 others and issued a list of 19 approved contenders for the Nov. 28 vote. Unfortunately, the commission did not explain its ruling, but it is widely understood that Jean and a handful of the others were declared ineligible to run because they had not lived in Haiti for five consecutive years as required by law. Jean initially accepted the decision, then backtracked on Twitter, saying he would challenge it. His first instinct was the right one. He can help Haiti most now by ending his bid with grace.

A surveillance plane assigned to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti crashed into a mountain, killing all 11 military personnel on board, the United Nations said. U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas in New York said the Uruguayan CASA 212 aircraft went down in rugged terrain west of Fonds-Verrettes near the border with the Dominican Republic. Rescue teams had to go to the area on foot because there were no roads there. When they arrived, they found no survivors, she said. The bodies were recovered and were being taken back to the capital, Port-au-Prince, according to a statement from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti.

Haiti: An April 13 article in Section A about the ouster of Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis incorrectly reported earlier observations by President Rene Preval about his exiled predecessor, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It reported Preval as having said that Aristide could be subject to arrest if he returned to Haiti because of pending criminal charges against him in Miami alleging corruption and instigating violence. The allegations were not criminal but part of a civil complaint brought by the interim government of Haiti against Aristide in U.S. District Court in southern Florida in November 2005.

Ousted President JeanBertrand Aristide has the constitutional right to return to Haiti whenever he chooses but may want to keep in mind that charges have been filed against him, President-elect Rene Preval said Wednesday. In his first major public statement since being declared the winner last week of a Feb.

Robert Manuel doesn't say much, but his omnipresence at the side of President-elect Rene Preval speaks volumes about the next head of state's newfound independence. Manuel was national security chief in the first years of Preval's 1996-2001 presidency but was forced to resign after a crackdown on drug traffickers netted some loyalists of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who served as president before and after Preval.

Politics in Haiti Re "Politics at the point of a pistol in Haiti," Opinion, Nov. 29 Mark Schneider should also know that when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected, there were 12,000 polling places rather than 800. The reduction in the number of polling places stacks the election against Aristide supporters. Many of these supporters live in rural areas and will have to walk five hours to stand in line for two hours to vote. In this instance, the U.N. is helping implement U.S. foreign policy, which is anti-Aristide.

Rebellious Haitian soldiers seized President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince on Monday after shooting up his private home and causing numerous deaths and injuries during a daylong rampage through the capital. Aristide's fate remained unknown late Monday.

Thousands of supporters of exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide marched peacefully through a Haitian slum, calling for his return. Three hundred heavily armed United Nations peacekeepers and 50 vehicles secured the demonstration, said Col. Carlos Barcelos, a spokesman for the troops.

A wealthy U.S. businessman is running in Haiti's first presidential election since Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled into exile in February 2004. Dumarsais Simeus, owner of a Texas-based food processing company, was born in Haiti. More than 20 people are candidates in the Nov. 20 vote.

As Haiti's crippled body politic tries to mend itself for fall elections, activists in former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas Party are risking the pitfall of "divide and conquer." Until recently, Lavalas politicians had refused to take part in preparations for the vote, demanding that Aristide first be allowed to return from South African exile and serve out his term.