Bread brought Rene Preval to politics. Piles and piles of it.
While running a bakery in the capital, he donated loaves to the church of a charismatic Catholic priest named Jean-Bertrand Aristide. As Aristide became Haiti's preeminent political figure, he set Preval on a tumultuous course that -- many years later -- culminated in an election Feb. 7, unrest following charges of electoral fraud and a compromise early Thursday that declared Preval the next president.
Aristide and Preval -- the first a master of soaring, pulpit-pounding oratory, the second a reserved enigma who prefers not to speak -- are entwined in the minds of Haitians. Even now, as he ascends at age 63 to his second presidency, Preval remains in the shadow of the younger, exiled Aristide, while international observers watch intently to see whether he will finally establish his own identity.
Tens of thousands of Haitians marched boisterously through Port-au-Prince after Preval's victory was announced, blowing homemade plastic horns and waving leafy branches in an homage to the three-leaf symbol of Preval's party, Lespwa, which means "hope" in Haitian Creole.
"Preval is hope," said Pierre Romin, a 39-year-old construction worker, as he climbed a steep slope leading to the home of Preval's sister, where the president-elect is staying.
Behind Romin, the crowd sang, "Oh Preval, we have been waiting for you," as overloaded tap-taps -- this country's splashily painted truck-taxis -- groaned up the hill.
Preval was named president after days of negotiations involving his campaign advisers, Haiti's interim government, the United Nations and international diplomats, including Brazil's ambassador and the top U.S. envoy here.
The talks were aimed at finding a way to end the protests that roiled this impoverished seaside capital, leaving roads barricaded by upended cars and burning tires, following allegations of electoral fraud.
Haiti's electoral council voted 7 to 2 early Thursday to disqualify more than 80,000 blank ballots cast, a decision that pushed Preval from just under a majority of votes counted to 51 percent, enough to avert a runoff. The second-place finisher, former president Leslie Manigat, who got 11 percent of the vote, called the decision "illegal" and said he would challenge it, but he urged his followers not to respond with violence.
Still a mystery
Despite Preval's impassioned support among Haiti's poor, his closest friends find him a mystery. He prefers to be alone, shies from public speaking and is ill at ease in the spotlight, often holding his face in his hands during news briefings.
"He has said, 'Aristide is Aristide and I am myself,' " said Michele Pierre-Louis, Preval's longtime partner in the bakery. "But that is not sufficient. He must have reasons not to want to take a stronger public stance."
Preval was born to a prosperous farming family from the village of Marmelade, high in the breathtaking northern mountains. He studied in Belgium, then trained as an agronomist. By his thirties he had drifted away from agriculture and become a supervisor at a garment factory. No one recalls him exhibiting any great promise as a leader -- and certainly not as president of his troubled nation. "It's really an accident of history," Pierre-Louis said.
Preval hated the factory job, so Pierre-Louis hired him as an assistant at the Port-au-Prince airport. Together they developed a national airport authority, but were fired in the mid-1980s when an official who had helped them fell out of favor.
Suddenly jobless, the two decided to buy a city bakery. Sometimes they attended Mass at nearby St. John Bosco Church, where Aristide's afternoon youth Masses were drawing huge crowds.
"It was like he came under Aristide's spell," a friend recalled of Preval.
The relationship deepened when Aristide came under threat of being removed by the Catholic hierarchy, which was uneasy with his controversial sermons. Preval quietly helped to organize a hunger strike to protest Aristide's removal. Their friendship was sealed.
In 1990, Aristide won an unlikely victory in the presidential race, backed by his Lavalas party. He eventually chose Preval to be his prime minister. The two were forced into exile after Aristide had been in office only seven months, but returned to Haiti three years later with the help of the United States.
Preval was elected president after Aristide's term ended and took office in 1996. In the early days, few doubted Aristide was the real power. Visiting diplomats and elected officials often bypassed the National Palace to be received by Aristide.
"He was simply under Aristide's thumb," said one Haitian who observed both men.
The relationship with Aristide began to fray, and another picture of Preval began to emerge. Somehow, observers say, his quiet, nonconfrontational style allowed him to navigate Haiti's often violent political world, where more than 100 political parties jockey for power. He was finding a middle ground. "Nobody understands him; he does not reveal himself," said Gerald Gilles, who was a Lavalas senator when Preval was president. "But he's a pragmatist."
As president, Preval built schools and improved social services, but later acknowledged he had not been successful. He disbanded parliament after tussling about appointments, a move that he asserted was legal but was widely condemned outside Haiti as a gross misuse of power.
Preval fell from the public eye during Aristide's turbulent return to the presidency in 2001, a tenure that ended with an uprising and his flight to exile on U.S. plane in 2004, leaving Haiti in the hands of an ineffectual interim government. Preval lived in quiet retirement in Marmelade. He became fascinated with bamboo, encouraging farmers to plant it to stabilize eroding soil.
What he now talks about trying to achieve is political stability. And nothing could disrupt any chance of stability faster, many here say, than Aristide returning from exile, even as the people in the streets cry for him to come back. "The crowds could go to the presidential palace and say, 'Preval get out, Aristide is in. He's the only person in Haiti who people will die for," Gilles said.
‘The country is upside down’
Preval has purposely lowered expectations for his second presidency, won under the Lespwa banner after he broke with Lavalas and its Aristide ties, repeatedly saying during his campaign that Haiti's problems -- 80 percent living in poverty, a corrupt legal system, one in 20 infected with HIV -- cannot be solved quickly.
At times, this champion of the poor places the classes against each other, sounding a bit like Aristide. "The country is upside down," he said.
But sometimes, Preval sounds like an ardent capitalist. He talks glowingly about private companies reviving failing state-run mills. He looks enviously at his neighbors in the Dominican Republic, who lure billions of dollars a year in foreign investments while Haiti gets only $7 million.
The crowds on the streets wonder whether Aristide will play a role, whether Preval will encourage his mentor to return from South Africa to help revive the country. Preval, at ease with prolonged silences, doesn't want to talk about it.
But in Marmelade, he stroked his gray beard and spoke of a less powerful presidency, a presidency unlike his former mentor's. "We will not," he said, "have anymore a president that comes after God."
