PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti's president has lowered rice prices and the Senate has sacked the prime minister. But hungry Haitians who rioted over food prices still want more.
"Aristide or death! Aristide or death!" young men in sunglasses and low-slung ballcaps chant outside parliament. That's right, Jean-Bertrand Aristide — the slum priest-turned-president who needed a U.S. intervention to restore him to power in 1994, and who accuses Washington of kidnapping him into exile a decade later as the country descended into political chaos.
The clamor for Aristide's return was deafening during last week's unrest over skyrocketing food prices that left at least seven people dead, hundreds injured and Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis out of a job. Some protesters vowed to press on until they unseat President Rene Preval, a former Aristide ally.
Experts say it is unlikely that Aristide engineered the protests from exile in South Africa. But people living in Port-au-Prince slums say workers for a prominent Aristide loyalist went door-to-door drumming up support for the peaceful protests, some of which spiraled into violence as criminal gangs seized the opportunity to loot stores.
Either way, Aristide's return has become a key demand on the streets after entire slums rallied for the former president and protesters carried tree branches they said signified their support for his Famni Lavalas party. "If there were an election in Haiti, Aristide would win," said Mario Jeanty, a Haitian who lives in New York. "There's no one who can beat him."
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