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Introduction:

&ldquo;Far from home, I am living here, but always in deep communion with my people. 
I am confident that I can serve my country without being involved as the president 
of the country now. I am sure that a profit driven recovery plan devised and carried 
out by outsiders, can not reconstruct my country.&rdquo; 
 
These are the words of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former president of Haiti who 
was in exile while his country faced harsh jolt of earthquake in January 2010. 
Haiti is a small Caribbean country that occupies the western third of the Island of 
Hispaniola. It was the first independent nation in Latin America and the first black- 
led republic in the world when it gained independence as part of a successful slave 
revolution in 1804. 
 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was twice elected as the president of Haiti democratically 
with a huge margin of vote of 65% and 92%. He has continued to be a spokesman 
for an alternative vision that places human development at the center of all 
economic programs. But the countries that are advocating the neo liberalization 
policies feel him as a threat against it for his anti &ndash;globalization approach. They 
made conspiracy against him and exiled him twice. His party Fanmi Lavalas has 
been banned in spite of immense popularity among the poor people of Haiti. During 
his period in office, Aristide resisted the call of International Monetary Fund to 
adopt neoliberal economic policies, including privatization of the state owned 
industries and opening markets to US goods of Haiti. The Aristide government 
continued to invest in education, medical training and a program to fight human 
trafficking, and it raised the minimum wage for industrial workers. In 1995, Aristide 
dispersed the Haitian military, which once absorbed 40% of Haiti&#39;s national budget. 
 
After that Haiti spends no money on the military, making it a model in allocating 
resources to human development rather than to militarism. He focused on the 
development of deprived poor Haitian. All his welfare works made him the enemy 
of powerful nations like USA, France and Canada. 
 
Aristide and his supporters have been continuing their struggle for establishing true 
democracy in Haiti. Aristide&rsquo;s view is that the promise of democracy can only be 
fulfilled if all sectors of the society are able to actively participate in the democratic 
life of the nation. According to him, to bring real change, democracy must include 
those at the margins of society: street children, market women, landless peasants, 
and restaveks (children living in Haitian households as unpaid domestic labourers), 
the urban poor. And it must address the issues of primary importance to the majority 
of Haiti&rsquo;s nine million citizens: food, jobs, health care, education, justice, and peace. 
 
In an explanation to his government Aristide said, &ldquo;When I was elected President, it 
wasn&#39;t strictly a political affair, it wasn&#39;t the election of a politician, of a 
conventional political party. No, it was an expression of a broad popular movement, 
of the mobilization of the people as a whole. For the first time, the national palace 
became a place not just for professional politicians, but for the people themselves. 
The simple fact of allowing ordinary people to enter the palace, the simple fact of 
welcoming people from the poorest sections of Haitian society within the very 
center of traditional power-this was a profoundly transformative gesture.&rdquo; 
 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide authored the book &ldquo;The Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path 
for the Poor in the Age of Globalization&rdquo; which used Haiti as a case study of 
globalization. He has specifically pointed out problems with the World Bank and the 
IMF in creating larger problems within the Haitian society and the economy. In this 
book he wrote: &ldquo;Between the death of resignation and death of violent explosion, 
collective mobilisation is the third way. It is an indispensable concentration of 
human energy. There will never be money enough, but there are people enough.&rdquo; He 
discovered a third ways to escape from the grip of globalization. He gave emphasis 
on collective effort of people for the real development. 
 
In his another book &ldquo;The Parish of the Poor&rdquo; he wrote: &ldquo;The rich of my country, a 
tiny percentage of our population, sit at a vast table covered in white damask and 
overflowing with good food, while the rest of my countrymen and countrywomen 
are crowded under that table, hunched over in the dirt and starving. It is a violent 
situation, and one day the people under that table will rise up in righteousness, and 
knock the table of privilege over, and take what we have all been working for all 
these years in the parishes of the poor.&#39;&#39;&nbsp; He invoked people in these words: 
 
&#39;&#39;Alone we are weak. 
Together we are strong. 
Together, we are the flood.&#39;&#39; 
 
In this task you will acquaint with the hardship of Haitian people created by the 
powerful nations in the name of globalization and continuous struggle of Aristide 
and his supporters to renovating democracy in Haiti.

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