Aristide arrives in Haiti after 7-year exile
Former president slams banning of party from presidential runoff. Jean-Bertrand Aristide's plane touched down in Haiti on Friday, ending the former president's seven-year exile. "There's a real excitement because people have been talking about Aristide coming back for years now," the CBC's Connie Watson reported from Port-au-Prince. Aristide was exiled to South Africa in 2004 after fleeing a rebellion. He was Haiti's first democratically elected president, but was ousted in a coup, then restored to power in a U.S. military intervention in 1994. He remains wildly popular among the country's majority poor. Aristide has pledged to live as a private citizen in Haiti, though many are concerned he may try to influence the country's political landscape. Shortly after arriving Friday, he slammed the barring of his political party, Lavalas, from Sunday's presidential runoff election, calling it "the exclusion of the majority."
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