Haiti is set to bury its former president Rene Preval in a state funeral Saturday in Port-au-Prince, after Preval suffered what is believed to have been a heart attack earlier in the month.
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The state funeral will take place at the National Pantheon Museum Garden in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, near the country’s presidential palace. Preval will then be buried in his small hometown of Marmalade some 120 miles north of the capital.
He died on March 3 at the age of 74 from what was initially reported as a heart attack after falling unconscious in his home. At the request of his family an autopsy was carried out, but could not confirm cardiac arrest. More tests are set to be carried out, but some are suspicious that the former leader may have been poisoned.
Preval served as president of Haiti on two occasions; first from 1996 to 2001 and again from 2006 to 2011. He oversaw the country’s devastating earthquake in 2010, which according to government estimated killed over 300,000 people.
Preval was the first in Haiti’s history to win a democratic election, serve out a full term and then peacefully hand over power to a successor in a country which has been plagued by political instability and coups.
"His flexibility was key to the relative success he enjoyed during his two terms in office. That’s why people say that he was a smart and subtle politician," former justice minister, Paul Denis, told Voice of America.
Preval first won the election with the support of the country’s poor. During his tenure, he managed to build new infrastructure and work on land reform with peasants. However, the country’s unstable economy and the 2010 earthquake proved difficult for his government, which was attacked for mismanagement of aid coming into the country for disaster relief.