Haitian Students Back on the Streets
Port-au-Prince – Students from the State University are back protesting on the streets on the capital, Port-au-Prince. Over a year since the previous object of their anger – President Jean-Bertrand Aristide – left the country, the students are now turning up the heat on the current interim government, blaming it for increases in the cost of living.
Some students are also taking aim at members of the business elite who, they say, are the ones now holding the reins of power. The powerful influence of the private sector is being blamed for the worsening living conditions for the poor majority.
In the last months of 2003 and early 2004, students were in the forefront of the mass street protests that undermined the legitimacy of the Lavalas Family party government. Weakened by the protest movement that united disaffected sectors from different social classes, that government collapsed in the face of an armed insurgency, and President Aristide left the country on 29 February 2004.
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