What is former President Aristide doing now?
A. After handing over to the new President in February 1996, Jean-Bertrand Aristide became a vocal critic of the economic policy of the OPL-dominated government. (In 1995, he gave up the priest-hood in the hope of improving relations between the Vatican and the Haitian government.) In November 1996, he formed a new party, the Lavalas Family (Fanmi Lavalas/FL), which presented candidates in the aborted 1997 partial elections. The FL won nearly all the Parliamentary and local government seats in the May 2000 general elections. In 1996, Aristide formed the Aristide Foundation for Democracy, a non-governmental organisation working in three areas: sponsoring forums and public dialogues on the issues such as justice, land reform, and the economic future of the nation, supporting literacy programmes, and promoting cooperative economic initiatives the Foundation runs a credit bank providing interest-free loans to 12,000 members. At the end of November 2000, Aristide stood virtually unopposed a
