Leslie Manigat, who has died aged 83, was Haiti's first modern-minded president. He tried to break the vicious circle of class-based violence and dictatorship that had held Haiti prisoner for nearly two centuries, but instead was broken by it himself. A social scientist and historian, the energetic and fiercely ambitious Manigat governed for only 133 days before he was overthrown in June 1988 by a drunken general who had earlier allowed him to win a fraudulent election.
Born into a middle-class family from northern Haiti, Manigat studied in Paris and his first job was in the foreign ministry under the dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, whose "noiriste" and nationalist views he shared. But he fell out with the tyrant, who accused him of organising a student strike and briefly threw him in jail. He left the country in 1963 to teach at universities in the US, France, Trinidad and Venezuela, and campaign tirelessly against the dictatorship. Duvalier sentenced him to death in his absence.
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