By TAMARA McKenzie, Guardian Staff Reporter

"When I found out that he left, I felt relieved, because the violence was so strong. I felt that we were already in a civil war and that it was going to continue to deteriorate," explained a Haitian citizen of Port-au-Prince, Eric Gaillard.

Mr Gaillard, a graduate of Harvard University's Kennedy School of government told The Guardian in an exclusive interview from Santo Domingo on Sunday that Mr Aristide also failed as a president to unite the Haitian people for the "common, durable, development" of the country. He said that as soon as the former president of Haiti took his post as president in 1990, he immediately stopped exercising leadership and moved into exercising authority.

"He lost his vision and he lost the basic principles of leadership, and instead of putting the country and the Haitian people in the center of his leadership, he put himself in the center and this was a major mistake, claimed Mr Gaillard, a Haitian citizen presently living in Port-au-Prince.

According to Mr Gaillard, Mr Aristide had a lot of anger in him when he became president and made a lot of declarations. He added that after firing the majority of individuals heading the armed forces in Haiti, he eventually removed the Haitian army and replaced it with a police force. He noted that millions was spent to train the group to eventually become an "a-political" force.

On the other hand, Mr Gaillard said the former Haitian president exercised "tremendous" leadership in the 80s by helping the poor and oppressed in Haiti. He added, however, that Mr Aristide was best known for overthrowing the dictatorship of Jean Claude Duvalier and removing the extreme right of those military forces that were not democratic and only wanted to oppress.

"I believe that in the beginning, he did have the interest of the Haitian people and he was certainly sincere, but he lost his vision, he became corrupted by the system and then he lost contact with the base," he said.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide's recent dramatic departure from Haiti marked the second time the president had been forced into exile. Mr Aristide was Haiti's first freely elected president in 200 years of independence. In 1990, he won the decisive victory which swept him to power as Haiti's first democratically elected president. Months later he was overthrown in a bloody military coup. He sought exile in the U.S. where he campaigned against Haiti's new military rulers.

His efforts paid off and he was reinstated in 1994 when the military rulers were forced to step down under international pressure and with the help of 20,000 troops, most of them American. Forbidden to stand for a second consecutive term in 1995, Mr Aristide was replaced by Rene Preval following presidential elections. But he stood in and won the 2000 poll, which was boycotted by the opposition groups. His Lavalas Party took more than 80 percent of the local and parliamentary seats, but international observers criticised the poll.

Mr Aristide's second term soon became mired in political, social and economic crises. The opposition refused to recognise the outcome of the 2000 elections. A coup attempt in July 2001 was blamed on former members of the military. Opposition groups claimed that an apparent coup attempt in December of that year had been staged by the government to justify repressive measures.

Mr Gaillard further stated that under the leadership of Mr Aristide, the country suddenly changed. He said that initially, he was loved by some 60 percent of the population, but instead of surrounding himself with qualified people to help him put Haiti on the "track of development" he opted to surround himself with those who were his political partisans.

According to Mr Gaillard, those "qualified" individuals who worked for the government left, and those who worked for the government and did not support Aristide's government left also, as they were not welcomed. "They were replaced by persons who were just partisans and the concept of public servant was eroded at its base," he claimed, adding that the police were not doing their job and were just listening to demands of the president.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was born in 1953 and educated at a Roman Catholic school and seminary. He was ordained in 1982 and became a strong supporter of liberation theology, which pressed the church to engage with social problems, including poverty and oppression. In 1986, he helped to establish a home for street children.

A stirring orator, he championed the poor, advocated democracy and campaigned against the dictatorship of Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier. But his political stance and growing support angered Haiti's incumbent leaders, and he was the target of several assassination attempts in the 1980s.

His political activities were also unpopular with church officials. He was expelled from his religious order in 1988 and left the priesthood in 1994. He later married Mildred Trouillot of Haiti.

Mr Aristide promised to hold parliamentary elections in 2004 and to initiate a programme to help the poor. But he singularly failed to address political divisions, and under his rule Haiti retained its status as the poorest nation in the Americas. Mr Aristide stepped down on March 1, a day after Washington questioned "his fitness to continue to govern" amid a crisis which, it said, was largely of his making.