Gerard Latortue, Haiti Prime Minister

After studying in Paris at the Institutes of Economic and Social Development, and Political Sciences, Latortue, at 26, returned to his country of birth and began work as a lawyer and later a professor. A year later, after noting that Haitians had no place to study economics, he co-founded a business and economic study institute in the nation's capital.

Like many other intellectuals and those in the business of law or politics of that time, Gerard Latortue fled during the Papa Doc years and lived in many countries of the Americas where he taught economics before joining the UN's Organization for Industrial Development and broadening his list of domiciles to include places in the east including the Ivory Coast and Vienna.

He returned to Haiti in 1988 and became a foreign minister in the Manigat government, but a coup just four months later would have him returning to the United Nations. From 1994 Gerard Latortue lived and worked in Florida, honing his hosting skills first on radio and then, on television with the launch of HTN.

For his nomadic tendencies, upon his appointment in 2004, many Haitians criticized the decision to appoint him interim Prime Minister, citing his many years of living outside of Haiti and the consequential distance this created between him and the Haitians he would govern.

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