PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti (CMC) — Rene Preval, the former president of Haiti, died yesterday, the Miami Herald newspaper has reported. He was 74.

It quoted his wife, Elisabeth Delatour Preval as confirming his death.

Preval died at home in Laboule, a neighbourhood in Port-au-Prince. His wife, who wasn’t with him, said she had spoken to him “three times” yesterday.

“He was in excellent humour,” said Delatour Preval. “He asked, ‘When are you coming home?’ I refused to believe it. I cannot believe it,” she told the newspaper

Preval served as president from 1996 to 2001, and again from 2006-2011. He is the only president in Haitian history to have served two full presidential terms and not be jailed, exiled or killed.

Born on January 17, 1943 in Port-au-Prince, Preval studied agronomy in Belgium. He lived for five years in New York in the 1970s.

After he returned to Haiti in 1975, he got a job with the National Institute for Mineral Resources.

He later became active in humanitarian work, including at an orphanage in Port-au-Prince run by Aristide, who was then a Roman Catholic priest.

An agronomist by training, Preval devoted his years out of the presidency to converting bamboo into furniture to create jobs and boost the national production of agricultural products.

— Additional reporting by AFP