Hours after embattled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled Haiti on Feb. 29, 2004, his constitutional successor, Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre, took the helm and called for calm after three weeks of violent uprisings had wracked the island nation.

"The task will not be an easy one," Alexandre told reporters that day. "Haiti is in crisis. ... It needs all its sons and daughters. No one should take justice into their own hands."

Friction between pro- and anti-Aristide groups had caused a political stalemate that led the parliament to expire in January 2004 and Aristide to rule the Caribbean nation of 8 million people by decree.

Days after Aristide fled into exile in the Central African Republic, Haitian officials started assembling a new government, making special effort to incorporate input from the political opposition.

An advisory council made up of members of Aristide's Lavalas Family Party, the political opposition and the international community selected a new interim prime minister, Gerard Latortue.

Latortue's job is to handle the day-to-day workings of the interim government and prepare for early elections planned for November 2005.

Alexandre, who was formally sworn in as interim president March 8, 2004, fills more of a ceremonial head of state role.

Alex Dupuy, professor of sociology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, who specializes in development, the Caribbean and Haiti, said the real authority is with the interim prime minister.

He said Alexandre is relatively unknown outside of Haiti, but a comment he made since becoming interim president, when he called the rebels -- some of whom are convicted assassins -- "patriotic men of honor," caused Dupuy some concern.

"It struck me as rather inappropriate ... and alarming," he said.

Alexandre asked the rebels to lay down their arms and help rebuild Haiti. He also asked Aristide loyalists to disarm, assuring them that the Lavalas Party will "play a role in the democratic process that we are starting," the Associated Press reported.

The former jurist, often described as low-key and nonpolitical, has a reputation within the country as being honest in a notoriously corrupt judicial system.

When he read a statement after his official swearing in ceremony, he barely looked up from the podium, New York Times reporter Lydia Polgreen noted on the March 9 NewsHour.

"He gave about a 15-minute speech in which he called upon the Haitian people to unite to put aside their divisions, and said, 'We are all the same boat. If the boat sinks, then we all sink together,'" she said. "He read from a piece of paper and did not look up once, so he's certainly feeling his way through being a politician."

Alexandre became a member of the Supreme Court in 1990, and Aristide appointed him chief justice about a decade later.

Previously, Alexandre worked as a lawyer for 25 years at the Port-au-Prince firm Cabinet Lamarre, which has since shut down.

Interim Prime Minister Latortue has more of a public persona as a former U.N. official and television talk show host.

One of three finalists for the temporary position, he said he welcomed his new role.

"I can facilitate the national reconciliation," he told the Miami Herald. "It is the most important thing today in Haiti after all the divisions we had in Aristide."

A Herald profile says Latortue was born in 1934 in Gonaives, a coastal city in northern Haiti. He studied economics and politics in Paris and returned to Haiti as a lawyer and professor. Finding the country lacked any business school, he started one with a friend in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince.

Latortue fled the Duvalier regime in 1963, went to Jamaica, then Washington, then to Puerto Rico as an economics teacher on a Fulbright scholarship, according to the Herald.

He joined the United Nations Organization for Industrial Development, becoming one of its chief negotiators.

He then returned to Haiti in 1988 under the government of Leslie Manigat and served as the minister of foreign affairs until the army staged a coup four months later, at which time he returned to the United Nations.

Latortue moved to South Florida in 1994. And in March 2003, his television career debuted with the launch of the new Haitian Television Network of America. He hosted two shows that discussed issues pertaining to Haiti in round-table format and one-on-one interviews.

He is married with three adult daughters.

-- Compiled by Larisa Epatko for the Online NewsHour