May to December 1913 · Haitianspan
Everything Oreste tried to reform made him another enemy
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Michel Oreste was fifty-four, from Jacmel, a professor of law with a reputation as parliamentarian and orator, and he had climbed into the elite from nothing by study. Inaugurated on 12 May 1913, he set out to do three things: reform the army, retire the paper currency and put real schools in the countryside. Each one cost him. The army would not be reorganised by a civilian. The men holding paper posts in the school system did not want inspecting. The Banque had no intention of releasing the ten million francs in gold that the currency law of 26 August required of it. The Cacos of the North, balked a second time by a capital that had handed the presidency to a lawyer from the West, wanted their payments kept up, and Oreste kept them up and then stopped them dead. Pyke reported to London in June that anonymous threats were being pinned to the president's bedclothes and that he no longer used his chair at the cathedral.
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