Istwa Nou

In July 1949 Dumarsais Estime put forward a revision of the constitution that would erase 1952 as the end of his term and lift the bar on a president succeeding himself. A general strike began at the university that November. Estime shut seven newspapers, banned the parties behind the strike, drove Daniel Fignole into the Argentine embassy and imposed censorship. When the chambers met on 18 April 1950 the Senate refused the revision by thirteen votes and held out for sixteen days. Then a crowd formed in the Marche Valliere, poured down on the Senate, beat the fleeing members, burned the archives and the portraits and carried pieces of the furniture through the streets. Estime went on the radio that night to praise their political maturity. Houses of the dissenting senators were sacked. On the morning of 10 May the general staff handed him a proclamation of his own resignation. An hour later Fort National fired the salute that told Port-au-Prince the junta was back.

The army had taken power in 1946 and given it back. In 1950 it took power again, and this time nobody pretended the officers were reluctant. Franck Lavaud's name headed the junta, and Paul Magloire took Interior and National Defence, which made him the man who counted. The junta dissolved the legislature and appointed a consultative council under Dantes Bellegarde, drawn mainly from the Senate, to design an electoral system and a constitution. Magloire told reporters that the constitution was in caretaker status. So were the Estime loyalists and the men who had wrecked the Senate in May, quietly arrested while the junta settled in. Antoine Levelt said the first job was to let people cool down. On 3 August the council issued a decree that served as an interim constitution. There would be elections for a new legislature and, for the first time in Haitian history, a direct presidential vote by every man over twenty one, on 8 October. Magloire resigned from the junta the same day and declared himself a candidate.