Istwa Nou

Expelling the bishops emptied posts, and the government filled them. In Gonaives the senior militiaman of the town, Zacharie Delva, who was also a boko, held a public ceremony in the cathedral doorway with a chalice of warm pig's blood, staged as a repeat of Bois Caiman. Expulsions of ordinary clergy went on for three years and reached Protestants too, among them the Episcopal bishop Voegeli, an old friend of the president. In February 1964 the whole Jesuit order was put out of Haiti, two centuries after Saint-Domingue expelled it the first time. The livings that fell vacant went to priests of the regime. Jean Hilaire said mass with a pistol on his hip. Bouillaguet commanded the militia at Leogane. Albert Dorelien went from parish priest to cathedral canon after announcing in public that Duvalier had brought 1804 up to date, which was an accurate description of what was happening. In the same years Clement Barbot, the president's closest friend, sat in a cell at Fort Dimanche.

On 8 April 1961 Francois Duvalier dissolved both chambers and called elections for a single fifty seven seat assembly to be held on 30 April. The ballots were printed with a heading across the top: Republic of Haiti, Doctor Francois Duvalier, President of the Republic. The names of the legislative candidates ran underneath. At Cap Haitien the prefect made government employees and the men in the jail vote, then collected Canadian and American residents, French priests, missionaries and their wives and walked them to the polls under guard. About a million Haitians were eligible. The government announced that 1,320,748 had voted. On 9 May the country was told that the same ballots had also returned the president, unopposed, by 1,320,748 to nil, for a six year term starting on 22 May, although his own constitution ran the term he was already serving to 1963. Duvalier said his enemies could accuse him of one crime only, which was loving his people too much.