1971, January 22: (The Plebiscite of 2,391,916 to 0: The Constitutional Age Lowered from Forty to Eighteen, Jean-Claude on the Balcony, Good Luck My Son, and…

1971, January 22: (The Plebiscite of 2,391,916 to 0: The Constitutional Age Lowered from Forty to Eighteen, Jean-Claude on the Balcony, Good Luck My Son, and the Schoolchildren Marched Downtown as on Execution Days): The National Assembly could take a hint. Ulrick Saint-Louis, still the legislative leader, flanked by macoute bodyguards with submachine guns, proposed that the constitution be amended to lower the minimum presidential age from forty to eighteen. The assembly so voted and asked the president to hold a plebiscite of ratification. January 22 was declared a public holiday — just as on execution days, schoolchildren were let out and marched downtown. Bands were mobilized and fueled with tafya; obedient peasants were hauled in, given their one-gourde notes and kleren. When the president stepped uncertainly onto the palace balcony, the familiar cries rose high as ever. His son was beside him. In a half-hour speech — by Duvalier’s terms, brevity itself — the president announced that his successor would be Jean-Claude. He will succeed me not only as Chief of State, said Duvalier, but as Chief of the Duvalierist Revolution. Good luck, My Son, Jean-Claude Duvalier. As he spoke, the old man placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders. He could barely remain on his feet. Within moments, on cue, the streets began throbbing to the beat of Duvalier meringues while the schoolchildren cheered and sang and the peasants obediently roared. One month later, the Haitian people voted on the following proposition: does the choice of Jean-Claude Duvalier as président-à-vie respond to your aspirations and desires — do you ratify it? The vote was 2,391,916 to 0. The plebiscite — its margin of unanimity exceeding even the 2,800,000 to 3,234 of 1964, its zero opposition achieved by the simple expedient of pre-printing only one answer — completed the transformation that had begun with Duvalier’s first inauguration on the number 22: the republican form preserved as an empty liturgy, the vote reduced to a sacrament of acclamation, the democratic process surviving in Haiti only as parody, its rituals performed with the same mechanical precision as the Vodou ceremonies from which Duvalier drew his deeper legitimacy.