1978, March – September 1979: (Sylvio Claude Beaten and Deported for Running Against Madame Max, Lerouge Sweeps the Cap with 34,800 Votes, the Chamber of Dep…

1978, March – September 1979: (Sylvio Claude Beaten and Deported for Running Against Madame Max, Lerouge Sweeps the Cap with 34,800 Votes, the Chamber of Deputies Roof Collapses, Grégoire Eugène Publishes In Defense of Political Parties, Two Christian Democratic Parties Founded, and the Press Restrained Again as Carter Weakens): Two people who had the temerity to take the government at its word on the openness of the electoral process came up against the harsher realities of Duvalierism. Sylvio Claude, human rights crusader and constant thorn in the government’s side, presented himself as a candidate in Mirebalais to run against none other than Madame Max Adolphe, head macoute and former warden of Fort Dimanche — for his efforts he was beaten and shoved on a plane to Bogotá. What the regime could do in the hinterlands it hesitated to try at the Cap: chafing as always at Southern domination, the feisty Capois fielded an opposition candidate — a heretofore obscure customs clerk, Alexandre Lerouge — who spoke out openly in favor of change, stopping just short of the taboo subject of the presidency for life, and to the delight of the Capois was not arrested, beaten, or deported. Unbeknownst to the electorate, Duvalier had decided to let the Cap seat be fairly contested as a show of independence from the dinosaurs; last-minute efforts to reverse the outcome availed not, nor did attempts to spirit the ballots away to Port-au-Prince for a special count — Lerouge swept the field with 34,800 votes out of 37,200 cast. Fire, so often a portent of Haitian crises, struck downtown Port-au-Prince in March, narrowly missing a major pharmacy; all too apt a metaphor, the roof of the Chamber of Deputies collapsed in mid-July with an explosion that reminded old-timers of the bombing campaigns that had ushered out regimes. To the further consternation of the conservatives, Grégoire Eugène, briefly the young Duvalier’s professor, published a tract entitled In Defense of Political Parties in Haiti; when reprisals did not materialize, two groups — the Haitian Christian Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Party of June 27th — set up shop on July 5, two days after the president’s twenty-eighth birthday. Seeking to reassure the dinosaurs on the twenty-second anniversary of the regime, Duvalier praised the milice and macoutes, referring to them as the first line of my defense. By late 1979, as the weakness of the Carter administration in the face of world events became apparent, the government felt confident enough to pass new regulations restraining the press — offenses, undefined, against the Duvalier family were punishable with prison time, as were articles that disturbed the public peace. To emphasize the tough message, macoutes broke up a meeting of the year-old Human Rights League: as Gérard Gourgue began to speak to a record crowd of 6,000, the TTMs waded in with truncheons swinging — reporters, foreign embassy staff, no one seemed immune. Four days later, a cabinet change capped with a roster of dinosaurs installed Claude Raymond as Interior Minister — never before in either Duvalier government had an army man held a cabinet portfolio. Spring, said one observer, is over.