1982, February – July 3: (Marc Bazin, Mr.

1982, February – July 3: (Marc Bazin, Mr. Clean: The Special Levy on Imported Cars, the $3.7 Billion Note Canceled, the GAO Declares a Decade of U.S. Aid a Failure, Free Municipal Elections Promised Without a Date, Franz Bennett’s Puerto Rico Cocaine Sting, Bayard Sacked After Six Years, Bazin Fired for Dunning Bennett Père for $1 Million in Back Taxes, $15 Million a Month Siphoned to Swiss Accounts, Lafontant Returns as Interior Minister, and Aristide Ordained on Duvalier’s Birthday): Part of the agreement worked out with donors had been the appointment of a finance minister with impeccable credentials — Marc Bazin, smart, fluent in English, who had been promised carte blanche to clean the Augean stables. He brought in other young World Bank technocrats of Haitian origin such as Leslie Delatour. The government’s pleasure at having dealt with the blan turned to consternation when the new minister took his mission seriously: first a special levy on imported cars was announced and collected without exception; then Mr. Clean, as Time dubbed him, attempted to collect overdue taxes from various members of the elite; then he canceled a $3.7 billion short-term note issue that had loomed like a horn of plenty for gourde-rich senior officials — to Bazin, it had looked too much like the nineteenth-century loans Haiti had struggled so long to pay off. A U.S. Government Accounting Office study in February declared that U.S. aid channeled to Haiti over the preceding decade had been a failure. The Cour de Cassation overturned Sylvio Claude’s sentence as too harsh — knowing the justices would not hand down such a verdict without a signal from the palace. On April 21, 1982, the president announced to deputies assembled for the eleventh anniversary of his presidency that free and honest municipal elections would be held, though no date was given. Into this brew was added family politics: Franz Bennett, the first brother-in-law, was apprehended by U.S. officials in Puerto Rico in a cocaine sting operation — Bennett had offered a capability that U.S. officials had long suspected, the use of Haiti as a transshipment point for large amounts of cocaine, and the conversation was taped. Thrown into jail, he yelled for help from his sister; to her intense anger, Michèle found that counselors such as Henri Bayard and Washington ambassador Georges Léger, who had heard the tapes, recommended the president stay well away from the affair. For his opinions Bayard found himself sacked after six years — Michèle had managed in weeks what Simone Duvalier and Zacharie Delva’s wangas had not been able to do in eight years: the ouster of the most powerful mulâtre from the cabinet. Bazin and his entourage were not long in following — taking his mandate too broadly, he had incurred Michèle’s wrath by dunning Bennett père for some $1 million in back taxes. Mr. Clean had lasted only six months; out of office in New York, he wasted little time in letting friends know that his duties had included finding up to $15 million a month in state accounts for siphoning into the first couple’s Swiss bank accounts. Into the vacuum created by the mulâtre exodus came Roger Lafontant, who had undone Cambronne a decade earlier — his appointment as Interior Minister sent shivers up many spines. Another appointment that summer had great though unforeseen consequences: a thirty-year-old divinity student, fresh from philosophy and psychology studies in Italy and Israel, was ordained in the Catholic Church by Bishop Romélus of Jérémie on July 3, 1982 — Jean-Claude Duvalier’s twenty-ninth birthday. The priest was Jean-Bertrand Aristide.