1990, March 10–13: (The Three Days of Confusion: Avril Agrees to Step Down but Not to Leave, Justice Gilbert Austin Too Close to Avril Disqualifies Himself, …

1990, March 10–13: (The Three Days of Confusion: Avril Agrees to Step Down but Not to Leave, Justice Gilbert Austin Too Close to Avril Disqualifies Himself, Ertha Pascal-Trouillot the Youngest Justice at Forty-Six Opens the Way, Bourik Chaje Prevails Again and Avril Is Whisked to Florida by U.S. Air Force Jet at Dawn, Haiti’s First Woman President Sworn In on March 13, General Abraham Declares the Army Awaits Your Orders, and a White Linen Suit and a Singular Ambition): While agreeing to step down, Avril had not agreed to leave the country, and while there he would inevitably act as a lightning rod for disaffected rightists. To complicate things further, the Justice in line for the Presidency, Gilbert Austin, was regarded as far too close to Avril to be able to govern — Austin disqualified himself, eventually opening the way for Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, the youngest member of the Cour de Cassation at forty-six. She had been appointed to the court by liberal Justice Minister François Latortue during his ten-month stint with the CNG. Avril, prevailed upon again by the good offices of bourik chaje, was whisked Monday in the early dawn with his family by U.S. Air Force jet to Florida. Ertha Pascal-Trouillot was sworn in as interim president on March 13, 1990 — Haiti’s first woman president received the sash of office from General Abraham, who declared that the Army awaited her orders. To a wildly cheering crowd, the new president, in a white linen suit, declared that she had no ambition but for the singular service of her country. For the first time in two and a half years, Haiti was back on the road to democratic government. The Pascal-Trouillot succession — a woman jurist inheriting the presidency only because the first-in-line justice was too compromised to serve, sworn in by a general who pledged obedience he had no intention of delivering, governing under the surveillance of a nineteen-member Council of State whose members were already positioning themselves for the elections her presidency existed to organize — established from the outset the paradox that would define every transitional government in post-Duvalier Haiti: authority conferred without power, legitimacy bestowed without the means to exercise it, and a mandate to prepare democracy that could only be fulfilled by institutions whose every instinct was to subvert it.