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Haiti News Media > Haiti News > Ertha Pascal-Trouillot - Haitian President Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, Haitian President
Ertha Pascal-Trouillot
Ertha Pascal-Trouillot provisional President of Haiti from 1990 through 1991
Ertha Pascal-Trouillot (born August 13, 1943) was the provisional President of Haiti from 1990 through 1991. She was the first woman in Haitian history to hold that office.
The father of Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, Thimocles, was an iron worker, and died when she was young. Her mother Louise (née Dumornay) was a seamstress and embroiderer. Pascal-Trouillot was the 9th of 10 children and when she was 10, she and one of her brothers went to the Lycée François Duvalier and was mentored by her future husband, Ernst Trouillot, who was 21 years her senior. In 1971, Ertha Pascal-Trouillot received her law degree from the École de Droit des Gonaives in Port-au-Prince.
From 1975 through 1988, Ertha held various positions as a judge in the Haitian federal courts until she became the first woman justice of the Haitian Supreme Court.
Pascal-Trouillot was chief justice when she temporarily became Haïti's first female president on March 13, 1990 following a military coup in which general Herard Abraham overthrew the government run by Prosper Avril and then immediately agreed to give up power.
At her inauguration, the provisional President of Haiti vowed to implement democracy. Nearly a year later, her government was nearly overthrown in a coup d'etat where she was allegedly kidnapped by Duvalier loyalist Roger Lafontant and forced to read a statement over Haïtian television announcing Lafontant as her successor. Lafontant was forced to flee soon after, after which Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected and sworn in as president.
Aristide had Pascal-Trouillot arrested under charges of complicity in the coup d'état of January 7. Ertha was released the next day after U.S. intervention in Port-au-Prince. The U.S. demanded a lift on the ban on departure. Pascal-Trouillot left the country shortly after, to return more than a year later. Since then, Ertha Pascal-Trouillot lives away from the public eye.
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