Jean-Claude Duvalier

On 27th May 1980, Jean-Claude married Michèle Bennett Pasquet and the couple was blessed with two children François Nicolas and Anya. However, the couple divorced after some years.

In 1984, the US ambassador to Haiti Ernest Preeg praised Jean Claude for his successful presidential rule in maintaining stability in the nation.

He lived lavishly in France but his divorce in the year 1993 cost him a lot of money.

Jean was born to François Duvalier and Simone Ovide on 3rd July 1951, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

When he was still in school, some kidnappers attempted to abduct him and his sister but the scheme was unsuccessful. After that incident he was secluded from the world and brought up in a secretively.

He received education at institutions such as ‘Nouveau College Bird’ and ‘Saint-Louis de Gonzague’.

He pursued his further education in law at the’ Université d'Etat d'Haïti’ (University of Haiti).

In 1971, he assumed the office of the President of Haiti when he was still a teenager, following the death of his father François Duvalier, the former President of Haiti. Arguably, he was made the president without his consent.

When he took office as the President, he was pressed by the United States to bring changes in Haiti and modify the government, which has been in a deteriorated condition since the time of the former tyrannical president.

Jean did not have an alternative and made a few changes in the government. However, he did not make major changes which would actually revive Haiti from the dictatorial rule it had endured.

Baby Doc, as Jean Claude was nicknamed, followed his father Papa Doc’s ways of governing like a shadow with negligible changes made in the government.

During his regime too, the opposition party was not accepted and there was no role of the legislature. The legislature was an institution for namesake and all major decisions were made solely by the president.

As a President of Haiti, he made a few changes in the government by dismissing some of the cabinet members and appointing new and young members. He also freed some political leaders who had been arrested during his father’s regime and even granted the press more freedom in their conduct.