Jean-Claude Duvalier of his father, François Duvalier (nicknamed "Papa Doc"), becoming the world's youngest president. Initially, Jean-Claude Duvalier resisted the dynastic arrangement that had made him Haiti's leader, having preferred that the presidency go to his older sister Marie-Denise Duvalier, and was content to leave substantive and administrative matters in the hands of his mother, Simone Ovide Duvalier, and a committee led by Luckner Cambronne, his father's Interior Minister, while he attended ceremonial functions and lived as a playboy. Duvalier was invested with near-absolute power by the constitution. He took some steps to reform the regime, by releasing some political prisoners and
François Duvalier to Déjoie's266,992. Even in this election, however, there are multiple first-person accounts of voter fraud and voter After being elected president in 1957, Duvalier exiled most of the major supporters of Déjoie. He had a new constitution adopted that year. Duvalier promoted and installed members of the black majority in the civil service and the army. In July 1958, three exiled Haitian army officers and five American mercenaries landed in Haiti and tried to overthrow Duvalier; all were killed. Although the army and its leaders had quashed the coup attempt, the incident deepened Duvalier's distrust of the army, an important