Michel Oreste

Michel Oreste Lafontant ( born April 8, 1859 in Jacmel, † October 28, 1918 in New York City ) was a Haitian politician and President of Haiti.

Biography

After school education and a degree, he worked as a lawyer and teacher. His political career began as a senator.

Two days after the death of Auguste Tancrède he was elected by the Constituent Assembly on May 5, 1913, President of Haiti for a seven-year term of office and officially sworn in on 12 May 1913.

In January 1914 in La Plain du Cul de Sac a revolution broke out against him, which was carried by the brothers Charles Zamor and Oreste Zamor, generals of the former President Cincinnatus Leconte German friendly. The brothers, who talked best relations with the Dominican General Desiderio Arias and related to the arms, occupied the customs house of Cap- Haïtien, which meant that the National Bank ( Banque Nationale ), which managed the finances of the state, the United States to take to protect their shareholders. Roger L. Farnham of the National City Bank in New York, not only Vice- President of the National Bank and president of the Haitian Railway Company ( Compagnie Nationale des Chemins de Fer d' Haiti), but also a friend to the Department Manager for Latin America at the State Department, Boaz Walton Long was visited on 22 January 1914 U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan in Washington, DC, to confer National support the demand for protection of the rights and investments of the shareholders of the Bank. But all the efforts of the New York financial circles to keep the weighted Michel Oreste them were in office, to no avail.

On 27 January 1914 he stepped back and therefore went first to the German training ship SMS Vineta in asylum and was later brought to Colombia by the Hapag- passenger liner Prinz Eitel Friedrich into exile. During a boat trip to the United States nearly four and a half years later, he died in New York City in uremia.

Successor was initially a committee of public welfare (Comité de Salut Public) chaired by Edmond Polynice before on February 8, 1914 Oreste Zamor new president.