Supreme Court Judge Ertha Pascal-Trouillot Tuesday became the first woman president of Haiti in the Caribbean nation's tumultuous 186-year history.
Pascal-Trouillot was inaugurated a day after military leader Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril, pressured by widespread protests, resigned and left the country.Pascal-Trouillot is to serve as interim president with a 19-member advisory council until after the country's first free elections, which could take place in three to six months.
"I have accepted this heavy task in the name of Haitian women," Pascal-Trouillot said.
Pascal-Trouillot, who was the only woman on the 12-member Supreme Court, was inaugurated by Maj. Gen. Herard Abraham, the army chief of staff, at the National Palace. The ceremony was carried live on state television.
"The armed forces are under your orders," Abraham told her. Abraham had taken temporary control of the government after Avril resigned Saturday.
"She has the capacity to lead the country to the democracy we have all been waiting for," said Chantal Hudicourt Ewald, a lawyer who helped write the 1987 constitution. "It is a great victory for women."
In the 1970s, Pascal-Trouillot campaigned for equal rights for women when it was illegal for a married woman to have a bank account or buy property without her husband's written approval.
The law has since been changed. Women are no longer "legal minors" in Haiti.
After the fall of dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier in 1986, she was appointed to the 12-member Supreme Court, becoming the first and only woman to sit on the body.