Wyclef Jean Says He’ll Challenge Election Ruling

By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: August 22, 2010

Supporters of the hip-hop star Wyclef Jean protested
Saturday in Croix des Bouquets, Haiti, against
his exclusion from the country’s presidential election.
Thony Belizaire/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MIAMI — Wyclef Jean, the hip-hop star who had hoped to become Haiti’s next president, said Sunday that his lawyers would challenge the recent ruling from election officials that kept him from the list of eligible candidates.
 An election council spokesman said there was no legal mechanism for contesting an election eligibility decision.
He had simply accepted the election council decision when it was announced Friday night, but in a message on Sunday on Twitter, his preferred means of public communication, Mr. Jean said he had decided to appeal because: “We have met all the requirements set by the laws. And the law must be Respected.”
Even with such brevity (and a capital “R”), Mr. Jean actually revealed the central conflict of his candidacy: When faced with a choice between charismatic celebrity and strict loyalty to laws that limit outside influence, which would Haiti choose?
Friday’s ruling seemed to indicate the latter. An election council spokesman, Richardson Dumel, said Sunday that there was no legal mechanism for contesting an election eligibility decision.
But Mr. Jean said he had been barred prematurely. He told The Associated Press that another Haitian elections entity had not issued a final ruling on whether he met the requirement that presidential candidates live in Haiti for five consecutive years before the election in November.
Earlier he had argued that, although as a child he left Haiti for the United States, he should not be barred on the basis of residency because he is a good-will ambassador for Haiti with a mandate from its government to rove the world.
On Sunday, he said he believed his candidacy was rejected because of politics, not law.
“I will be seeking a solution through legal channels, and I urge my countrymen to be patient,” he said in a statement issued later in the day.
At least one of the 19 approved presidential candidates, Leslie Voltaire, said that Mr. Jean should be allowed to run. “It’s not fair” that he was eliminated, Mr. Voltaire said Sunday.
Regardless, the continued back and forth reflects a deeper Haitian rift. Historians point out that the country’s political class has never fully made its peace with what Mr. Jean represents: the successful Haitian diaspora — financially helpful and mostly out of town.
Elections are a prime example. In the Dominican Republic, emigrating — even becoming an American citizen — does not mean sacrificing the right to vote in one’s native country. But dual citizenship is not allowed in Haiti, so millions of Haitians living abroad are cut out of the country’s voting system.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Mr. Jean, left, and his lawyer Thursday.

The residency rule for candidates is also an extension of that historic ambivalence. And in the case of Mr. Jean, who announced his candidacy on “Larry King Live” on CNN, it led some Haitians to ask: Who would a Jean administration really serve?
“What was interesting about his candidacy was the way that it crystallized the ambiguities surrounding the role of the Haitian diaspora,” Laurent Dubois, a historian of Haiti at Duke University, said in an interview. “Wyclef talked about bringing the American dream to Haiti, and those who supported him saw him as a potential conduit and communicator between the two countries. But there’s also, of course, anxiety in Haiti about U.S. influence, so that can cut both ways.”
Haiti’s identity, after all, has been linked with resisting outsiders since it became the world’s first black republic in 1804, casting out the French. Whites were prevented from becoming landowners by an article of the Constitution, Mr. Dubois said, until the United States rewrote it during its occupation from 1915 to 1934.
Later interventions by the United States and the United Nations have only increased Haiti’s sensitivity regarding independence, especially after an earthquake on Jan. 12 brought the country to its knees.
But this is not an emotion felt equally by all. With their homes in ruins, many Haitians wander the streets saying they will welcome foreign control if it helps.
Louis Herns Marcelin, a Haitian-born anthropology professor at the University of Miami, said that Haiti had become “an apartheid country”: those with influence and money have greater fears about the change that outsiders might bring, while most people just want to see their own, often wretched circumstances change. What most of Haiti’s population is looking for, he said, “is an opening out of the ghetto, an opening out of the permanent prison and segregation they are living in.”
That was what many people, especially the young, had hoped Mr. Jean could bring. “Clef,” as his supporters in Haiti call him, is not part of the status quo. Even in terms of language, he represents a break from the past because he speaks Creole and English, not French, the language of Haiti’s political order.
“He isn’t like the others who came and became president, then stole all the Haitian people’s money,” said Fafane Petion, 24, a supporter of Mr. Jean in Port-au-Prince, the capital.
And yet, Mr. Marcelin contends, “being a rock star does not qualify you to be president.”
Even before he was disqualified, Mr. Jean faced tough questions (and not just from the elite) about his lack of political experience, his personal finances and his charity, Yéle Haiti.
Mr. Jean has blurred boundaries between his personal business and Yéle Haiti’s mission — using the charity to pay his production company for benefit concerts that he headlined. Some Haitians have worried that the millions of dollars Yéle Haiti raised after the earthquake would be used to advance Mr. Jean’s campaign.
To supporters, Mr. Jean’s brief run for office, which began in early August, has already solidified his position as an inspiring star who knows how to keep Haiti in the spotlight. If he finds a way to stay in the race, young Haitians say, they are more likely to vote.
If he is ultimately disqualified, though, the conversation that he kick-started — about the diaspora, about who is Haitian and about what Haiti needs from beyond its borders — will be cut short, perhaps temporarily.
That could mean one of two things, according to experts. Either it is a sign of maturity, with a country once ruled by dictators holding fast to law and tradition; or it is a sign of insecurity by those in power, which will very likely lead to greater disengagement, anger and frustration.
“People are actually very tired of politicians from inside or outside making promises,” Mr. Marcelin said. “The people, they always end up in the same condition.”
Vladimir LaGuerre contributed reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world/americas/23haiti.html?_r=1&ref=haiti