American Troops Leave Haiti
By KATHY CHEN

WASHINGTON—The bulk of U.S. military forces will depart Haiti on Tuesday, leaving United Nations forces and civilian groups to help the country rebuild its devastated capital in the wake of January's deadly earthquake.

The departure, which was agreed upon by the U.S. and Haitian governments and long anticipated, signals that "we have reached a basic level of sustainment in Haiti," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley in an interview on Monday. "The military played an essential short-term role, but now this is getting back to where the focus is on development, and that expertise rests in the civilian sector."


The U.S. will remain involved in assisting Haiti through the U.S. Agency for International Development, the lead agency coordinating the U.S. response, U.N. efforts and nonprofit groups, U.S. officials said.

In addition, 500 National Guard troops will be stationed in Haiti for several months to help construct schools, clinics, and community centers, while medical staff aboard the USS Iwo Jima will offer continued medical care to Haitians when the ship arrives in the Port-de-Paix area in July.

Gen. Doug Fraser, head of U.S. Southern Command, which is based in Miami and runs the Haiti mission, said in a statement that these projects "demonstrate our continued support to the people of Haiti. We also have a robust capability to rapidly respond to any future disaster situation in Haiti."

An aide to Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said the transition was discussed and jointly agreed to by the Haitian and U.S. governments. She said the right U.S. teams "will be here to do the necessary work for agreed upon projects."

The country faces numerous challenges as it tries to recover from the January quake, which left more than 230,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands injured.

An immediate issue will be ensuring the safety of the country's 9.9 million residents during the coming rainy and hurricane season, which runs from June through November.

More than two million people—mostly in the capital, Port-au-Prince—were displaced by the quake, and hundreds of thousands still live in tents or other temporary shelters that could be affected by flooding. U.S. and U.N. forces have worked together to move people living in locations subject to flooding, and U.S. Navy engineers have helped shore up nine settlement camps, clearing canals and putting down gravel, among other measures.

Other challenges include beginning reconstruction of damaged buildings and roads, getting children back into schools, and ensuring residents have access to clean water and food.

The country is also slated to hold national elections that had been postponed by the quake before year-end.

There are currently about 500 U.S. military personnel stationed in Haiti, a big decrease from the 22,000 or so at the peak of the effort. They have helped with everything from transporting supplies to reopening the airport to providing medical services and performing surgeries. According to USAID, humanitarian assistance to Haiti by USAID and the Department of Defense so far has totaled $1.08 billion, including $460 million from the Department of Defense.

The State Department and USAID have asked for $1.64 billion in additional funding to assist Haiti; the request is pending before Congress.

"The U.S. military presence in Haiti was extremely useful... [but] we are still at the emergency phase," said David Wimhurst, director of public information for the U.N.'s stabilization mission in Haiti, based in Port-au-Prince. "It is going to take the country 10 years to pick itself up and do some smart reconstruction," he added.

José de Córdoba contributed to this article.

Wyclef Jean, President of Haiti: Do Haitians like the sound of that?
Hip hop star Wyclef Jean has filed the necessary paperwork to run in Haiti's Nov. 28 election. Haiti is abuzz with talk of a Wyclef presidency, but not all young people like the idea.


Recording artist Wylclef Jean, right, is interviewed by host Stuart Varney on the 'Varney & Company' program on the Fox Business Network, in New York Friday, July 23. Mr. Jean is considering running in Haiti's Nov. 28 presidential election.
(Richard Drew/AP)
By Alice Speri, Correspondent
posted July 27, 2010 at 2:08 pm EDT

Port-au-Prince, Haiti —
Haitian-born, New York-raised hip hop star Wyclef Jean has filed to run for president of Haiti, according to an official statement the singer’s family distributed to the media. The 37-year-old former Fugee has filed all necessary papers and has until Aug. 7 to formally declare his intention to run.

Mr. Jean is expected to travel to Haiti later this week and may answer questions about his candidacy. Until then, the devastated nation of 10 million will be buzzing with speculation. But while the singer is very popular in Haiti, especially among the young, many on Tuesday reacted to the news of his possible candidacy with the same skepticism and indifference they expressed for other political candidates.

“It’s difficult for Haitians to have any faith in the election, we are so used to politicians taking advantage of us,” says Anise Ulysse, a 27-year-old who shrugged at the prospect of the singer running. She said she will not vote for anyone. “The people living on the streets have other things to think about.”

Ms. Ulysse, who says she likes Wyclef’s music but prefers Celine Dion, also raised doubts about his understanding of Haiti. “I don’t really think he knows the country,” she said. “He’s like an American.”

Jean should stick to music, but his popularity may successfully get him to a seat for which he has no experience, says 26 year-old Marie Lacrete.

“I don’t have a problem with Wyclef, but he’s not the right person to be president. He’s a musician, not a politician,” says Ms. Lacrete, adding that the singer didn't graduate from college.

Lacrete, who has a degree in agronomy but works as a secretary, said that Haiti’s problem is that the right person is never in the right place. “Still, people will vote for him, because he has money and he’s popular and because they don’t know what they are doing.”

Splitting time between US and Haiti

Many in Haiti had expected the announcement. Jean had previously denied an intention to seek office, though he played with the idea in his 2006 hit “If I Was President.” The song’s video – set in the US – shows the artist singing “Election time is coming, who you gonna vote for?” as fans hold signs saying “Wyclef for President.”



In the 24 hours after the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the country’s capital, killing over 230,000 and displacing some 2 million, Jean’s foundation, Yele Haiti, raised over $1 million in text-message donations, though the organization subsequently came under fire for mismanagement of funds and corruption.

Jean was born in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Croix-des-Bouquets, but moved to the US at age 9 and grew up between New York City and New Jersey. Though he holds a Haitian passport, often travels back to Haiti, and has long been an advocate of dual citizenship and greater diaspora involvement, the artist has not permanently resided in the country since he left.

“How is Haiti going to move forward if the Haitians that came to live in America can’t go back and help the Haitians in Haiti?” Jean said last spring, at a fundraising event he held at Queens College, in New York City.

A daunting task ahead

The next Haitian president will have to take on the daunting task of reconstructing a capital city still covered in rubble and tent cities, rescuing the country’s moribund economy, and providing shelter and employment to the growing masses of poor and displaced.

He or she will also have to deal with rising insecurity and the possible return to the riots and violence that have marked many of Haiti’s elections in the past two decades.

Then there's the $10 billion in reconstruction aid that Haiti is supposed to get over the next few years. Administering that correctly won't be easy.

“He can’t even manage an enterprise properly,” Lacrete shuddered, talking about the Haitian TV company Telemax, which she charges has been “going down” since the singer became a shareholder. “How is he going to manage Haiti?”

'An authentic heart'

Others, however, are enthusiastic at the idea of having a music star for president and think the singer’s motivations are genuine. His supporters say he is already wealthy enough not to seek power for personal gain, as local politicians regularly do.

“He is not like the others, he has an authentic heart,” says Dominique Lapierre, a salesperson at a Port-au-Prince music store.

“Wyclef has done so much for this country, especially for the youth,” says Lapierre, who added he will not vote because he lost his ID while fleeing Port-au-Prince in January. “But I would vote for him. I believe he can really change this country.”

Related:

Haiti earthquake: Six months later, are relief efforts dragging?
In Haiti, Red Cross, Wyclef Jean change charity a text at a time
Six months after the Haiti earthquake, what progress?

Mystery presidential candidates bring buzz to Haiti


Haiti's upcoming presidential elections fuel speculation on who will be among the contenders.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES

JCHARLES@MIAMIHERALD.COM

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- The filing deadline for Haiti's presidential elections isn't until Aug. 7, but many of the potential contenders are playing coy about their plans and speculation about who will run is rampant.
The political jockeying for one of the toughest jobs in the hemisphere began well before the catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake. But it has intensified as rumors fly over a possible bid by Haiti-born multi-platinum musician Wyclef Jean, secret polling by foreign powers in search of a new face to lead Haiti's reconstruction and candidacy declarations by some Haitian diplomats and government officials.
The potential candidates are stirring up so much interest that the subject even came up Tuesday at a U.S. congressional hearing on Haiti's rebuilding efforts. The House later approved a $2.8 billion Haiti aid package that is part of a war spending bill on its way to President Barack Obama for approval.
During the hearing, U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York, a stalwart supporter of the quake-ravaged Caribbean nation, asked U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah what he was hearing about the scheduled Nov. 28 presidential elections.
``Can you give us any idea of who might be running because I got a call from [Haiti Ambassador to the U.S. Raymond Joseph] that he is a candidate,'' Rangel said.
Shah chuckled slightly and responded: ``I've heard a lot of rumors; it's best for me not to speculate.''
Said Rangel: ``I certainly hope they are just rumors!''
In an interview with The Miami Herald a day earlier, Joseph, who is also the uncle of Jean, would not confirm his candidacy, saying only that ``I am thinking about it.''
Rumors of Joseph's candidacy swirled two weeks ago when he traveled to Haiti to meet with Haitian President René Préval, presumably to hand in his resignation. He never got the meeting.
`HUGE DECISION'
As Joseph was making the rounds in the capital, so was his nephew, Jean, who emigrated to the United States as a child and whose visit to check on his birth certificate in the city of Croix-des-Bouquet immediately sparked political buzz about a presidential run.
``It's a huge decision,'' Jean told The Miami Herald about the prospect of his running. ``The decision is not final.''
Jean could help generate a high turnout among Haiti's disenchanted youth, said Robert Fatton, a Haitian-born political scientist at the University of Virginia.
While Jean has long used his status as a superstar producer and hip-hop artist to help Haiti even before the devastation, his charity, Yéle Haiti Foundation, has come under scrutiny over how it spends money donated to it on behalf of Haiti.
A recent attempt by Jean to reach out to the population by gathering 200 people and handing each $7 was met with some criticism by camp dwellers in St. Pierre's Plaza.
``If it's money that was given to his organization that he gave out, then it's too little,'' said Acceme Guerrier, 39, a camp dweller.
Jean, who has defended allegations against his grass-roots nongovernmental organization, said the money handed out to quake victims was a symbolic gesture to kick off his Yéle Corps rubble removal project that will begin employing 1,000 people at the end of this month.
``You are not going to have everyone happy with everything you do,'' he said. ``How much are the other NGOs paying per day? $6.''
In Haiti, the big question is who Préval will bless to lead his INITE (Unity) platform in the presidential balloting.
``Even if he's very unpopular, he's kept control of what remains of the state and the Provisional Electoral Council, and those things are key,'' in being able to name a successor and win the election, Fatton said. ``He's mastered the art of controlling the political system.''
Still, Préval's choice is among Haiti's best kept secrets. Sources close to him say he may not have even made up his mind yet. And his final choice may end up being none of the names that have been bandied about.
``He doesn't name names,'' said a frequent attendee at daily, hours-long discussions about the upcoming presidential and legislative elections between Préval and members of INITE.
Under Haiti's constitution, Préval, who is in his second term as president, is barred from seeking reelection.
As a result, observers say who he anoints as his successor will in large part be based on his desires once he leaves office. Does he want to remain an influential behind-the-scenes power or does he want to retire from politics as he did following his first presidential term in 1996-2001?
``All the choices he's going to make involve a risk. The question is what is the least risky,'' Fatton said.
One of the biggest dangers is the possible collapse of the very coalition that Préval launched right before the earthquake, bringing both political foes and supporters under one banner -- INITE. The political coup positioned him as a kingmaker destined to push through constitutional and economic reforms -- until the quake forced the postponment of the Feb. 28 legislative elections.
But now with his former prime minister, Jacques-Edouard Alexis, and both the current and former presidents of the Haitian Senate, Kely Bastien and Joseph Lambert, interested in running for president -- whether they receive the INITE nomination or not -- Préval finds himself walking a delicate balance of managing egos and political ambitions.
IN SOUTH FLORIDA
Privately the two lawmakers have expressed interest as have at least four government ministers, sources say.
Meanwhile, Alexis was in South Florida this week stumping for support, and has been working on his political campaign since he was fired by Haiti's Senate in April 2008 in the aftermath of food riots.
Another possible candidate is current Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, whose candidacy is being pushed in some quarters. In a visit with The Miami Herald last month, Bellerive said he did not know if he would be among the candidates because ``it is not a personal decision. I am on a team.''
Meanwhile, political observers say whomever Préval chooses must be seen as independent, otherwise the candidate would risk igniting an opposition that has attempted to force Préval's resignation and change the nine-member electoral council.
These attempts have raised concerns among some in the international community, who worry about a possible boycott of the elections and low turnout as Haitian officials try to register voters and replace identity cards in a country where 1.5 million people are displaced.
``Préval could pick anyone and if there is a low turnout, they will win,'' Fatton said.
Ultimately, the determination over who is qualified -- or not -- to run for president of Haiti will be up to the nine-member CEP. It is the final authority that will decide, for example, if Alexis has the proper documentation to run and whether a superstar like Jean meets the five years residency and non-dual citizenship requirements to run.
Miami Herald staff writer Lesley Clark contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/27/v-fullstory/1749439/mystery-candidates-bring-buzz.html#ixzz0uyawaCOa

Wyclef Jean's uncle to run for president of Haiti
Wyclef Jean's uncle, Raymond Joseph – who is Haiti's ambassador to the US – tells the Monitor that he is running for president this fall. Will the hip hop artist and his uncle team up – or compete against each other in Haiti's presidential campaign?




Wyclef Jean’s uncle, who is Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, says he will run for president of Haiti this autumn.

Ambassador Raymond Joseph says that he will formally announce his candidacy next week, hinting that he would be campaigning alongside his immensely popular nephew, the hip hop singer.

In a turn of fate, it was Ambassador Joseph who helped push Wyclef on a Grammy-award winning musical career decades ago.

Joseph won't dispel reports that Wyclef Jean might run for president, citing respect for the Jean family’s privacy. But he says that the two wouldn't run against each other.

“No, I wouldn’t say running against, I would say running parallel,” says Joseph, ambassador since in 2005, speaking by telephone Tuesday. “I think Haiti needs all her sons and daughters.”

“We talked about this – we talk all the time,” he adds. “We are family. And we won’t allow politics to divide.”

Wyclef Jean, President of Haiti: Do Haitians like the sound of that?

Wyclef encourages uncle to run

Wycelf, who was appointed Haiti’s ambassador-at-large in 2007 and holds a diplomatic passport, has encouraged his uncle to run for president.

“I am not running for president of Haiti,” he said at an event in September 2009, adding that he wished that his uncle Raymond Joseph would, according to an article on BET.com.

Wyclef told The Associated Press in a recent interview he intended to be involved in the Nov. 28 election, but not necessarily as a candidate. "Do I have political intentions? At this time no,” he said. Campaigning alongside his uncle for a place in the presidential cabinet could explain what Wycelf meant.

"I think he [Joseph] would be a strong contender," says Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor at Florida International University and a close follower of Haitian affairs. "I’m not endorsing him, but I am saying that he does fit the profile of what many expect to see in the next round: someone able to engage the international community."

"Ambassador to the US is a position of very high significance," he adds. "It’s a significant post, and a good venue in which to embark on a presidential campaign.

Professor Gamarra says Joseph is the first to announce he will be running for president. Other presidential candidates could include heavyweights Jean-Max Bellerive, the prime minister, and Leslie Voltaire, the special envoy to the United Nations. Both men, like Joseph, are close to Haiti President René Préval and could be contending for his endorsement.

And would Wyclef Jean be a serious contender? "He probably has more resources to run a campaign than the other candidates. And money is an important thing," says Gamarra.

The Nov. 28 presidential election was originally scheduled for Feb. 28, but was postponed because of the Jan. 12 quake that killed an estimated 230,000 people and left another 2 million homeless.

It was that shattering event, says Ambassador Joseph, that inspired him to run for president of a country that once sentenced him to death.

From Haiti to Chicago

Born on Aug. 31, 1931, Raymond Alcide Joseph’s father – like Wyclef’s father – was a Christian pastor. The family grew up in the southern city of Les Cayes surrounded by missionaries from the United States, and at the age of 10, Joseph says, he could already speak his native Creole, French, and English.

In April 1954, a Baptist minister from Asheville, North Carolina, came to evangelize to the island. He needed a translator, and Joseph volunteered.

“I interpreted for him at a big convention of 10,000 people. After a week he said, ‘Young man what do you want to do?’ I said I wanted to study in America. He said to me, ‘count on me.’ ”

By August 1954, Joseph was studying at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago on a scholarship from Reverend Wesley Grant, Sr., who died in 2007. Joseph attended the funeral. “I have remained in touch with the family; his children consider me their elder brother,” he says.

Joseph graduated from Moody and then went on to earn his B.A. in anthropology from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., with the class of 1960, about a decade after Reverend Billy Graham attended the evangelical school.

Papa Doc takes control

Now fluent in Hebrew and Greek, Joseph says that he returned to Haiti just after Dr. François Duvalier, known as "Papa Doc," had taken over as president. Joseph spent two years translating the first New Testament, plus the Psalms, into Creole for the American Bible Society. Until then, it was only available in French.

But he remembers feeling unease already with the authoritarian government, and in 1961 he returned to the US to earn his Master’s degree in social anthropology/linguistics from the University of Chicago. He subsequently took a job in New York City. In 1964, alarmed by Papa Doc’s public execution of two men – Louis Drouin and Marcel Numa – he says that he condemned the government in a radio broadcast from New York City that earned him a death sentence in absentia.

Joseph became a radio personality, founding the weekly newspaper Haiti-Observateur with his brother in 1971, and then working as a financial journalist for the Wall Street Journal in the late 1970s and 1980s.

First shot at presidency

His newspaper, Haiti-Observateur, opened an office in Haiti in 1986 following the ouster of "Baby Doc" Jean-Claude Duvalier. Baby's Doc's ouster also opened the first window for Joseph to run for president, the ambassador says.

“I was the face of the opposition against the Duvalier regime. People thought I wanted to be president,” he says.

Instead, in 1990, he became Haiti’s chargé d’affaires in Washington and his country’s representative at the Organization of American States. He played a hand in the country’s first free election in decades, helping to bring in international observers to monitor the vote.

From 1991 to 2004, Joseph went back to leading his newspaper Haiti-Observateur, where he remained until he was called back to Washington in March 2004, first as chargé d’affaires and then promoted to ambassador a year later.

Wyclef on the scene

And all that while, Joseph’s nephew had been growing in fame, thanks in part to some gentle early prodding from Joseph.

Wyclef had moved to the United States at a young age with his family, first living in Brooklyn and then northern New Jersey. His father, the conservative Christian pastor of a Nazarene church in Newark, originally did not want his son entering the world of secular music.

“I took my Bible and sat down with him [my brother-in-law],” says Joseph, who is siblings with Wycelf’s mother. He says he pointed to Chapter 12 of the Book of Romans, which calls for people to utilize their gifts. “I said, ‘He has a gift of music. Let him play his music.’ ”

And that’s what Wyclef did. In the 1990s he teamed up with his cousin Prakazrel “Pras” Michel and Lauryn Hill to form The Refugee Camp (also known as The Fugees). They sold tens of millions of albums worldwide.

In a nod to a father who nearly ended his son’s musical career before it began, in 2003 Wyclef came out with the album, “The Preacher’s Son.” It rose to No. 22 on the Billboard Top 100.

Vision for Haiti

With Wyclef's growing fame and charity work for Haiti, he was seen as a de facto ambassador for the Haitian community, performing songs in Creole and draping himself with the Haitian flag on television. In 2007, he was appointed Haiti's Ambassador-at-Large in a ceremony conducted by his uncle Raymond, who had been asked to continue as ambassador to the US for the administration of President René Préval.

page 2
“I don’t know whether I will ask for the endorsement of anybody now,” Joseph says, referring to Préval. “I think I want to run on my record and my vision for Haiti, a decentralized Haiti, something I have been preaching about for quite a while.”

The Jan. 12 earthquake killed more than 230,000, displaced some 2 million, and destroyed or damaged 188,383 homes, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). While the earthquake only affected one-fifth of the island, it wiped out 80 percent of the economy, according to Joseph.

“What lesson do we need more than we have to decentralize? We can no longer decide that everything should be inside Port-au-Prince,” he says.

Joseph credits himself with shepherding the Haitian Economy and the HOPE Act of 2006, which opened up US markets to tax-free Haiti textiles. In 2008, HOPE Act II extended the tax-breaks for 10 years, and in January 2010 it became the HELP Act and opened the US market up to many more Haitian products. “I want to make Haiti a more open society to US business,” he says.

Battling the outsider image

As for Haitians who will challenge his candidacy on the grounds that he is out of touch with a land where he has not lived for five decades, Joseph has a list of challenges for his critics.

“I challenge them to speak Creole as good as I do.

“I challenge them to look in my background and see all I’ve done for Haiti and compare me with others. See how all these years I have been working for my country even at a distance.

“I challenge them also to think about what the Haitian diaspora has done for the country. The Haitian diaspora has transferred $2 billion in remittances every year – that’s a quarter of GDP! Diaspora and Haitians at home are one in the same.”

That’s why, Joseph says, he will campaign to push for parliament to pass a law allowing dual nationality.

Joseph-Wyclef ticket for 2010?

Joseph says he wants to instill pride in Haitians, and to dispel the negativity that surrounds the island's image as the hemisphere's poorest country.

“This little country that people are belittling – it should be a foundation of wealth, a foundation of liberation, for the whole hemisphere,” he says. “In 1804, there were only two independent nations in this hemisphere: the US and Haiti, and only one stood for the freedom of all individuals. And we showed it in action. I want Haitians to return to that vision that they are a great people.”

Professor Gamarra of Florida International University warns that Wyclef's super-stardom alone won't win the election for him or for his uncle. "It’s not just a connection with a single individual that is going to make anybody president of any country," he says.

With Joseph now running for president, Wyclef will test that assumption, as he will no doubt be a part of the Haiti election this fall.

A big question now looming is: Will Wyclef play a supporting role or a leading role?

Will Haitians see Wyclef Jean take the stage this fall to introduce his uncle as the family's presidential candidate?

“I wish that could happen,” says Joseph. “We don’t have to wait too long to see

Is Wyclef Jean eligible to run for president of Haiti?
Wyclef Jean is rumored to be running for president of Haiti. The Haiti Constitution gives six clear requirements for becoming president, however, and Wyclef may not meet them all.


Recording artist Wylclef Jean, left, is interviewed by host Stuart Varney on the "Varney and Company" program on the Fox Business Network, in New York, July 23. Wyclef Jean is rumored to be running for president of Haiti.
(Richard Drew/AP)
By Stephen Kurczy, Staff writer
posted July 27, 2010 at 3:45 pm EDT

Wyclef Jean has casually hinted that he may run for president of Haiti before, but he heightened speculation on the matter on Tuesday when he said he is mulling whether to formally announce his candidacy for the Nov. 28 vote.

“At this time, Wyclef Jean has not announced his intent to run for Haitian president," the Jean Family said in a statement today. "If and when a decision is made, media will be alerted immediately.”

But beyond “will he?” is the question of “can he?”

Dr. Wyclef (in May he received an honorary doctorate from Western Connecticut State University) has already qualified to be a diplomat for the Haitian government. The Grammy Award-winning musician, whose full name is Nel Ust Wycliffe Jean, was appointed ambassador-at-large in 2007.

But the Haitian Constitution gives six specific requirements for president, and it remains unclear if Wyclef meets them all.

Constitutional requirements

Article 135 of the Constitution states that the president must be at least 35 years old; a native-born Haitian and have never renounced Haitian nationality; the owner in Haiti of at least one real property and have his habitual residence in the country; have been relieved of this responsibilities if he has been handling public funds; have resided in the country for five consecutive years before the election; and have never been sentenced to death, personal restraint, or penal servitude or lost of civil rights for a crime.

Wyclef appears to meet at least five of the six requirements, according to the Haitian Ambassador to the United States, who also happens to be Wyclef’s uncle.

Wyclef meets most requirements

Born on Oct. 17, 1972, Wyclef will be 38 on election day this November.

Although he moved to the United States as a child and grew up in Brooklyn and Newark, Wyclef has always retained his Haitian citizenship, says Ambassador Raymond Joseph.

“He is not a US citizen and has never been,” Ambassador Joseph told the Monitor in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Fulfilling a third category, Wyclef owns a home and businesses in Haiti, according to Ambassador Joseph. Wyclef purchased the Haitian television station Telemax in early 2006.

Wyclef does not hold public office and therefore does not handle public funds. His charity, Yele, is a registered nonprofit charitable organization with tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status.

A Monitor search of public archives does not show Wyclef having ever been sentenced to death, personal restraint, or penal servitude or lost civil rights for a crime. In 2002, during a protest with fellow musicians P Diddy and Alicia Keys against proposed budget cuts at New York City public schools, he was arrested and briefly jailed for disorderly conduct. But this would not block a presidential run.

"I didn't go to prison for no drugs, no guns, or whatever. I went to prison because I believe they shouldn't cut the budget... when it comes for protesting for the right cause, that's what I'm all about. I'm a revolutionary," he told BBC News shortly afterward.

Potential roadblock: residence

However, one category may throw a wrench in any potential run for Haiti's highest office.

Wyclef spends much time in the United States, and it is unclear if his stints living in Haiti will qualify him for having resided in the country for five consecutive years before the election.

The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) will rule on this if Wyclef decides to run for president, says Ambassador Joseph, who has consulted his nephew on his political plans.

“We talked about this – we talk all the time,” says Joseph, declining to divulge more.

He notes that one attribute of a president that is not constitutionally required, but is Wyclef’s greatest asset, is his popularity. “He is sort of a spokesperson for a large segment of Haiti’s youth,” he says.

Is there any Haitian more popular?

“I don’t think so,” the ambassador says.

Wyclef Jean for president of Haiti? Look beyond the hype
August 2, 2010
[Translate]
by Charlie Hinton, with editing assistance from Kiilu Nyasha


Wyclef Jean holds a Haitian flag as he considers running for president of Haiti. Beware! Wyclef is Haitian, but he is no friend of the Haitian people as a whole, who remain loyal to President Aristide.
To cut to the chase, no election in Haiti, and no candidate in those elections, will be considered legitimate by the majority of Haiti’s population, unless it includes the full and fair participation of the Fanmi Lavalas Party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Fanmi Lavalas is unquestionably the most popular party in the country, yet the “international community,” led by the United States, France and Canada, has done everything possible to undermine Aristide and Lavalas, overthrowing him twice by military coups in 1991 and 2004 and banishing Aristide, who now lives in South Africa with his family, from the Americas.
A United Nations army, led by Brazil, still occupies Haiti six years after the coup. Their unstated mission, under the name of “peacekeeping,” is to suppress the popular movement and prevent the return to power of Aristide’s Lavalas Party. One must understand a Wyclef Jean candidacy, first of all, in this context.

Every election since a 67 percent majority first brought Aristide to power in 1990 has demonstrated the enormous popularity of the Lavalas movement. When Lavalas could run, they won overwhelmingly. In 2006, when security conditions did not permit them to run candidates, they voted and demonstrated to make sure Rene Preval, a former Lavalas president, was re-elected.

Preval, however, turned against those who voted for him. He scheduled elections for 12 Senate seats in 2009 and supported the Electoral Council’s rejection of all Lavalas candidates. Lavalas called for a boycott, and as few as 3 percent of Haitians voted, with fewer than 1 percent voting in the runoff, once again demonstrating the people’s love and respect for President Aristide.


When Lavalas candidates were barred from the ballot for the Senate election of April 19, 2009, almost no one voted; even some poll workers refused to vote. That's how loyal Haitians are to the Lavalas Party. - Photo: Alice Smeets
Fanmi Lavalas has already been banned from the next round of elections, so enter Wyclef Jean. Jean comes from a prominent Haitian family that has virulently opposed Lavalas since the 1990 elections. His uncle is Raymond Joseph – also a rumored presidential candidate – who became Haitian ambassador to the United States under the coup government and remains so today. Kevin Pina writes in “It’s not all about that! Wyclef Jean is fronting in Haiti,” Joseph is “the co-publisher of Haiti Observateur, a right-wing rag that has been an apologist for the killers in the Haitian military going back as far as the brutal coup against Aristide in 1991.
“On Oct. 26 [2004] Haitian police entered the pro-Aristide slum of Fort Nationale and summarily executed 13 young men. Wyclef Jean said nothing. On Oct. 28 the Haitian police executed five young men, babies really, in the pro-Aristide slum of Bel Air. Wyclef said nothing. If Wyclef really wants to be part of Haiti’s political dialogue, he would acknowledge these facts. Unfortunately, Wyclef is fronting.”

As if to prove it, the Miami Herald reported on Feb. 28, 2010, “Secret polling by foreign powers in search of a new face to lead Haiti’s reconstruction …” might favor Jean’s candidacy, as someone with sufficient name recognition who could draw enough votes to overcome another Lavalas electoral boycott.

Wyclef Jean supported the 2004 coup. When gun-running former army and death squad members trained by the CIA were overrunning Haiti’s north on Feb. 25, 2004, MTV’s Gideon Yago wrote, “Wyclef Jean voiced his support for Haitian rebels on Wednesday, calling on embattled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down and telling his fans in Haiti to ‘keep their head up’ as the country braces itself for possible civil war.”

During the Obama inaugural celebration, Jean famously and perversely serenaded Colin Powell, the Bush administration secretary of state during the U.S. destabilization campaign and eventual coup against Aristide, with Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”

Jean also produced the movie, “The Ghosts of Cite Soleil,” an anti-Aristide and Lavalas hit piece, which tells us that President Aristide left voluntarily, without mention of his kidnapping by the U.S. military, and presents the main coup leaders in a favorable light. It features interviews with sweatshop owners Andy Apaid and Charles Henry Baker without telling us they hate Aristide because he raised the minimum wage and sought to give all Haitians a seat at the table by democratizing Haiti’s economy, a program opposed by the rich in Haiti.

It uncritically interviews coup leader Louis Jodel Chamblain, without telling us he worked with the Duvalier dictatorship’s brutal militia, the Tonton Macoutes, in the 1980s; that following the coup against Aristide in 1991, he was the “operations guy” for the FRAPH paramilitary death squad, accused of murdering uncounted numbers of Aristide supporters and introducing gang rape into Haiti as a military weapon.

Wyclef Jean’s movie, “The Ghosts of Cite Soleil,” an anti-Aristide and Lavalas hit piece, features interviews with sweatshop owners Andy Apaid and Charles Henry Baker without telling us they hate Aristide because he raised the minimum wage and sought to give all Haitians a seat at the table by democratizing Haiti’s economy, a program opposed by the rich in Haiti.
It uncritically interviews coup leader Guy Phillipe, without telling us he’s a former Haitian police chief who was trained by U.S. Special Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s or that the U.S. embassy admitted that Phillipe was involved in the transhipment of narcotics, one of the key sources of funds for paramilitary attacks on the poor in Haiti.

Wyclef runs the Yele Haiti Foundation, which the Washington Post reported on Jan. 16, 2010, is under fiscal scrutiny because “(i)t seems clear that a significant amount of the monies that this charity raises go for costs other than providing benefits to Haitians in need … In 2006, Yele Haiti had about $1 million in revenue, according to tax documents. More than a third of the money went to payments to related parties, said lawyer James Joseph … (T)he charity recorded a payment of $250,000 to Telemax, a TV station and production company in Haiti in which Jean and Jerry Duplessis, both members of Yele Haiti’s board of directors, had a controlling interest. The charity paid about $31,000 in rent to Platinum Sound, a Manhattan recording studio owned by Jean and Duplessis. And it spent an additional $100,000 for Jean’s performance at a benefit concert in Monaco.” A foundation spokesperson “said the group hopes to spend a higher percentage of its budget on services as it gains experience.”

PLEASE SPREAD THE NEWS: “WYCLEF JEAN IS NOT A FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT OF HAITI.” The floating of his candidacy is just one more effort by the international forces, desperate to put a smiley face on a murderous military occupation, to undermine the will of the Haitian majority by making Wyclef Jean the Ronald Reagan of Haiti.

The floating of his candidacy is just one more effort by the international forces, desperate to put a smiley face on a murderous military occupation, to undermine the will of the Haitian majority by making Wyclef Jean the Ronald Reagan of Haiti.
Let us be clear. Jean and his uncle, the Haitian ambassador to the U.S., are both cozy with the self-appointed czar of Haiti, Bill Clinton, whose plans for the Caribbean nation are to make it a neo-colony for a reconstructed tourist industry and a pool of cheap labor for U.S. factories. Wyclef Jean is the perfect front man. The Haitian elite and its U.S./U.N. sponsors are counting on his appeal to the youth to derail the people’s movement for democracy and their call for the return of President Aristide. Most Haitians will not be hoodwinked by the likes of Wyclef Jean.

Charlie Hinton is a member of the Haiti Action Committee and works at Inkworks Press, a worker owned and managed printing company in Berkeley. He may be reached at ch_lifewish@yahoo.com.

Wyclef Jean to Run for President of Haiti
President Obama may not be the world’s hippest leader for long: Rapper Wyclef Jean has confirmed to Time.com that he will run for president of Haiti in November. “If not for the earthquake, I probably would have waited another 10 years before doing this," said Jean, who was born and lived in Haiti until he was 9. "The quake drove home to me that Haiti can't wait another 10 years for us to bring it into the 21st century." Time sees a few reasons why Jean can win: Half of Haiti’s population is younger than 25; in the wake of the earthquake, Haiti’s politicians are unpopular; and Jean’s fame will lift turnout, particularly among diaspora voters.

Wednesday, Aug. 04, 2010
Wyclef Jean to Run for President of Haiti

Hip-hop, more than most pop genres, is something of a pulpit, urban fire and brimstone garbed in baggy pants and backward caps. So it's little wonder that one of the music form's icons, Haitian-American superstar Wyclef Jean, is the son of a Nazarene preacher — or that he likens himself, as a child of the Haitian diaspora, to a modern-day Moses, destined to return and lead his people out of bondage. Haiti's Jan. 12 earthquake, which ravaged the western hemisphere's poorest country and killed more than 200,000 people, was the biblical event that sealed his calling. After days of helping ferry mangled Haitian corpses to morgues, Jean felt as if he'd "finished the journey from my basket in the bulrushes to standing in front of the burning bush," he told me this week. "I knew I'd have to take the next step."
That would be running for President of Haiti. Jean told TIME he is going to announce his candidacy for the Nov. 28 election just days before the Aug. 7 deadline. One plan that was discussed, loaded with as much Mosaic symbolism as a news cycle can hold, called for him to declare his candidacy on Aug. 5 upon arriving in Port-au-Prince from New York City, where he grew up after leaving Haiti with his family at age 9. "If not for the earthquake, I probably would have waited another 10 years before doing this," Jean says. "The quake drove home to me that Haiti can't wait another 10 years for us to bring it into the 21st century." Jean sees no contradiction between his life as an artist and his ambitions as a politician. "If I can't take five years out to serve my country as President," he argues, "then everything I've been singing about, like equal rights, doesn't mean anything." (Watch the video of Wyclef Jean discussing his plans to run for President of Haiti.)
It's tempting to dismiss this as flaky performance art, a publicity stunt from the same guy who just a few years ago recorded a number called "President" that included the refrain "If I was President." But Jean's chances as well as his motives seem solid. And there are good reasons for Haitians — and the U.S.-led international donor community, which is bankrolling Haiti's long slog to the 21st century — to take this particular hip-hop politician seriously. Pop-culture celebrity hardly disqualifies you from high office today. (The last time I looked, an action hero was still running California.) And in Haiti, where half the population of about 9 million is under age 25, it's an asset as golden as a rapper's chains. Amid Haiti's gray postquake rubble, Jean is far more popular with that young cohort than their chronically corrupt and inept mainstream politicians are, and he'll likely galvanize youth participation in the election.

More important, Jean stands to prove that fame can do more than lift voter turnout — or raise millions of dollars for earthquake victims, as his Yéle Haiti (Haiti Freedom Cry) foundation has this year. His presidential run, win or lose, could build a long-awaited bridge between Haiti and its diaspora: a legion of expatriates and their progeny, many of them successful in pursuits spanning every field, who number 800,000 in the U.S. alone. International aid managers agree that Haiti really can't recover from the quake unless it taps into the education, capital, entrepreneurial drive and love for mother country that Jean epitomizes — even if his French (one of Haiti's official languages) is poor and his Creole (the other) is rusty. "A lot of Haitians are excited about this," says Marvel Dandin, a popular Port-au-Prince radio broadcaster. "Given the awful situation in Haiti right now," he says, "most people don't care if the President speaks fluent Creole."
Accentuating the Positive
Jean's celebrity candidacy at least promises to keep an erratic media more regularly focused on Haiti's awful situation. International donors have pledged some $10 billion in aid, but seven months after the earthquake, mountains of shattered concrete still choke Port-au-Prince's streets, and more than a million people remain homeless, trapped in squalid tent cities as a sclerotic government bureaucracy and loosely organized aid groups struggle to relocate them to decent temporary shelters. The Caribbean hurricane season, which reaches its peak in about a month, threatens to make conditions even uglier. (See exclusive photos of the destruction in Haiti.)
Jean has spent most of his life trying to show the world the positive side of star-crossed Haiti. Despite his Brooklyn and New Jersey upbringing — where he recalls weekly "beat up a Haitian" days at his schools — he proudly embraced the nation, even when, in the 1980s and '90s, Haiti was an abject byword for boat people, AIDS and dictators. "A lot of us focused on assimilation in the U.S.," says Jean's younger brother Sam, a New York entertainment lawyer. "Clef was unabashedly proud to be Haitian long before it was in vogue." So much so that Jean never took U.S. citizenship, instead carrying a Haitian passport on his international concert tours.